🍱 Tart
Representative confectionery of Matsuyama City. In Matsuyama City, a rolled cake-like confection with anko (sweet red bean paste) wrapped in castella sponge cake is called "Tart." In the 4th year of Shoho (1647), Sadayuki Matsudaira, the first lord of the Matsuyama domain of the Hisamatsu family, heard news of a Portuguese ship entering Nagasaki. When he went to patrol the seas near Nagasaki, he encountered a tart, a Nanban-gashi (confectionery influenced by Portuguese culture), where jam was rolled inside castella. He became captivated by the taste. Upon returning to Matsuyama, he brought back the manufacturing method from Nagasaki and added yuzu, a citrus fruit from Shikoku, as an accent, transforming it into a confection with elements of Japanese culture. The method later became a family tradition of the Hisamatsu family and spread to confectionery artisans in Matsuyama after the Meiji era. The name is believed to originate from either the Dutch word "taart," meaning cake, or the Portuguese word "torta," meaning rolled cake. Both derive from the Latin term for baked confectionery.