Tart

History

The French word tarte can be translated to mean either pie or tart, as both are mainly the same except a pie usually covers the filling in pastry, while flans and tarts leave it open.

Tarts are thought to have either come from a tradition of layering food or to be a product of medieval pie making. Enriched dough (i.e. shortcrust) is thought to have been first commonly used in 1550, approximately 200 years after pies. In this period, they were viewed as high-cuisine, popular with nobility, in contrast to the view of a commoner's pie. While originally savory, with meat fillings, culinary tastes led to sweet tarts prevailing, filling tarts instead with fruit and custard. Early medieval tarts generally had meat fillings, but later ones were often based on fruit and custard.

An early tart was the Italian crostata, dating to at least the mid-15th century. It has been described as a "rustic free-form version of an open fruit tart".