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A tart is a baked dish consisting of a filling over a pastry base with an open top not covered with pastry. The pastry is usually shortcrust pastry; the filling may be sweet or savoury, though modern tarts are usually fruit-based, sometimes with custard. Tartlet refers to a miniature tart; an example would be . The categories of "tart", "flan", and "pie" overlap, with no sharp distinctions.
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.Davidson: s.v. 'tart'
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".Corley: 2011. Page 129.
Tarte Tatin is an upside-down tart, of apples, other fruit, or onions.
Savoury tarts include quiche, a family of savoury tarts with a mostly custard filling; German Zwiebelkuchen and Alsace Tarte à l'oignon or ZewelwaïDavid, pp. 184–185 (onion tarts), and Swiss cheese tart made from Gruyère.
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