According to Dutch culinary folklore, stroopwafels were first made in Gouda either during the late 18th century or the early 19th century by bakers repurposing scraps and crumbs by sweetening them with syrup. One story ascribes the invention of the stroopwafel to the baker Gerard Kamphuisen, which would date the first stroopwafels from somewhere between 1810, the year he opened his bakery, and 1840, the year of the oldest known recipe for syrup waffles. Stroopwafels were not found outside Gouda until 1870, by which point the city was home to around 100 syrup-waffle bakers.