Traditional Sweets of Portugal

Bean Tart

The tradition of making sweets from legumes combined with the ubiquitous bitterness of almonds was already well established long before the arrival of beans into Portuguese kitchens from the Americas. Appearing in the Tratado de Cozinha e Copa [Treaty onFood and Wine] by Carlos Bento da Maia, rst published in 1904, bean tarts were described in a recipe very similar to that for which Torres Vedras is famous. In his gastronomic tour of Portugal in 1940, Albino Forjaz de Sampaio was very taken by the Torres Vedras bean tarts and marked the town on the map as the birthplace of this pastry that is so fundamental to Portuguese confectionery. In terms of its history, more important than its origin are its protagonists, who through their re ned expertise and great attention to detail, transformed the pastry into a sweet symbol of Torres Vedras. Maria Adelaide Rodrigues da Silva, loyal depositary of this long-standing family secret, invested in their production and with her mastery and penchant for quality turned them into a popular pastry. Later on, members of her family continued the tradition of a secret whose alchemy was characterised by the delicacy and precision in the mixture of ingredients. As always, it is the hands, steady in their movements as if they are performing a ritual, that add a touch of perfection to this pastry, which gets its consistency from beans and has a moist and generous lling of almonds and eggs. Creatinga sharp and wonderful contrast between diverse ingredients, beantarts are a hearty and opulent pastry. It is a pleasure to bite into them and discover their distinct sweet lling.

Vila Real Cockerel’s Comb

Known as bacon pasteles (Pastéis de Toucinho) at the time of theClarissan nuns of the Convent of St. Clare in Vila Real, these pastrieswere later nicknamed Cockerel’s Combs (Cristas de Galo) due totheir similarity in appearance with the eshy comb on the headof cockerels. These pastries were blessed with the expertise thatabounded in Portuguese convents, which were like alchemical laboratories where treasures of Portuguese confectionary were born from improbable mixtures of ingredients. Without a doubt, thehands that brought Cristas de Galo into being were blessed. If at rst glance you suspect that the lling is yet another variation of sweetegg custard, you will be pleasantly surprised by the ingenious andunexpected mixture of sugar, eggs, almonds, bacon, cinnamon and apple. Bacon the avour that lingers on your palate, but you only discover the perfection of the mixture in the second bite. The sugar in its lling is what gives it its sweetness, but the pastry is also unique, in this case so much more than a recipient for the lling. The pastry, on its own, is a tribute to the women that made it, doing what they dobest. With a lightness that gives it a certain delicacy, the crisp pastryleaves you wanting more, making it hard to decide which part is more delicious, the lling or the pastry. Cristas de Galo are still made today by the mastery of the people of Vila Real, in honour of the historyof the defunct Convent of St. Clare in Vila Real, devoted to NossaSenhora do Amparo (Our Lady of Refuge). They are a gift from a happy time where perfection was not just about the sweetness of sugar, but also the perfect combination of pastry and lling and such varied ingredients as sugar and bacon. It almost seems as though, inthe absence of words, due to their vow of perpetual silence, the nuns used these bacon pasteles to describe the moments of happiness that they would have liked to enjoy. It is a comfort to know that the world these nuns did not experience; the lands they abandoned early on, never to return; the lands they never had the chance to know, would come to experience the perfection of a moment of happiness through these pastries. How grateful w e are to be able to taste them!

Sintra Pillow

We owe the excellence of travesseiros de Sintra to Constança Luísa dos Santos Cunha, heiress of the art of confectionary of the prestigious Casa das Queijadas de Sintra. In the 1940s, in spite ofthe di culties felt in Portugal due to the scarcity of many foods afterthe Second World War, Constança Luísa found consolation for the ills of the world in confectionery. Inspired by a desire for perfection, she read and reread the old confectionery recipe books where theart of making egg custard was combined with new pastry-makingtechniques, resulting in the delicious travesseiro de Sintra. The eggcustard stands out for its lightness and aroma, deriving from untold ancient wisdom, a family secret forever kept under lock and key. It is fair to say that not just any pu pastry will do when it comes to making an exceptional sweet. The best ingredients must be chosenin order to ensure that the travesseiro is both crisp and melt in the mouth. If you think the pastry is good, o ered up almost indecently to your palate, you’re in for a treat when you get to the delicious lling inside. It’s not di cult to invent a new pastry, as long as you’re willing to read the vast collection of recipes available and experiment with ingredients, techniques and expertise. The di cult part is creating a pastry that makes history, a taste that will be handed down through generations, that makes the moment you rst taste it stick in your memory. This is the magic of cooking; when something you create lives forever in the memories of others. We are indebtedto Constança Luísa and are grateful to her heirs for keeping this excellent tradition alive. In each travesseiro de Sintra you can tastesomething that has been passed down through time, from the very rst one that was ever made, right down to the one which has justbeen eaten. This longevity can only be achieved when the art ofconfectionery is much more than a way of life, it is a way of paying respect and honouring those people who came before us and gave us the best they had to o er; the magic of confectionery.

