Tarts

[ladyofastolat]

Prompted by a question on Sporcle: (Yup, still addicted

Comments

[philmophlegm]

I think I'm with your mum, but I expect there are exceptions.

[ladyofastolat]

re. icon: Does Buck Tucker Man eat tarts? It sounds almost an inappropriate as the quiche I was served at a Wychwood Warriors feast.

[philmophlegm]

I dunno. I'm often surprised at how genteel he tries to make his bush camps. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't touch a quiche (he's probably a 'real man' and we all know they don't eat them), but I think if some outback sheila offered him a tray of freshly-baked tarts, he'd gladly eat a couple before trading the rest to an elderly aboriginal man in return for witchetty grubs...

[lil_shepherd]

I'm with your mum too - but I think that 'tarts' are sweet and open, and 'flans' are savoury and open, and pies, whether sweet or savoury, always have a lid.

[ladyofastolat]

Interesting. phoebesmum is of the opinion that flans are always sweet. I think I have two very different images in my head when I hear the word "flan": something quiche-like, and something sweet and fruity in a sponge base.

Though I did once play some silly console game about international cooking, in which the representative dish of England was called "flan," and looked something rather like creme caramel.

[sally_maria]

Creme caramel being called "flan" is a Spanish thing, I think - or possibly even a Latin American one.

I'm another one for whom flan is always a fruit thing... quiche is quiche and something different again.

[wellinghall]

Spanish, I think.

[steepholm]

I'm of the open/closed school, though on reflection it's strange that something called tart should have to be sweet. And a tarte tatin is different again.

I recently read that what they used to call pies in Elizabethan times (pretty much their main version of fast food) were more like what we'd call pasties or turnovers, which makes me wonder whether the "classic" container-with-filling+lie model is actually but a small province of the empire of piedom.

[steepholm]

container-with-filling+lie model

Er, that should be 'lid', of course!

[ladyofastolat]

Is a turnover just a sweet pasty, or are they different? *muses* I'm assuming a pasty is defined by being made by a single piece of pastry folded around its filling, and sealed with a single seam. Is this correct, I wonder? (Googling spoils the game, so I'm not doing it.)

Having made loads of Pie Banners, I feel I should find this Emperor of Piedom and offer him my services. I wonder if he has hideous wars with the neighouring Sultan of Stew.

[steepholm]

I believe the international community is trying to keep them apart by establishing a buffet zone.

[themis1]

Also with your mother. I think the difference with flans is to do with the type of topping, I was thinking egg but then I realised this would get me into confusion with quiches ... sigh!

[phoebesmum]

I'm with your mum, mostly, except that I think of pies (meat or apple etc, pastry lid) as being large, to feed several, and tarts (open, always sweet) as small, individual. Flans, open, always sweet, sometimes made with sponge rather than pastry, large. Quiche, open, always savoury (eggy filling), usually large, small defined specifically as mini-quiche and a modern innovation.

[ladyofastolat]

Interestingly we've now had one vote for flans being emphatically sweet, and one for flans being definitely savoury. I have two different images of flans: an egg/cheese/ham thing that was always called "a flan" in the 70s, but turned into a quiche in the 80s; or something made with a spongey case and filled with fruit and probably jelly.