Julia Child’s Spinach Quiche Recipe
Julia Child’s spinach quiche recipe can be on your table in 45 minutes! The flavors are perfectly balanced to create a masterpiece. One bite and this will be your favorite quiche recipe for life!
Julia Childs’ spinach quiche recipe is pure French perfection! I was never a big quiche fan. I liked it, but I never loved it. This recipe was a true game-changer for me. It is unlike any quiche I have had before. All of the ingredients are perfectly balanced. Not to be overly dramatic, but this recipe is a French masterpiece.
You can make this recipe using a homemade or store-bought crust. They both have their merits. You can make this recipe in 45 minutes using a store-bought crust. Alternatively, a homemade crust will have a richer flavor and a flakier crust. I have used a home and a store-bought crust. I can personally tell both are good!
Quiche is a perfect dish any time of the day. I prefer to make it for brunch, dinner, or special occasions. I will pair it with my vegan lemon tart for Mother’s Day in the spring. I love to serve it with roasted purple cauliflower and Nadyia Hussians olive and rosemary crown bread during the holidays.
Spinach Quiche Ingredient Notes
All-Purpose Flour (homemade crust)
All-purpose flour is needed to make a homemade crust. You can skip this step and use a store-bought crust instead.
Butter
In this recipe, butter serves two purposes. When making the crust, you want to use cold butter. By that, I mean very cold butter. The butter will steam in the oven, creating flakey layers.
Eggs
Eggs bind all the ingredients together. When shopping for eggs, look for a high-quality free range with the best flavor. These eggs will have a deeper yellow, almost orange, yolk from eating a better diet. The color will also deepen the yellow in your quiche.
Heavy Cream
It makes the quiche indulgent. You could use lighter-fat milk, but I recommend staying with heavy cream. The French have perfected this recipe, and each bite is sinfully delicious!
Nutmeg
It will add a balancing flavor to all the dairy richness.
Shallots
Shallots are a mild onion. You can use a white or yellow onion if you do not have shallots. I recommend against a red onion. The flavor is too sharp for this recipe.
Spinach
When it comes to spinach, you have two options: fresh or frozen. I recommend using frozen spinach. It is easy and convenient. It is important to note that Julia Child recommends fresh spinach. She felt that frozen spinach had stems and was of poor quality. I believe the quality of frozen spinach has improved since she wrote The Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Swiss Cheese
Add more richness to this recipe. Gruyere cheese would also taste great with this recipe.
See the recipe card for the complete ingredient list and measurements.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you tried this spinach quiche recipe or any other recipe on my blog leave a star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below.
Julia Child’s Spinach Quiche
Equipment
- 1 9-inch tart pan or pie dish
- 1 saute pan
- 1 medium mixing bowl
- 1 cutting board
- 1 Knife
Ingredients
Crust
- 2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon (6g) salt
- ¼ teaspoon (1g) sugar
- 6 ounces (170g) butter, chilled and diced into 1/4 inch bits
- 4 tablespoons (51g) vegetable shorting, chilled
- ½ cup (118ml) water, cold
Filling
- 3 large eggs
- 1 ½ cup (318ml) heavy cream
- 1 ¼ cups (37g) spinach, either fresh and blanched or frozen
- 3 – 4 ¼ tablespoons (102g) butter * amount of butter will vary by fresh or frozen spinach
- 2 tablespoons (20g) shallots, minced
- ½ teaspoon (3g) salt
- 1 pinch pepper
- 1 pinch nutmeg
- ¼ cup (9g) grated swiss cheese
Instructions
Crust
- Combine: Start by preheating the oven to 400f/200c. Mix the flour, salt, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the butter and vegetable shortening, and using the tips of your fingers, combine the ingredients. The result should look like loose breadcrumbs.
- Blend: Slowly add the ice water to the mixture and form a dough ball. Divide the dough into two and shape it into a flattened circle. Wrap each disk individually in cling wrap and place it in the refrigerator to rest for a minimum of 2 hours or up to 3 days.
- Rolling: Place dough on a lightly floured surface and roll it into a circle about 1/8. The dough should be 2 inches wider than your pan. So for a 9-inch tart pan, I will roll the dough into an 11-inch round disk. You will want to work quickly to keep the butter as cold as possible. Once rolled, use your rolling pin to lift the dough and place it into your tart or pie pan. Using your fingers, press the dough into place. Run your rolling pin over the top and remove excess dough. Using your thumbs, push the dough 1/8 of an inch above the edge of the pan. Take a fork and press into the edge of the dough to make a decorative edge. Then take a fork and prick the pastry all over to create air vents, including the sides, at 1/2-inch intervals. Refrigerate if not baking right away.
