Julia Child’s Secrets for Making Quiche Are Life-Changing

Quiche is a quintessential French dish with an impressive appearance and taste. Still, achieving perfect results is easier than you think—especially with a little help from Julia Child. These essential tips and tricks from her legendary television shows and cookbooks—including The French Chef and Mastering the Art of French Cooking—will have you mastering everything from the crust to the custard. 

Julia once described the versatile dish as a “terribly good” custard in an edible container (aka crust). And with several delicious quiche recipes featured in her cookbooks, you can follow along to make your favorite variation or simply use her fail-proof custard base to create your very own.

While there’s nothing wrong with using a store-bought crust, Julia’s tips for making quiche crust are so straightforward that you might want to try making one from scratch. The flaky results alone are worth it—plus, you can use the opportunity to do like the beloved chef often did, creating playful shapes using almost any oven-safe dish. 

Here are Julia’s tips for the ultimate flaky crust and custardy filling.

1. Use Cold Butter Plus Vegetable Shortening

Most pie crust recipes recommend incorporating cold butter into the flour so that the small pieces can melt and create steam during the baking process, resulting in a flaky texture, but Julia takes it one step further by also calling for chilled vegetable shortening. The shortening tenderizes the crust by coating the flour particles, preventing too much gluten development that can cause a dense texture.

2. Add a Pinch of Sugar to the Mix

Because quiche usually requires a relatively short bake time, achieving a golden crust can be difficult, but Julia has a genius solution. She calls for adding a pinch or two of granulated sugar to the dough. The sugar caramelizes when heated, contributing to quicker browning. And it also adds a very subtle sweetness that beautifully complements savory fillings.

3. Use an Electric Mixer

In Mastering, Julia explains that one of the best ways to learn how to make the crust is by feeling the dough in your hands. However, she cautions against using your palms as this can cause the chilled butter pieces to melt. A couple of years later, while filming her quiche episode on The French Cook, she noted that using an electric mixer is an excellent and faster alternative. If you don’t have an electric mixer and are worried about using your hands, a stainless-steel pastry blender is also a great option. 

4. Chill and Rest the Dough—Twice

If you’ve ever wondered why chilling pastry dough is a necessary step, there are actually a couple of reasons. Not only does this help evenly distribute the moisture and re-chill the fats, but it also gives the gluten a chance to relax, which is essential for a flaky crust. Julia believed that a second chill after molding the dough into the pan further ensured a tender crust and less shrinkage.

5. Choose a Shallow Baking Dish

Even the most skilled chefs can make mistakes—like Julia, who once had a quiche fall apart after she created too deep a crust. A shallow, wide dish is ideal to avoid a cracked crust and also helps the filling cook quickly and at the same rate as the crust. If you do decide to use a deeper dish, bake the crust inside the dish instead of solely using it to mold a standing crust. For extra insurance, take a tip from Julia and create a sturdy brace by lining the crust with foil and dry beans. 

6. Butter and Pre-Measure the Dish

When baking the crust, always butter the bottom and sides of the dish so that it doesn’t stick when it comes time to serve. Lining the dish with parchment paper also works well. But before you prep the dish, use it to calculate how much filling you need to make. To do this, Julia would fill an empty baking dish with water to just below where the crust would end, then pour the water into a measuring cup to see how much there was. It’s a pro tip that can help you avoid making too little or too much filling.

7. Blind-Bake the Crust

A mistake that can ruin just about any pie or tart is forgetting to blind-bake the crust before adding the filling. Julia uses the French term, cuire à blanc, referring to the light color of the crust after the blind bake. This short additional baking time is crucial for a thoroughly baked crust—especially the bottom, since it can remain partially raw if not par-baked. 

8. Get the Ratio Right

If you really want to master quiche, Julia’s custard-ratio rule is perhaps the most important piece of cooking wisdom to take note of, and it works for any serving size or variety. Just remember: for every cup of filling, use two eggs. Or simply do like Julia and drop two eggs into a glass measuring cup, then fill it to the 1-cup mark with the other liquid ingredients, like milk or cream. It creates the perfect custard base, every time.

9. Avoid Oversalting 

When making quiches that call for cured meats, remember not to add too much salt to the custard mixture. In Mastering, Julia explains that cured meats, like ham and bacon, often used in traditional quiche Lorraine recipes, can be quickly blanched to help remove some of the salt content. However, she believed that simply sautéing the meats and cutting back on the salt in the custard was quicker and just as good a method.

10. Don’t Overfill the Crust

One of the main ingredients in the custard is eggs, which, when whipped, tend to puff up when baked. So always leave a little room for that reaction by not overfilling the crust (keep it to, say, about ½-inch below the edge of the crust). To avoid over-puffing, try under-whipping the eggs slightly in order to introduce less air. Another related, and crucial, tip is: Don’t fill the crust until you’re ready to bake. This ensures an evenly cooked, non-soggy crust. The baking process takes around 25 to 30 minutes, and Julia said the center should jiggle a little bit when the quiche is removed from the oven. Don’t worry, it will continue to cook and set as it cools. In other words, don’t dig in for at least 30 minutes. 

The Bottom Line

For authentic patisserie results at home, follow Julia Child’s quiche tips, like allowing the dough to rest for a flakier crust, choosing the right dish to ensure an even and quicker cook, and waiting until you’re ready to bake before filling the crust for a perfectly cooked crust. Once you’ve mastered these methods, you’ll be making quiches of all flavors and shapes—just like she did.