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. The Italian crostata, dating to at least the mid-1400s, has been described as a "rustic free-form version of an open fruit tart".
Early medieval tarts generally had meat fillings, but later ones were often based on fruit and custard.