Évora Cheese Tart

The Alentejo is a kind of sanctuary of traditional confectionary, andit is the home of one of the most famous recipes for Portuguesecheese tarts, the Queijadas de Évora. The distinct taste of cheese,which in the planes of the Alentejo usually comes from sheep’s milk, derives from the (dis)proportionate ratio of cheese to sugar, where the balance tips in favour of the former. It is perhaps for this reason, because they only have a delicate hint of sugar in them, that these cheese tarts make one forget one’s gluttony when eating them. Their subtle sweetness, which results from the small quantity of sugar involved, but more predominantly from the amount of full-fat sheep’s cheese, tricks our palate to think it less of a sin. Thesheep’s cheese is well strained to ensure a smooth mixture with the egg yolks, sugar, and a little our, and its strong avour makes the pastry live up to its name. The need to preserve foods in order for them to keep longer, especially in the case of milk with its limited shelf life, led to the discovery of cheese and its transformation intoa delicacy. We owe the cheese tarts to this need for preservation andthe type and abundance of milk available, ready to be transformed into cheese. It is not surprising that the recipe book that PrincessMaria, granddaughter of King Manuel I, had in her trousseau on hermarriage to the 3rd Duke of Parma, Alexander Farnese, includeda recipe for alvojávenas de Dona Isabel de Vilhena for which themixture and quantities of ingredients were very similar to the Évora cheese tarts. Furthermore, a recipe book compiled by Friar Manuel de Santa Teresa (from the 18th century) included various recipes for cheese tarts with mouth-watering references to the techniques and expertise used in their confection and the re nement and care taken by those in charge of confectionery. In the midst of the planes of the Alentejo, our eyes are dazzled by the hot sun and we cast them over the open horizon, awakening dreams of far-away places. On this journey, we come across the subtle sweetness of an Évora cheese tart which reminds us that we are at our best and happiest when dreams appear in the form of sweets on our palate.

Ançã Cake

The tradition of making sweet breads is widespread across the whole of Portugal. First there was bread, staple food of our culture. Then came honey and sugar, and this gave rise to the sweet dough that was baked and used as a popular o ering on saint’s days. It was an inexpensive way for the poor and middle classes to have something sweet on days of respite from the daily grind. The tradition evolvedin all villages and towns, but in Ançã it excelled and proved that theconfectionery of the masses could be extraordinary and deserving of utmost respect. Why this sweet bread, made from simple and common ingredients, tastes so good, one can only wonder. Maybe it is the way the our is mixed with the eggs and the butter, with the patience of someone who knows that it you cannot rush alchemy in the kitchen, or the rhythmic kneading of hands with noble intentions. Perhaps it is the wood oven that gives the bread its depth of avour. Or could it be the vendors, who sing announcements, selling theirAnçã sweet bread wherever they go? Who knows why, but theappeal of its simplicity is irresistible. It is also di cult to explain why the tradition of sweet breads in the village of Ançã grew so much and gained such a following, since the circumstances and availability of our also led to the creation of the bolo de cornos [horned cake] and bolo no [ ne cake] as well as the traditional bolo de Ançã [Ançã cake], whose crown, which opens up well into the baking time, seems to hold all of the splendour of the moist and delicious dough inside of it. Di erent purities of our, some ne, some coarse, produce di erent textures; and all the admirers of this cake have their own personal preference. In 1933, Jaime Cortesão wrote in the Comarca de Cantanhede that “Ançã is the talk of the town in Lisbon (...) thanks to its magni cent sweet breads (...)”. There is nothing like experiencing the purity of avour of an egg cake, a horn or a ne cake, to the sound of the alternating rhythm of the clear andcrystalline water of the Ribeira de Ança, which you can’t help but feel cleansing your soul as it runs through the village.

