Geraardsbergen can date its city status back to the 11th century, and its long history often revolves around food. When Walter IV of Enghien held the city under siege in 1381, the inhabitants chucked food over the walls to mock the enemy by showing that they had plenty (they nevertheless were defeated and the city sacked).

Fast forward 500 years to 2009, when Guido De Padt, a native of the city and then government minister, caused uproar by drinking, as is the tradition on the day that marks the siege, a chalice containing live fish. “I’ve been doing it now for more than 20 years, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t go on doing it,” an unapologetic De Padt told VRT news. But we digress.

The word matten or matton dates back to the 13th century and refers to the curds produced when raw milk is cooked, mixed with buttermilk and allowed to split. So in fact it’s a very young cheese, like the Italian ricotta. Traditionally, the whey was then fed to the animals and the matten chopped up and mixed with egg yolks and sugar. That, inside a puff-pastry case, is all that the mattentaart requires.

The pastry is buttery, and the curds slightly sour; the best versions are sweetened, but not by much. They are rather rich and made fairly large – eight to 10 centimetres around and four to five high. In my view, that’s slightly too much; it’s not the most exciting pastry in the world, local anecdotes aside.

The cakes crop up in the 17th century, in the records of the Hospital of Our Lady in Geraardsbergen. The city’s bakers were concerned that their standards were being undermined by inferior products from elsewhere and drew up a set of quality criteria, which were given the force of law in 1752 by the Habsburg empress Maria Theresa herself.

The Flemish recognition, meanwhile, was given the force of law after the European Commission in 2006 awarded the cake Protected Geographical Indication, which means that, despite every bakery in the region serving up its own version, only those made in Geraardsbergen (and the neighbouring municipality of Lierde) can call them mattentaart. (Though most bakeries flout this law.)

The honour of this delicacy is defended by the Brotherhood of the Geraardsbergen Mattentaart, created in 1978.

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