If you are from Paterna or its surroundings, you surely know what we are talking about when the word cachap is pronounced. In this town, the sacred coffee hour is usually accompanied by a sweet that is unique in the world and is part of the cultural heritage of the city. At the same level as the Tower of Paterna, the Calvary or the Cordà.
This dessert is made of thin and crunchy layers of puff pastry filled with cream and is more than a hundred years old. The first cachaps produced in Paterna date back to the beginning of the 19th century.
They came from the hands of Celestino Monrabal and his son Mariano in the Horno Nuestra Señora del Rosario (C/ Carrer de Vicent Lerma, 18), following a family recipe handed down from generation to generation. However, at that time, they had no name.
Origin of the name “Cachap”.
The flaky sweets gained fame over time and it was in 1923 when history gave them a name. During the wedding of “Tío Cachapot”, an illustrious neighbor of Paterna and friend of the Monrabal family, he commissioned the oven to make this cake to offer it to the guests during the banquet. It was from that moment on when it became known as cachap, in honor of “Tío Cachapot”.
Later, the Monrabal’s descendants would continue with the tradition until 1947, when Manuel Sánchez (Manolo, el dels cachaps), an employee of the family, continued with the elaboration of the cachaps.
The success of this sweet lies in the secrecy surrounding its recipe, which has been passed down for centuries among confectioners. So much so that today cachaps are a sweet whose original production can only be made in this oven in Paterna. And Cachaps, a registered trademark, just like Coca-Cola.