Quiche (/ˈkiːʃ/ KEESH) is a French tart consisting of a pastry crust filled with savoury custard and pieces of cheese, meat, seafood or vegetables.

[1] Recipes for eggs and cream baked in pastry containing meat, fish and fruit are referred to as Crustardes of flesh and Crustade in the 14th-century, English Cookbook, The Forme of Cury.

[7] The American writer and cookery teacher James Peterson recorded first encountering quiche in the late 1960s and being "convinced it was the most sophisticated and delicious thing [he had] ever tasted".

He wrote that, by the 1980s, American quiches had begun to include ingredients he found "bizarre and unpleasant", such as broccoli,[n 1] and that he regarded Bruce Feirstein's satirical book Real Men Don't Eat Quiche (1982) as the "final humiliation" of the dish, such that "[a] rugged and honest country dish had become a symbol of effete snobbery".

[9][10] Types of quiches include: In her French Country Cooking (1951), Elizabeth David gives a recipe for a quiche aux pommes de terre, in which the case is made not from shortcrust pastry but from mashed potato, flour and butter; the filling is cream, Gruyère and garlic.