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Pastry for a one-crust 9-inch pie (see pastry recipe)

4 strips bacon

1 onion, thinly sliced

1 cup Gruyère or Swiss cheese, cubed

¼ cup grated Parmesan

4 eggs, lightly beaten

2 cups heavy cream or 1 cup each milk and cream

¼ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Tabasco sauce to taste

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1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees.

2. Line a nine-inch pie plate with the pastry. By all means build a rim with the pastry and flute it. This is essential for the amount of custard indicated in this recipe.

3. Cover the bottom of the pastry with a round of parchment paper and add enough dried beans or peas to partly fill the shell. Bake 10 minutes.

4. Reduce the oven heat to 375 degrees. Remove and discard the beans and parchment paper and set the pastry-lined pie plate aside.

5. Cook the bacon until crisp and remove it from skillet. Pour off all but one tablespoon of the fat remaining in the skillet. Cook the onion in the remaining fat until the onion is transparent.

6. Combine the eggs, cream, nutmeg, salt, pepper and Tabasco sauce. Crumble the bacon and sprinkle the bacon, onion and cheeses over the inside of the partly baked pastry.

7. Strain the cream mixture over the onion-cheese mixture. Slide the pie onto a baking sheet.

8. Bake the pie until a knife inserted one inch from the pastry edge comes out clean, about 50 minutes. Remove to a wire rack. Let stand 5 or 10 minutes before serving.

For this Craig Claiborne classic, start by making his egg-yolk-enriched butter dough. (And save the egg white!) Instead of refrigerating the dough ball for hours or days, go ahead and roll it out after a brief chill. Once it’s in the pie plate, it can be covered and refrigerated for up to three days or frozen for a month. Of course, you can start with a store-bought frozen crust or ready-to-roll pie dough. What you can’t skip is blind-baking the rolled dough: Set a sheet of parchment paper over your dough-lined pie dish, fill it with dried beans and bake. Mr. Claiborne lets it go for 10 minutes to set the sides; I double that time so that even the bottom is completely dry because I really hate even the slightest uncooked bottom crust. If the pastry cracks with my long blind bake, I brush some of that reserved egg white in the crevices to seal them. While the crust bakes, you can prep the fillings. The cheeses, bacon-onion mixture and custard can be used right away or refrigerated in separate containers, and that blind-baked crust will keep at room temperature for a few days. An hour or so before you want to serve your warm quiche, fill the crust and slide it in the oven. Easy!