You and I probably know them better as Jules Destrooper wafers, their instantly recognisable blue-and-white box a common feature on supermarket shelves. Jules Destrooper the company make half a dozen different kinds of biscuits, but this is the one people mean, and this is the one on which the whole company is based.

Destrooper was a colonial trader, and he started the company in Lo-Reninge in 1886, selling amandelbrood, or almond thins, flavoured with the spices he’d become familiar with in his travels, which he delivered to hotels in De Panne for guests.

The product was successful, but his real success came when he picked up a recipe that was universal across West Flanders, turning it into a luxury item. “Butter waffles were typically made in West Flanders as a gift at New Year,” explains Jo Van Caeneghem of Vlam, the Flemish agricultural agency that runs the accreditation system for streekproducten, or regional products. “That’s where the name lukken comes from: to wish someone good luck.”

Housewives then used the simplest ingredients: wheat flour, sugar, butter, eggs, salt and bicarbonate of sodium as a raising agent. The same ingredients feature on the box in front of me: nothing added, and nothing taken away.

The factory is still in Lo, but now the ingredients are listed in four languages. The waffles, or “butter crisps”, have been awarded a royal warrant. And the trade is now international and online.

Lukken are at the same time plain and luxurious. They are 18% butter, which gives them their crispness when you bite, and ensures they melt away to nothing in the mouth. I haven't tried it, but I imagine it must be pretty difficult for a home-baker to achieve that consistency.

Earlier this year, King Albert, one of the company’s most prestigious customers, presided over the opening of a new visitor centre at the factory to mark the company’s 125th anniversary. Visitors can watch a demonstration of how products are made.

There are plenty of recipes involving the various products at the company’s website (www.destrooper.com) as well as a rather good one involving regional coffee and beer on the Vlam website. There’s also a competition running this year to win a brand new €250,000 apartment in Nieuwpoort, which, as we reported two weeks ago, is the most expensive town in Flanders in which to live.

Well, it is a luxury product, after all.

www.streekproduct.be