By Ines Keane
Bread, butter, then a shower of chocolate. It sounds like a child’s idea of lunch, and in the Netherlands it is an ordinary one. Wikipedia describes hagelslag as small, oblong, sweet chocolate granules, a few millimetres long, sprinkled on buttered bread or rusks and eaten for breakfast or lunch. The Dutch word means hailstorm.
The beginning
Three sources tell the early story, and they mostly agree. According to Wikipedia, citing the Amsterdam City Archives, B. E. Dieperink, director of the liquorice company Venco, invented hagelslag in 1919. Expat site I Am Expat gives the same year and the same source for the claim, and says the first version was brittle white aniseed sprinkles used as a bread topping. The food-history site Food Republic adds a detail the others do not: that the name was inspired by a hailstorm in Amsterdam in the autumn of 1919, which sparked Dieperink’s idea for a sandwich filling. We treat that as an account, since the other two do not repeat it.
The name that could not be used
The three sources agree that Venco protected the name. Wikipedia says Venco held a patent on the term, so De Ruijter and Venz could not call their products hagelslag. Food Republic and I Am Expat say Venco patented the name, so competitors needed another.
That is why the shelf still carries two words. De Ruijter named its sprinkles after their flavours, such as vruchtenhagel, which Wikipedia says included lemon, raspberry, orange and aniseed. I Am Expat gives 1928 for De Ruijter’s fruit sprinkles; Food Republic gives 1928 as well, with orange, lemon and raspberry. Venz, which Wikipedia calls the largest Dutch producer, made chocolate versions that were called chocoladehagel.
The chocolate date, and the quarrel over who
Here the pages part. Wikipedia says Venz has made chocolate hagelslag since 1936, and also says Venco’s version did not contain chocolate until 1951. I Am Expat says Venz began making chocolate hagelslag in 1936, named chocoladehagel because of the patent, and says the idea reportedly came from letters from a young boy. Food Republic gives 1936 too and says the first chocolate product came from a five-year-old boy’s letter requesting a chocolate topping. It then refers to Venco and Venz inconsistently, so we cannot tell from it which company made the 1936 chocolate version. We do not try to settle that. The boy’s age and the letter are also single accounts that two sources repeat as a story.
The cocoa rule
Two sources give a rule, and the numbers differ. I Am Expat says chocolate sprinkles must contain at least 32 per cent cocoa to be called chocoladehagelslag. Food Republic says hagelslag must contain at least 32 per cent cocoa butter. Wikipedia’s article does not mention a legal cocoa requirement at all. Note what is measured: cocoa in one, cocoa butter in the other, and neither cites a regulation. We have not read the rule itself. Food Republic adds that American sprinkles contain mainly sugar, wax and binders, with minimal cocoa powder, which is its own comparison and not a legal finding.
Kinds on the shelf
Wikipedia lists pure hagelslag in dark chocolate, white, and milk chocolate, plus vruchtenhagel and chocolate flakes, known as vlokken, made for buttered bread. I Am Expat says supermarkets carry around twenty varieties, including aniseed, fruit, forest fruit, extra-large sprinkles, flakes and low-sugar versions. Food Republic lists milk, dark, extra-dark and white chocolate, and says the topping is commonly put on buttered beschuit, a round hard rusk made from twice-baked bread, as well as on toast.
How much, and the little mice
The consumption figures are the best-travelled numbers in the story. Wikipedia and I Am Expat both say roughly 750,000 hagelslag sandwiches or slices are eaten each day in the Netherlands and about 14 million kilograms a year. Food Republic quotes more than 30 million pounds a year, attributing it to another website, and calls hagelslag the most popular bread topping. Those two annual figures are of the same order, though they are in different units and we do not convert them.
Food Republic also mentions muisjes, sugar-coated aniseeds in pink, blue and white, served at celebrations for a new baby. It says the practice dates to the 1400s and that muisjes are believed to be an ancestor of hagelslag. That is a belief reported by one source, and we do not endorse it. Wikipedia adds names from elsewhere: in Indonesia the topping is called meses, from muisjes, and in Belgium muizenstrontjes, which it translates as mouse droppings.
Dates in order
- 1919: hagelslag invented by Venco’s director, according to Wikipedia and I Am Expat.
- 1928: De Ruijter’s fruit sprinkles, according to I Am Expat and Food Republic.
- 1936: chocolate hagelslag from Venz, according to all three, with the Venco and Venz mix-up in Food Republic.
- 1951: Venco’s version first contains chocolate, according to Wikipedia.
Side by side
Where all three agree: 1919, Dieperink, the patented name, 1936 for chocolate. Where two agree: the 32 per cent figure, and the boy’s letter. Where only one speaks: the hailstorm, the 1400s muisjes, Venco’s chocolate in 1951. Our reading: the best-supported plain account is a 1919 aniseed topping, a protected word, and a flavour-named competitor that left the Dutch with two names on one shelf. That is our inference from what the sources share.
What kind of sources these are
Wikipedia (open encyclopaedia), I Am Expat (an expatriate lifestyle site) and Food Republic (a food-and-drink website). We found no producer’s site, archive record or regulation that we could load. We left out brand claims about recipes, anything about nutrition and every price.
Quick answers
- Who invented hagelslag? According to Wikipedia, citing the Amsterdam City Archives, Venco’s director B. E. Dieperink invented it in 1919.
- Why is it sometimes called chocoladehagel? Wikipedia and I Am Expat say Venco held a patent on the name hagelslag, so rivals used other words.
- How much hagelslag do the Dutch eat? Wikipedia and I Am Expat both say about 14 million kilograms a year, around 750,000 sandwiches or slices a day.
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