The cuberdon is a small cone-shaped Belgian sweet: a crust of gum arabic and sugar around a soft, syrupy filling, traditionally raspberry-flavoured and coloured purple. Its shape gives it its everyday names. In Ghent it is a neus or neuzeke ("nose", "little nose"), or more formally a Gentse neus ("Ghent nose"); other Flemish names include tsoepke and topneus, and in Belgian French it is a chapeau-de-curé or chapeau-de-prêtre ("priest's hat"). So if you have been told about a "nose" sweet from Belgium made with gum arabic, this is the one. People sometimes call it a "Brussels nose", but it belongs to Ghent and East Flanders.
A cuberdon is about 2.5 cm across and weighs roughly 10–18 grams. The crust is firm and the inside is gelatinous to liquid. The texture changes as you eat it: the crust snaps, then the slightly firmer layer just inside gives way, then the liquid centre runs out. That contrast is what the sweet is for, and it does not last. A cuberdon keeps for only about three weeks. After that the inside starts to crystallise. This is why the sweet is seldom exported, and why most people outside Belgium have never tried a fresh one.
Composition and form
Cuberdons are made from sugar, gum arabic and flavouring. The hot mass is poured into cone-shaped hollows pressed into trays of starch. As the sweets rest, a crust forms where they touch the starch, and the inside stays soft. The classic flavour is described as raspberry with a hint of violet. Producers now make many other flavours, more than twenty in some ranges, including strawberry, cherry, lemon, mint and anise.
Gum arabic, which comes from acacia trees in Africa, is the essential ingredient. Flemish accounts say production stopped during the Second World War, when gum arabic imports dried up, and started again after 1946 when supplies came back and confectioners who remembered the recipe went back to work.
Origin: the Ghent pharmacist story
The most widely repeated origin story is set in Ghent. In 1873 a pharmacist named De Vynck is said to have noticed by chance that a failed syrup preparation had formed a crust while its core stayed liquid, and he decided to sell the result as a sweet. Dutch-language accounts add that Paul D'havé, an artist from Eeklo, made the moulds. A rival story credits a member of the clergy in Bruges, which may help explain the "priest's hat" name in French. Neither story is documented well enough to be certain, so the 1873 Ghent version should be treated as tradition rather than established fact.
What is clear is that the cuberdon became firmly tied to Ghent and the surrounding province of East Flanders. VLAM, the Flemish agricultural marketing agency, recognises it as a regional product, and the cuberdons of Confiserie Geldhof received that recognition in 2009.
The "neuzekesoorlog": Ghent's nose-candy war
In English, the cuberdon is best known for a feud. In 2011 a dispute began on the Groentenmarkt in Ghent between two cuberdon sellers, Carl Demeestere and Sonny Breine. Demeestere had been selling cuberdons there first, and Breine then set up a cart with the same product almost in front of him. Flemish media called it the neuzekesoorlog ("little-noses war"), and it became a long-running local saga. Insults and arguments over customers led, around two years in, to a fistfight in front of tourists.
The story was picked up by international outlets, the BBC among them, and became a piece of Ghent folklore. It also went to court. In March 2019 a Ghent court convicted one of the vendors of racially motivated insults against his rival. He received a two-month suspended sentence and a fine, and was ordered to keep his stand at least 50 metres from his competitor. In April 2023 Demeestere was sentenced in a separate case over the 2020 bankruptcy of his business: a one-year suspended prison sentence, a professional ban and an order to repay about €108,000. On appeal, the repayment was reduced to €25,000 and the ban to five years, according to Belgian media. Breine has since been reported as the only cuberdon seller left on the Groentenmarkt. In 2024 the Ghent filmmaker Frederik Van Melle announced a short film about the feud.
Who makes cuberdons
Only a handful of confectioners still make cuberdons to the traditional method. The best known is Confiserie Geldhof in Eeklo, north-west of Ghent. Founder Antoine Geldhof, who had learned the trade at a large Ghent confectionery, started his own business in 1954. The family firm was taken over by the confectioner Confiserie Joris in 2024. Confiserie 2000 in Evergem is also named as a producer of traditional cuberdons. Industrial versions with a longer shelf life are sold in supermarkets and souvenir shops. Many people in Ghent consider these a different, lesser product, because a firmer filling or a different formulation does away with the contrast between crust and centre.
Why the cuberdon does not travel
The fresh cuberdon's problem is time rather than distance. The liquid centre slowly crystallises, warmth speeds this up, and the thin crust cracks easily. A fresh batch is at its best within a few weeks, and that limits the sweet to shops and markets near where it is made. Many Belgians who live outside East Flanders only eat cuberdons on a trip to Ghent. If you want to taste the real thing, buy them fresh in Ghent and eat them within days. A shelf-stable version bought abroad will be an approximation.
The cuberdon in context
Along with the babelutte of the coast, the cuberdon is one of the few Belgian sweets that has kept a strongly local identity. It has not industrialised the way the praline trade did, and it has not spread worldwide the way speculoos did through Lotus Biscoff. Its short shelf life is the reason it stays local, and part of the reason Ghent is proud of it. Cuberdon flavour has since spread into other products, including jenever, ice cream, dessert sauces and biscuits.