What's the difference between a flan & a tart?

It’s straightforward. Flan is another name for custard, such as crême bruléeème_caramel or this simple recipe

The Brits used to call it “shape.”

Tarts have a bottom and side pie crust and are filled with fruit, pudding, and yes, custards.

Wikipedia seems to lump them together loosely but they’re both essentially open-faced with a baked bottom crust:

“Quote”
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.

The categories of ‘tart’, ‘flan’, and ‘pie’ overlap, with no sharp distinctions, though ‘pie’ is the more common term in the United States.

It depends where you live. The UK uses the words differently than the US. In the US a tart is a pastry with a crust like a pie, while flan is a custard with a “caramel” topping, the topping is actually made from melted sugar. In the UK they use the term tart for flan.

Creme brulee and flan are actually different but similar. Creme brulee is very pudding like, usually served ina dish and has burnt sugar on top. Flan can be creamy to almost short of cake like, very dense, stands on its own, with melted sugar on top.

Another quote from Wikipedia,ème_caramel which corresponds more to my cooking and eating experience.

“In Spanish-speaking countries and in North America, flan refers to crème caramel. This was originally a Spanish usage, but the dish is now best-known in the United States in a Latin American context. Elsewhere, including in Britain, flan usually means a custard tart (French flan pâtissier), sometimes with a fruit topping.”

In the UK a flan is a savoury thing similar to a quiche.

A flan has no crust, a tart does.

I didn’t marry a flan.

Yes, flan has a shell, but no upper crust.

@filmfann I thought you were American? There is no crust on a flan in Amercia.

I had no idea American flans were completely different to the flans in Australia! Wow, the differences just keep unveiling themselves.

Wikipedia says flans often have shortcrust pastry, while tarts usually have puff pastry bases, but I do not think this distinction is adhered to in most bakeries. The definition that makes most sense to me is that a flan is a type of tart, made in a flan ring (which is like a bottomless pie dish), but again I wouldn’t be surprised if the word was often used just to make the food appear fancier.

This is a photo of flan in the Americas.

It can also be made larger and sliced like a cake. Photo here.