- Partial Blind Bake: Line the top of the pastry with aluminum foil or parchment paper to create a barrier between the dough and the dough weights. Cover the edges of the pastry with the barrier if possible. Fill with dough weights (dried beans, lentils, rice, or pastry weights). The goal here is to weigh down the pastry, so it does not rise. Bake for 8 – 9 minutes. Remove the pastry from the oven and remove the weights. Make additional pricks into the dough with your fork and bake for 2 – 3 minutes more. When the shell starts to turn golden or shrink from the sides of the baking dish, remove it from the oven.
Filling and Baking
- Prep: Preheat the oven to 375f. Whisk together eggs, cream, a pinch of salt, a pinch of pepper, and a pinch of nutmeg. Set aside.
- Spinach: Use either fresh or frozen spinach. Follow the correlating instructions. Fresh Spinach Instructions: Start a pot of boiling water. While you are waiting, clean the spinach to remove all the dirt and de-stem the spinach leaves. A handful at a time, place the spinach in the boiling water and cook for two minutes. Remove the spinach and run under cold water. Then, squeeze as much water out of the spinach as possible and cut the spinach into small pieces. Repeat until you have 1 and 1/4 cups of spinach. Frozen Spinach Instructions: Defrost the spinach just enough to slice it by bearing it down with your knife. Melt an additional 1 1/2 tablespoons of butter in a saucepan or skillet. Stir in the spinach, cover, and cook for 1 – 2 minutes. Remove the cover and cook until all the water has evaporated, about 3 minutes.
- Saute: Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet. Add diced shallots and cook until done about 1 – 2 minutes. Add the spinach and cook until the water has evaporated. Remove from heat and cool for a few minutes before moving on to the next step.
- Combine and bake: Add the spinach mixture to the bowl with the egg mixture. If the spinach is very hot, allow more time to cool down. Add the spinach to the egg mixture in quarter increments. Use caution not to scramble the eggs. Pour the mixture into the pastry shell, sprinkle the top with Swiss cheese, and dot with the remaining 1 tablespoon of butter. Bake at 375 for 25 – 30 minutes. You will know the quiche is done when you insert a knife and it comes out clean.1/4 cup (9g) grated swiss cheese
Notes
- When making the pastry shell, use only the tips of your fingers. You want the butter to stay as cold as possible. Use caution, not to over mix, bits of butter is a good thing with pastry.
- For more details on making pastry, visit my blog post ‘The Perfect Pie Crust”. The recipe is slightly different; however, the technique is the same. https://sinfulkitchen.com/a-pie-crust-recipe
- This recipe was adapted from Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume 1.
This recipe is almost the same as the one I’ve used for over 40 years. I tried this and did find Gruyère cheese and used the heavy whipping cream vs 1/2 & 1/2. Game changers!
Hi Sharon, I am so glad you liked this recipe. Julia Child was amazing. Her Mastering the Art of French Cooking is the best cookbook ever written, IMHO. I love how well she described things. I agree about the heavy whipping cream and I am so happy you were able to find the gruyere cheese! It truly is the perfect flavor for this recipe.
Absolutely love it. The second time I made this, I sautéed a medium sweet onion (finely chopped) in about 2 lbs. bacon grease…left over from 1/2 lb. of bacon (cut into 1 inch pieces) previously cooked. These were then mixed with the fresh spinach (steamed , dried and chopped) and then added to the eggs and cheese. The cheese I use is Gruyère and I used a bit more! Anyway, it was as divine as the first one but different.
Hi Margaret, I am so happy you loved it! Ohhh, Gruyere sounds amazing with this recipe! I never really loved quiche until I tried this recipe. Julia Child has all the ingredients in perfect ratios. The result is amazing!
I had to make some changes because I was cleaning out the fridge/pantry before vacation. I used an oil crust instead of the one in the recipe, plus used green and vidalia onions instead of shallots, and milk instead of heavy cream.
Plus, I had to use up all my deli swiss so I used about a half pound and sliced it into sticks. It still came out amazing! It was actually one of the absolute best quiches I’ve ever made – and I’ve made many! I always love the Julia inspired proportions the best.
That sounds amazing! Julia was truly the GOAT. I love how well everything is described in Mastering The Art of French Cooking. I am so glad you liked it and I hope you have a wonderful vacation!
I like to use Gruyere. Instead of spinach, I like to use chopped Swiss chard.