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For almost two centuries people from around the world have flocked to a pastry shop in Lisbon for a creamy custard tart made according to a recipe that has been kept secret since it was bought from a monastery in the early 1800s.

The cavernous establishment located near the tombs of Portugal's kings and queens is the only place that sells the tiny ‘pasteis de Belem’, named after the riverside neighbourhood where the shop is located.

"There is nothing else like these," said Augusto Moraes, 37, as waiters wearing white shirts and black bow ties hustled back and forth to deliver plates of the tarts which can be eaten in just two or three bites.

While the shop serves other traditional cafe foods, waiters say most people who visit come for the tarts which sell for less than $1.3 each.

It is especially busy on Sundays when entire families along with tourists and young couples fill its tile-walled rooms of differing sizes and a line of customers waiting to get inside often stretches outside its doors.

Around 100 workers make 15 000 of the tarts each day which can be served with a sprinkling of cinnamon or powdered sugar — or both.

The shop tries to stay faithful to the recipe — known only by three people — to ensure the cakes taste the same as when they were first made despited changes over the years to the suppliers of the ingredients causing difficulties.

"The milk no longer comes from farms near Lisbon like before and the cinnamon is no longer from Portugal's former colonies," said Pedro Clarinha, the shop's manager and one of its seven part-owners.

Like most of Portugal's traditional pastries, the tarts were originally made by nuns at a nearby monastery.

But after a revolution in 1820 many religious orders were forced to close and one of Clarinha's ancestors bought the recipe for the ‘pasteis de Belem’ from an out-of-work confectioner and began to make them himself.

Variations of the tarts — called ‘pasteis de nata’ — are sold everywhere in Portugal as well as around the world.

They can be found in countries with large Portuguese immigrant populations like Australia, Canada, France and South Africa as well as in Macau, a former Portuguese enclave that reverted to China's rule in 1999.

Hong Kong branches of US fast food chain KFC have sold the tarts, which also became popular in Singapore and Taiwan in the late 1990s.

But only the tarts that come out of the ovens at Clarinha's pastry shop in Lisbon can be called ‘pasteis de Belem’ after his family registered the name in Europe in 1911.

"It is very difficult to control imitations at a global level," he said.

Despite the huge success of the pastry shop, Clarinha said an expansion to other areas has been ruled out because the tart's secret production process would not allow for mass production.

Fans of the tarts appear happy to make the trip to Lisbon.

Elsa Ferreira said she and her husband Carlos sometimes travel from their home in Torres Vedras, some 45 kilometres northwest of Lisbon, on weekends just to eat ‘pasteis de Belem’.

"The others don't come close to these," she said as she sprinkled powdered sugar on a plate of four custard tarts she was about to share with her husband.

AFP