The story of Portuguese sweetmaking

Even before Atlantic sugar arrived, the south of Portugal already had a deep culture of sweets, inherited from centuries of Islamic presence. The Arabs of North Africa left in the Algarve a legacy of flavours that still defines it today: honey, citrus, cinnamon and, above all, dried fruits and nuts.

The almond, fig and carob trees became emblems of the Algarve's landscape and larder. From almonds come the finest pastes, moulded into the shapes of fruit and animals — the "doce fino" — a technique of clear North African ancestry. From dried figs and carob come dense, perfumed sweets that long predate the abundance of sugar.

When, centuries later, this tradition met the egg-and-sugar sweetmaking of the convents, it produced some of the south's most celebrated confections, such as the Morgado, with its almond paste, and the Dom Rodrigo, of egg threads and almond, both originating in Algarve convents. The Arab inheritance is thus one of the oldest and deepest roots of Portuguese sweetmaking.

It is in the convents and monasteries, above all between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, that Portuguese sweetmaking reached its height. With sugar now plentiful, and with time, patience and dedicated hands, nuns and monks perfected hundreds of recipes that married sugar with an ingredient they had in excess: egg yolks.

The explanation lies in a curious domestic problem. Egg whites had many practical uses in the convents: they were used to starch habits and wimples, to clarify wine, and even to fix the gold leaf on the altarpieces of churches. This left enormous quantities of leftover yolks — and Portugal was one of Europe's largest egg producers. Rather than waste them, the religious turned them, with sugar, into an endless variety of sweets.

Thus were born names that are at once poetry and indulgence: trouxas-de-ovos (egg bundles), papos-de-anjo (angel's chins), barrigas-de-freira (nun's bellies), toucinho-do-céu, ovos-moles. Many were prepared for great religious feasts and offered to benefactors and distinguished visitors. Each religious house jealously guarded its recipes, creating an extraordinary diversity of convent sweets that to this day remains the heart of the national repertoire.

For centuries, the secrets of convent sweetmaking remained shut behind monastery walls. That changed abruptly with the end of the civil war between Liberals and Absolutists. In 1834, following the Liberal victory, the state decreed the dissolution of the male religious orders and the closure of the monasteries; female convents disappeared gradually, as their last nuns died.

Deprived of their way of life, many religious — and above all the lay workers who knew the recipes — carried that knowledge out of the cloisters. Convent sweets entered the confectioners, pastry shops and kitchens of towns and cities, ceasing to be reserved for religious feasts and becoming everyone's heritage.

It was this exodus of knowledge that democratised Portuguese sweetmaking. Recipes once tasted only at a convent door spread across the country, took root in each region, and began to be made commercially. Without 1834, many of Portugal's best-loved sweets might have been lost along with the convents that created them.

No sweet tells this passage from convent to world better than the pastel de nata. Its origin is tied to the Jerónimos Monastery in Belém, on the bank of the Tagus, where a custard tart was made following an old and secret recipe.

With the dissolution of the religious orders in 1834 and the monastery's imminent closure, someone connected to the Jerónimos began selling the tarts in a shop attached to a nearby sugarcane refinery, as an attempt at survival. The success was immediate. In 1837, regular production of the "Pastéis de Belém" began in the premises beside the refinery, following that secret recipe from the monastery.

The Antiga Confeitaria de Belém has kept that recipe to this day, known only to a handful of master confectioners in what is called the "secret room". The name "Pastel de Belém" still designates only the tarts made in that house; everywhere else in the country and the world, the same pastry is known as the "pastel de nata". From a humble convent leftover it became, perhaps, the most Portuguese of all pastries.

Once out of the convents, the sweets took root in every region, and Portugal became a country of local confectioneries. Aveiro has its ovos-moles, wrapped in wafer and moulded into marine shapes; Sintra, its queijadas and travesseiros; the Alentejo, its encharcadas and sericaias; the North, the pão de ló of Ovar and the tigeladas. Each place proudly guards its own sweet.

To protect this heritage, several sweets have won designations of origin and geographical indications recognised by the European Union. In 2006, the Ovos Moles de Aveiro became the first Portuguese sweet to obtain a Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), guaranteeing the authenticity of the recipe, the ingredients and the artisanal method. Others, such as the Pão de Ló de Ovar and the Travesseiro de Sintra, followed similar paths of certification and recognition.

Meanwhile, the pastel de nata carried Portuguese sweetmaking to the world. Today it is found in Lisbon and Porto, but also in London, Macau, Tokyo and São Paulo, multiplied across pastry shops, cafés and international chains. What began with the sugar of Madeira and the yolks of nuns is, in the twenty-first century, one of Portugal's most delicious ambassadors — a sweet story still being written.