For many cooks, making a quiche is a big deal. That’s not the way it’s seen in France, where it’s considered a simple, everyday dish. Really!
“Nothing fancy; I’m just making a quiche,” is the way a friend will issue a casual dinner or lunch invite. Often there will be more than one kind. The friend never seems to have broken a sweat.
That’s why when we set out to develop a recipe for quintessential quiche Lorraine, we wanted to keep things quick and simple as possible.
And we did! Our Quintessential Quiche Lorraine can be accomplished with less than an hour of active work — and that includes prep, making the crust, and cleaning up, which I’m able to nearly finish just as the filled quiche is going into the oven. While the quiche bakes (35 to 45 minutes) and rests 10 minutes or so, you can make a simple green salad, and voilà — a fabulous dinner or brunch.
How simple did I want to go? Not as simple as what I did a hundred years ago when I was learning to cook: Buy a pre-made crust and fill it with scrambled eggs and grated jack and cheddar and call it a day. But it had to be decidedly simpler than the majestic, lofty, ethereal version Thomas Keller offered in his 2004 Bouchon cookbook.
Here’s the way Keller described the ideal quiche:
“A great quiche has a rich, flaky crust and a custard about two inches deep. When it is sliced, the edges should be clean, and the exposed custard should have a smooth, almost liquid sheen. When it arrives hot, it should tremble as if were on the verge of collapse. It maintains its form—just—but you can see what’s going to happen when you take a bite. It collapses on the plate, molten, spreading out luxuriously.”
So what was quiche Lorraine originally supposed to be like, back when it was invented? Unlike moussaka, or butter chicken, there is no charming origin story attached to quiche Lorraine. Or at least I was unable to turn one up. In fact, I was able to find little reliable information about its history.
Larousse Gastronomique, generally accepted to be the authoritative encyclopedia of French cuisine, says that quiches in general originated in Lorraine in the 16th century, and it defines quiche as “an open tart filled with a mixture of beaten eggs, crème fraîche and pieces of bacon, served hot as a first course or hors d’oeuvre.” It points out that the word quiche derives from the German Küchen, meaning “cake.” In Nancy, the former capital of the Lorraine region, its local name is “féouse.” Originally it had a bread-dough crust.
So if once upon a time a quiche Lorraine’s filling was just eggs, crème fraîche and bacon, what is it today? It can be a few things. At its most essential, it is still just that: eggs, cream and bacon. More often there are also onions, which happen to go beautifully with the bacon. And also quite often, there is cheese.
Where did the onions come from? The entry for Quiche lorraine on Wikipedia France has a helpful clue, citing Guy Cabourdin, author of Everyday Life in Lorraine in the 17th and 18th Centuries (Éditions Hachette, 1984). Cabourdin, according to the entry, points to a kinship between the original quiche and tarte flambée — the famous onion-and-bacon tart of Alsace, Lorraine’s neighbor. So perhaps we don’t have to wonder too hard where those onions came from.
When I started developing this recipe, I naïvely assumed there was supposed to be cheese in a quiche Lorraine. Keller put both onions and cheese (Comté or Emmenthaler) in the Quiche Lorraine recipe in Bouchon. But once I dove into the history a bit — and saw that Julia Child did not use cheese, I thought I’d try it without. (Julia also does without onions.)
You know what? It’s good both ways — with cheese and without.
Paradoxically, leaving out the cheese allowed me to get the texture I was after — Keller’s “smooth, almost liquid sheen.” That’s why it is the cheese-less version that I prefer: It’s wonderfully custardy, a bit lighter and loftier.
The photo below gives a sense of its custardy texture (see the sheen on the top half of the custard?), while the photo at the top of the story shows the cheese-ful one. I think they give a sense of the difference.
Quintessential Quiche Lorraine, made with bacon, onions, eggs and cream — hold the cheese. Our recipe also offers a variation that includes Gruyère, Comté or Emmentaler.
Again, both are legit. Our recipe for Quintessential Quiche Lorraine is cheese-free, but a variation at the end tells you how to easily add some Gruyère (or Comté or Emmenthaller, or whatever you want.)
Our crust, inspired by one my friend Danièle Delpeuch taught me years ago, is a pâte brisée (short crust) that comes together in a snap in the food processor. Because it’s made so quickly and handled so little, glutens don’t have time to develop, and it stays tender, even if you don’t chill it before and after rolling it out. It’s really a wham-bam-thank-you-madame kind of crust.
That crust is a pleasure to work with it. It’s easy to handle, it stays together and it’s generous enough to easily fit a deep-dish pie pan without having to roll it out too thin. If you do get a tear or hole once you fit it into the pan, don’t worry — you can patch it with the trimmings.
And the crust is good — super buttery and pretty flaky. Is it as fabulous as the one that takes an entire giant page, a heavy-duty stand mixer with a paddle attachment, several trips of the dough in and out of the refrigerator to chill and 50 to 65 minutes of blind-baking before it is filled? Um, no. But it’s so easy to throw together that it puts us in the mood to make a quiche every couple of weeks. With a little practice, you can have it in the oven in 20 minutes.
I hope you like it as much as we do at our house. In normal times, with all that cream, it might seem like a ridiculous indulgence. These days, it has been one of those special treats that make the current state of the world just a little more tolerable. I’d say that you could just have a thin slice and focus on the salad, but that would be dishonest.
I’m pretty sure you’ll want a second piece.
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