National Quiche Lorraine Day

The traditional Lorraine filling is deliberately simple: eggs, heavy cream, smoked bacon (lardons), nutmeg, salt, pepper. No cheese in the strictest traditional version, though most French and American recipes now include Gruyère or Emmental. No vegetables, no onions (onions make it 'Alsacienne,' a sibling variation). The pastry is a simple pâte brisée, flour, butter, water, salt. What makes the dish elegant is proportion and technique, not ingredients.

Quiche Lorraine was not widely known in America before 1961. That year, Julia Child's 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' (co-authored with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle) published the first English-language recipe widely available to American home cooks. Child's subsequent television show "The French Chef" (1963-1973) repeatedly featured quiche. By 1970, quiche was a standard American brunch-menu offering. By 1975, quiche was firmly established in American home cooking.

The 1980s put quiche through a pop-culture detour. Bruce Feirstein's 1982 satirical bestseller 'Real Men Don't Eat Quiche' made quiche an American cultural punchline, framed as emblematic of 'sensitive,' upper-middle-class, non-macho eating. The joke, of course, undermined itself: everyone who ate quiche knew it was delicious, regardless of gender politics. After a brief dip, quiche rebounded in the 1990s and has remained a bedrock American brunch and make-ahead meal ever since. It is, by any measure, one of Julia Child's most successful cultural exports.

Four details that separate bakery-quality from rubbery:

Six American quiche traditions worth knowing: