Most people meet the stroopwafel before they know its name. You hold one over a cup of coffee, the steam softens the caramel, you bite in, and something clicks. That moment has been happening in the Netherlands for more than two hundred years. The history of the stroopwafel starts in a small Gouda bakery in the early 1800s and ends, for the lucky ones, on Albert Cuypstraat where you can press a fresh one yourself at our stroopwafel workshop Amsterdam. This is the full story: where it came from, how the recipe evolved, why Amsterdam became its showcase, and where to taste real ones today. If you only have time for one read on the history of the stroopwafel, this is the one we wrote for our own visitors. For where the stroopwafel sits in the wider canon today, see our roundup of the best Dutch snacks in Amsterdam and where locals actually buy each one. For a wider catalogue beyond the stroopwafel, see our guide to wider canon of traditional Dutch desserts. For the modern version of that same recipe (ingredients, ratios, and iron technique), see our traditional stroopwafel recipe.

Where the stroopwafel began: Gouda, around 1810

The stroopwafel was born in Gouda, the small South Holland city better known abroad for its cheese. The widely accepted origin story, recorded in the Wikipedia entry on the stroopwafel and repeated in nearly every Dutch culinary history, places the invention around 1810 in the bakery of a man named Gerard Kamphuisen. He opened his shop that year, and the first written recipe survives from 1840, so somewhere in those three decades the cookie took its modern shape.

Like a lot of brilliant food ideas, the stroopwafel came out of thrift. Bakers ended every day with crumbs, broken biscuit dough, and odd bits of leftover. Kamphuisen pressed those scraps between a hot waffle iron, sliced the thin round in half while it was still warm and flexible, and glued the two layers together with a thick caramel-like syrup the Dutch call stroop. The result was cheap, portable, and deeply satisfying, sold for a few cents at the weekly market. If you want to compare every waffle style in the city, every waffle style in our Amsterdam guide covers Dutch, Liege, Brussels, and poffertjes side by side.

Within a generation, Gouda had more than one hundred stroopwafel bakers. The cookie picked up the nickname armenkoek or poor people’s cookie, because it was the affordable treat for families who could not buy expensive pastry. That humble origin matters. The stroopwafel was never invented for tourists. It was invented because nothing should go to waste, and that quiet practicality is still baked into the recipe today. For a modern twist, see our guide to modern stroopwafel ice cream variations.

The name: a literal Dutch sandwich

Stroopwafel is a compound word that translates literally as syrup waffle. Stroop means syrup, wafel means waffle. English speakers occasionally write it as stroopwaffle with two f’s, which is a phonetic spelling rather than the correct Dutch form. In Australia they sometimes call them coffee toppers, in reference to the trick of placing one over a hot cup. None of those names quite catches it. The Dutch original is what locals say, and it is what you will see written above every market stall in Amsterdam.

The wider word waffle is itself a loan from Dutch. According to the Wikipedia entry on waffles, the English word first appears in 1725, traced back through Middle Dutch wafele and the Frankish wafla, meaning honeycomb or cake. So when you bite into a stroopwafel in Amsterdam, you are eating a treat whose name and form have travelled through Dutch hands for the better part of a thousand years.

How the recipe became fixed

By the second half of the 19th century the recipe had stopped being a way to use scraps and become a craft of its own. The waffle dough settled into a brioche-like mix of flour, butter, brown sugar, yeast, egg, milk, and a pinch of cinnamon. Bakers rolled the dough into small balls, pressed each ball in a hot iron for around 30 seconds, then sliced the warm round horizontally with a thin knife while it was still flexible. The two halves came back together with the syrup as the glue.

The stroop itself is the soul of the cookie. It is a slow-cooked caramel of brown sugar, butter, a splash of water, and cinnamon, reduced until it is thick enough to hold its shape but still glossy and pourable when warm. A bad stroop is grainy, too sweet, or slides out the sides. A good stroop is the reason you cannot stop at one. This is the recipe you can read about in the stroopwafel history feature on FunAmsterdam, and it is essentially unchanged from what Kamphuisen was doing in Gouda.

From Gouda market to global icon

For most of the 19th century the stroopwafel stayed local. It was a Gouda speciality you bought at the weekly market, not something exported. That changed slowly through the 1900s as Dutch industrialisation reached the food sector. Family bakeries grew into regional brands, and a few of those brands grew into giants. Daelmans, founded in 1904, became the largest stroopwafel maker in the Netherlands and shipped to dozens of countries. Other names like Van der Meulen and De Stroopwafelmakerij followed.

Two things turned the stroopwafel from a Dutch curiosity into a global one. The first was supermarket distribution, which put packaged stroopwafels on shelves in more than 70 countries. The second was airline catering. KLM started serving stroopwafels on flights to introduce passengers to a Dutch speciality, and decades later United Airlines made them the standard mid-flight snack on US domestic routes, which alone introduced the cookie to millions of Americans every year. Suddenly people were Googling the recipe, and the modest armenkoek from Gouda became one of the most recognisable Dutch foods in the world.

The stroopwafel is not the only market sweet that travelled that way. Central Europe’s kürtőskalács took a similar route: a Transylvanian celebration cake, wound around a spit, baked until the sugar sets, and rolled in more of it, which spread outward until it became the pastry you smell before you see it on half the squares in the region. Same idea as the stroopwafel (dough, sugar, an iron or a flame, made in front of you) arrived at independently a few hundred kilometres east. The Chimney Cake Workshop’s guide to chimney cake in Prague covers where to find a good one and how it is actually made.

Why Amsterdam became the showcase

Gouda is the birthplace, but Amsterdam is where most visitors meet a stroopwafel for the first time. The reason is simple. Amsterdam draws around 20 million tourists a year and has the foot-traffic markets where fresh stroopwafel stalls thrive. The most famous of those is Albert Cuypmarkt in De Pijp, a daily street market that has run since 1905 and where one or two stroopwafel vendors press fresh rounds in front of you on weekday mornings. If you want the deeper market story, our guide to where to find the best stroopwafel in Amsterdam walks you through every spot worth visiting.

Beyond the markets, central Amsterdam is dotted with small bakeries and dedicated stroopwafel shops, especially around Damrak, the Nine Streets, and the Jordaan. Prices vary wildly, from less than two euro for a single fresh one at Albert Cuyp to four or five euro at the heavily branded shops near Dam Square. We track current prices, what is fair, and what is overpriced in the Amsterdam stroopwafel price and best-spots guide. For the wider picture of how the stroopwafel fits into the city’s food culture, the complete local guide to stroopwafel in Amsterdam covers everything from rituals to neighbourhoods.

The two-century-old eating ritual

Every Dutch household has the same trick: place a stroopwafel on top of a freshly poured cup of coffee or tea, wait around 60 seconds, then lift it. The steam softens the syrup so it folds slightly in your fingers, the waffle warms through, and the caramel pulls between the two layers as you bite. It is the closest thing the Netherlands has to a national snack ritual.

That coffee-topper habit explains why the cookie is exactly the diameter of a standard Dutch coffee mug. It was not designed that way at first, but the size settled there because of how people ate it. Two centuries of small kitchen behaviour shaped the dimensions of the modern stroopwafel.

The waffle question: stroopwafel vs Belgian waffle

Many first-time visitors arrive in Amsterdam expecting Belgian-style waffles and end up confused when they meet a stroopwafel instead. The two are entirely different cookies that share a Germanic linguistic root. A Belgian waffle is thick, leavened, eaten warm with toppings. A stroopwafel is thin, two layers, glued by caramel, eaten as is or warmed over coffee. We unpack the differences in our breakdown of waffles in Amsterdam if you want the full comparison. We unpack the full Dutch waffles vs Belgian waffles question in a dedicated guide if you want the seven differences laid out clearly. For a full breakdown of what to put on top, see our guide to stroopwafel toppings from traditional Dutch pairings to creative twists.

The short answer: if you want the authentic Dutch experience in Amsterdam, ask for a stroopwafel, not a waffle. The vendor will know exactly what you mean and will probably hand you a fresh one straight off the iron.

Make your own piece of stroopwafel history

Reading about the history of the stroopwafel is one thing. Pressing one yourself on a traditional iron, in a real Amsterdam market neighbourhood, is the other half of the history of the stroopwafel that no book can give you. The stroopwafel workshop Amsterdam sits at Albert Cuypstraat 194, one street back from the Albert Cuypmarkt stalls. It is a 45-minute hands-on activity for up to 20 people per session: you mix, press, slice, fill, and decorate two XL stroopwafels with traditional toppings while the team walks you through the same craft Gerard Kamphuisen was doing in 1810. Coffee and tea are included, and you leave with a certificate and a paper bag of warm waffles. Travelling in autumn or winter? Our roundup of indoor things to do in Amsterdam on a rainy day pairs the workshop with the strongest covered options nearby.

The activity is also listed on the stroopwafel workshop on FunAmsterdam if you prefer to book through the wider Amsterdam activity platform. Either way, you end up at the same address pressing the same waffles. Most groups pair it with a nearby experience: a covered Amsterdam canal cruise in the afternoon, or a creative session at the Tile Painting Workshop Amsterdam for a Delft Blue heritage parallel. Three Dutch crafts, one day, all rooted in centuries of local tradition. For more on the wider context, our Stroopwafels Amsterdam pillar guide ties the threads together. If you are organising the visit with a friends group, our Amsterdam with friends day plan turns the day into a workable two-anchor itinerary.

A short timeline: history of the stroopwafel year by year

• c. 1810 Gerard Kamphuisen opens his bakery in Gouda. Tradition credits him with the first stroopwafel, made from leftover dough and homemade syrup.
• 1840 The first written stroopwafel recipe is recorded.
• Mid 19th century More than 100 stroopwafel bakers operate in Gouda. The cookie spreads to other South Holland markets.
• 1904 Daelmans is founded, later becoming the largest stroopwafel maker in the Netherlands.
• 1905 Albert Cuypmarkt opens in Amsterdam, eventually becoming the city’s most famous stroopwafel street.
• 20th century Supermarket distribution carries packaged stroopwafels into more than 70 countries.
• 2010s United Airlines adopts stroopwafels as its standard domestic flight snack, introducing millions of Americans to the cookie.
• Today Fresh stroopwafels are pressed daily at Amsterdam markets and at the Stroopwafel Workshop on Albert Cuypstraat 194.

FAQ on the history of the stroopwafel

Who invented the stroopwafel?

Dutch culinary tradition credits Gerard Kamphuisen, a baker in Gouda, with inventing the stroopwafel around 1810. He opened his bakery that year, and the oldest known written recipe dates from 1840, so the invention sits somewhere in those three decades. Other Gouda bakers were experimenting with similar leftover-dough cookies at the same time, so it is fair to call him the most likely inventor rather than the only one.

Why is it called a stroopwafel?

The name is a Dutch compound word. Stroop means syrup and wafel means waffle, so a stroopwafel is literally a syrup waffle. The cookie is two thin waffle layers held together by a caramel syrup centre, which is exactly what the name describes.

Why was the stroopwafel originally cheap?

It was made from bakery scraps. In the early 1800s, bakers ended each day with crumbs and leftover dough that would otherwise be thrown out. Sweetening those scraps with syrup turned them into a sellable cookie at a few cents apiece, which is why it was nicknamed armenkoek, the poor people’s cookie. The recipe became more refined later, but the thrifty origin shaped the proportions we still use.

How did the stroopwafel become famous outside the Netherlands?

Two main routes. First, supermarket exports starting in the mid 20th century put packaged stroopwafels in more than 70 countries. Second, KLM and later United Airlines served them as in-flight snacks, which introduced millions of travellers to the cookie. Today the fresh, market-pressed version sold in Amsterdam is the main reason tourists come looking for the real thing.

Where can I make a stroopwafel myself in Amsterdam?

At The Stroopwafel Workshop on Albert Cuypstraat 194 in De Pijp, one street back from the Albert Cuypmarkt stalls. Workshops run daily, starting every hour from 09:00 to 18:00, last 45 minutes, take up to 20 people, and cost from 19.00 euro per person. You leave with two XL stroopwafels you pressed yourself and a certificate. Book the stroopwafel workshop Amsterdam directly or check our our reviews first.

Closing thought: a cookie with a long memory

The stroopwafel is a rare food whose 200-year history is still legible in the cookie itself. The diameter matches a coffee mug because that is how Dutch families ate it. The two-layer structure exists because Kamphuisen needed to use scraps. The cinnamon in the caramel is there because cinnamon was an affordable spice in 1810s Holland. Every detail has a reason, and every reason has a date. Reading the history of the stroopwafel is really just paying attention to the cookie in your hand, and the best way to remember the history of the stroopwafel is to make one. Then go press your own at the stroopwafel workshop Amsterdam and add your own footnote to the history of the stroopwafel.