Odivelas White Quince Jam

In times gone by, when an abundant supply of sugar made miracles of confectionery possible in convents and monasteries, a well known recipe was given a new twist when the Odivelas Monastery o ered the world Marmelada Branca. Presented in small cubes, the Odivelas quince jam stands out from others due to its white colour,which hints at the innocent and delicate secrets of its confection.The Bernardine nuns of the Cistercian Order knew to take great care over the smallest details, so that the fame of this sweet quince jam spread throughout the kingdom, leading greedy palates to ock to the convent’s turn-box to acquire it. This quince jam became famous,above all, for its white colour, however, those who have grown upeating it say that no other jam has such intense taste of quince, whichis regarded as the greatest fruit of a season of plenty. The convent’slast nun left a written record of the recipe: “peel the quinces and put them into cold water. Bring them to simmer on a low heat and when they are well cooked pass them through a sieve. For 1kg of pulp, heat 2kg of sugar until it bubbles up in the pan, so that a drop of it in a glass of water becomes rm: take the pan o the heat and stir in the pulp with a spoon until the mixture is smooth, then put it back on the heat until it bubbles. Remove the pan from the heat and beat the jelly until it cools, then put it on plates to dry.” Told as if telling a storyto a friend, this recipe tells us that the secret was kept by the personwho used it every autumn and had mastered the art of making a white quince jam, so di erent from the others that were commonly made throughout the region. The record in the recipe book wasn’t so much an attempt to ensure the recipe’s survival, but rather a story from the kitchen entrusted to people who knew all the secrets of confectionery, forging a relationship that would last for all time. Asecret whispered between everyday conversations, this recipe leadsus to assume that the secret to a good white quince jam rests, then as it does now, upon the desire to achieve perfection by transforming a fruit with sour skin and esh into small silky cubes that melt in the mouth.

Caniço Doll Biscuits

We must trace our steps back to the 19th century to nd the rst signs of the doll biscuit tradition in Caniço. Oral history identi es António Correia, born in Mãe de Deus, in Caniço, as the rst person to make Bonecas de Massa, as a way of providing extra income for his family. In 1916, one of his sons, Alexandre Correia, known as ‘Old Father’, married Ludvina, in the area of Serralhal, and together the large family adopted the tradition when it became impossible to maintain the couple and their nine children with agriculture alone. They made the dollsat home on their farm, the Sítio dos Barreiros.

The Bonecas de Massa, representations of human gures made outof dough, began to gain popularity at street parties and Alexandre would follow the trails around the island with a basket on his back,laden with Bonecas to sell in the big religious festivals: the Bom Jesus festival in Ponta Delgada; the Sr. Dos Milagres festival in Machico; the Senhora do Monte festival in Monte; the Senhora da Piedade festival in Caniçal; and the Livramento and Santíssimo Sacramento festivitiesin Caniço.

The production of the doll biscuits was an important event for children and when word spread that Ludvina was about to make them, her grandchildren and their friends would come from all around and show up at the house to o er their help. The children were in chargeof putting on the eyes, using the seeds of a herb known as balloonvine or love in a pu (Cardiospermum), that grows on the shore of the island, Indian shot (Canna indica), chive seeds or cloves, thatthey would break in half with a stone and put in place of the eyes. They would also help to put on the red, blue or green tissue paperdecoration (papelinhos). The colours don’t have any special meaning; they were the colours that were available at the time. There isphotographic evidence of the use of green. The children would carrythe raw dolls in their arms up to the oven door, where Ludvina would use an oven peel to put them in the oven. The children would wait eagerly for the 15 or 20 minutes it took to bake them, to receive the broken ones, which could not be sold. They would gather plums and pears with a stick or by climbing trees and would eat them with thepieces of broken doll biscuits. When Alexandre passed away, Ludvinacontinued to make the dolls with the help of her two daughters, Elisa and Glória. Glória followed in the footsteps of her father and would go to the street parties, together with her cousin, Salomé Teixeira, who would later continue with the tradition of making the Bonecas de Massa. Thanks to Salomé Teixeira, the Bonecas de Massa or Bonecasde Maçapão earned a place in Madeiran popular art and variousexhibitions were held to promote the art form.

The gures each had di erent characteristics; they came in di erent shapes and sizes: male and female, holding hoops or nests and cockerels or hens. Each stage of their preparation requires a great amount of skill. The process begins with the preparation of the dough, in which water is mixed with salt and yellow egg colouring before adding the our, which sometimes is mixed with yeast. Once the dough is well kneaded, like bread, it rests. It is then cut into small pieces and moulded into the desired shape. After the moulding comes the decorating stage when the necklaces are added: poor/ traditional girl dolls get 3 necklaces and rich girl dolls get 5 necklaces and a more detailed skirt. Then comes the red or blue paper. Usually red is used on their heads, shoulders and the hem of their skirts, while the blue is used on their arms; crossing from one arm to the other below the neck. The number of necklaces and the amount of tissue paper used makes the distinction between the poor/traditional and the rich dolls. Other shapes like nests/hoops with 3 hens, a cockerel or hen are also made and adorned with tissue paper.