MATTENTAART FROM GRAMMONT

GRANDMA

Anne Marie

COUNTRY

Dutch Belgium

ORIGIN

Grammont

INGREDIENTS

• Two sheets of puff pastry
• 600 gr matten (a kind of coagulated or curdled milk)
• 400 gr sugar
• 6+1 eggs
• 1 to 3 drops of almond extract.

HISTORY

The mattentaart from Grammont is protected by the European Union. It’s a pie made of puff pastry with a filling of “matten”, a mixture of coagulated or curdled milk, and eggs, sugar and almond extract. The quality of your pie depends on the quality of your matten. Matten is made of milk. That’s why Grammont is the town with the best mattentaart. The fields around that village are perfect for the cows. Healthy cows means better milk and that means better pies. Again, the origin is uncertain. It is sure that the pie is very old. Mentions of “matten” have been found in Medieval literature. It’s a pie that was created on farms. They always had curdled milk, so they needed a use for it.The oldest recipe is found in a book from the 16th century written by Thomas Van der Noot and called “Boeken van Cokerijen”. We can also see the cake in a painting by the famous painter Pieter Breughel the Elder. Mattentaart as we know them now became popular at the fairs of West Brabant and the Dender region. In the 19th century the pastry got its round shape. Nowadays, Grammont is still the centre of production, but the pie is famous all around Belgium and even abroad.