Egg Tarts: From Macao Monasteries to Taiwan’s Collective Memory of “Swarming”

30-Second Overview:
In Taiwan, the egg tart is more than a dessert; it is the namesake of the economic “egg tart effect.” From the queueing craze triggered by the arrival of Portuguese egg tarts in 1998, to the bleak sight of hundreds of shops closing within months, this small caramelized pastry recorded the island’s collective consumer anxiety and enthusiasm. Today, the egg tart has evolved from a short-lived emblem of fashion into a core competitive asset for fast-food brands and an experimental field for a new generation of “mille-feuille” pastry techniques.

1998: The Island’s Collective Anxiety That Year

On Dalian Road in Taipei in 1998, the air was thick with the rich aroma of butter and eggs. It was not an ordinary bakery smell, but the smell of “money.” At the time, all of Taiwan was caught up in a frenzy later known as the “egg tart turmoil.” People were willing to queue for two hours under the scorching sun just to buy a box of freshly baked Portuguese egg tarts marked with charred black spots.

Media reports at the time described egg tart shops springing up everywhere in city streets and alleyways; even telecom stores and pharmacies switched businesses and began selling egg tarts. Yet the craze cooled rapidly in less than a year. Hundreds of storefronts shut down one after another, leaving behind only empty signs and a phrase that would thereafter be widely cited: the “egg tart effect” ¹.

📝 Curator’s Note: Taiwanese enthusiasm for egg tarts did not arise from a pursuit of dessert, but from a social experiment about “scarcity” and “collective anxiety.”

From Lisbon Monasteries to Coloane, Macao

The origin of the Portuguese egg tart (Pastéis de Nata) can be traced to nineteenth-century Lisbon, Portugal. At the Jerónimos Monastery (Mosteiro dos Jerónimos) in the Belém district, nuns used large amounts of egg whites to starch religious habits, and the leftover yolks were made into desserts ².

This dessert later crossed the ocean to Macao. In 1989, the Englishman Andrew Stow opened Lord Stow’s Bakery on Rua da Tassara in Coloane, Macao. He adapted the traditional Portuguese recipe, abandoning custard powder in favor of cream, eggs, and milk while reducing the sugar content. This was how the “Macao-style Portuguese egg tart” familiar to Taiwanese consumers today took shape ³. After Andrew and his wife Margaret Wong divorced in 1997, Margaret established her own business on the Macao Peninsula selling the same kind of egg tart. She later licensed the recipe to KFC, opening the legendary chapter of Portuguese egg tarts within Asian chain-store systems ⁴.

The Egg Tart Shop Delayed by Fried Chicken

Before 1998, egg tarts were not on the menu at KFC Taiwan ⁵. To respond to the Portuguese egg tart craze, KFC introduced Margaret’s recipe. Ironically, while specialty shops across Taiwan were collapsing one after another, KFC unexpectedly absorbed all remaining market demand because of its standardized production and stable quality.

Around 2022, KFC staged a marketing campaign implying that egg tarts were about to be discontinued, triggering an outcry among consumers across Taiwan who worried that this classic product was about to disappear. In the end, it proved merely to be a publicity stunt for the launch of a new egg tart flavor. But it also once again confirmed the irreplaceable place of egg tarts in Taiwanese hearts: they had already changed from a “trend” into a “tradition” ⁶.

📝 Curator’s Note: When a brand is jokingly called “a delayed specialty shop,” it usually means that its achievement in a side business has already become a cultural symbol.

The Battle of Varieties: From Cookie Crusts to “Little Flower” Mille-Feuille Evolution

Taiwan’s egg tart market is not limited to the Portuguese style. Before Portuguese egg tarts arrived in Taiwan, the common variety was the “traditional egg tart,” with a firmer crust influenced by flour supplied under U.S. aid in the 1950s. This dessert has existed in Taiwan for half a century ⁷.

Portuguese Egg Tarts: Caramel Tiger Stripes and Laminated Puff Pastry

The most conspicuous feature of the Portuguese egg tart (Pastel de Nata) is the caramelized black spotting on its surface. This is not overbaking, but the Maillard reaction produced by sugars and cream in the filling under high heat, giving the tart its distinctive bitter-sweet layering ⁸.

In technique, Portuguese egg tarts use a “laminated puff pastry” process. During production, the dough is wrapped around butter, then repeatedly folded and chilled. It is finally rolled into a cylinder, sliced, and hand-pressed into molds. This method gives the bottom of the tart a spiral pattern, a substantial texture, and distinct layers, producing a clear “crack” when bitten ⁹.

Taiwanese and Hong Kong Egg Tarts: The Plainness of Pressed Shortcrust and Chinese Puff Pastry

Before Portuguese egg tarts became popular, the mainstream in Taiwan and Hong Kong was the smooth-crusted egg tart. These tarts are mainly divided into two schools:

• Pressed shortcrust (cookie crust): This is Taiwan’s most traditional “egg tart” method. The crust is made by mixing butter, flour, and eggs, without folding. Its texture falls somewhere between a tart shell and a cookie. The filling usually has a perfectly smooth, mirror-like surface, with a firm texture and rich milky aroma ¹⁰.
• Chinese puff pastry: Common in traditional cha chaan teng, or Hong Kong-style cafés. Unlike the Western puff pastry used in Portuguese egg tarts, Chinese puff pastry usually uses lard or vegetable oil and relies on the traditional reverse-folding method of wrapping oil dough inside water dough. Its layers are extremely flaky and shatter at a touch, emphasizing an elegant oil aroma rather than a rich buttery quality ¹¹.

Mille-Feuille Egg Tarts: The 2024 Revival of Extreme Technique

In 2024, Taiwan saw another wave of enthusiasm for “mille-feuille egg tarts.” Visually, this egg tart presents an appealing radial “little flower” shape. Its greatest technical difference from the traditional Portuguese egg tart lies in hand-forming and molds.

Mille-feuille egg tarts usually use high-quality French butter, such as Montaigu butter, and Japanese flour, pursuing an extreme crispness. During production, the puff pastry is no longer rolled up and sliced; instead, the pressed multilayer pastry is directly fitted into specially made little-flower baking molds, allowing it to bloom like petals during baking ¹². The filling often uses cream with a higher milk-fat content, such as Nakazawa cream, creating an almost pudding-like molten texture ¹³.

📝 Curator’s Note: From the “cookie base” of traditional egg tarts to the “petal puff pastry” of mille-feuille egg tarts, the evolutionary history of the egg tart is an arms race in Taiwanese pursuit of “crispness” and “milky aroma.”

Contemporary Lessons of the Egg Tart Effect

The “egg tart effect” continues to repeat itself in Taiwan today. From Ching Yu’s jade lemon tea and Fat Daddy fried chicken to the suancai fish, or pickled mustard-green fish, of recent years, the Taiwanese market has always followed a pattern of “explosive rise and collapse” ¹⁴. As the originator of this phenomenon, the egg tart has long since surpassed food itself in meaning. It reminds us that behind collective frenzy often lies an extreme craving for novelty, and a fear of losing one’s ticket to the latest trend.

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