Arganil Sweet-Potato Broa
Also known as: Côja Sweet-Potato Broa
A tall sweet-potato and white-maize broa born in Côja's old communal ovens.
- Origin
- Côja · Arganil
- Region
- Côja · Arganil
- Season
- Year-round
Arganil Potato Broa is a large, round rustic cake with a cracked brown crust and a tall, moist yellow crumb. Its dough combines cooked sweet potato, sugar, butter, wheat flour, white maize flour, cinnamon and aniseed; it rests overnight, is shaped next day, brushed with yolk and baked.
Despite the word broa, this is neither everyday maize bread nor a small cookie: it is served in thick slices revealing its tender, close sweet-potato crumb.
- sweet potato
- sugar
- butter
- wheat flour
- white maize flour
- cinnamon
- aniseed
- egg yolk
- salt
Sweet, moist and earthy, with gentle maize and warm cinnamon-aniseed notes.
The ancestral formula reportedly used pumpkin; texture, browning and flour proportions vary by producer.
At Boutique da Tuxa and Pérola de Côja, and in Arganil pastry shops.
Coffee, black tea or mildly aged cheese.
Côja oral tradition says a baker replaced pumpkin with potato in a year of scarcity. The result succeeded, became a local product and remained linked to the old communal ovens, where each household marked its own broas.
It is still produced year-round in Côja and Arganil and appears on the municipality's visitor map among its local foods.
Sources: visitarganil.pt · visitarganil.pt
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