Boiled Broas
Also known as: Boiled Broas of the Ribatejo · Ribatejo-Style Boiled Broas
The broas you boil before they ever see the oven — honey, walnut and aniseed that keep until Christmas.
- Origin
- Convent confectionery · Convent of São Domingos das Donas, Santarém (founded 1348)
- Region
- Santarém
- Season
- Christmas and All Saints' (autumn and winter)
The broas fervidas are small sweet honey buns, distinct from all other broas by their method: everything liquid — water, olive oil, honey, brown sugar — goes first to the heat with the walnuts, cinnamon and aniseed, and only once boiling point is reached is the flour added, stirred until the dough thickens and pulls away from the bottom of the pot. Hence the name, and hence too the dense, patient texture that makes them unmistakable.
Shaped into small, flat ovals, marked with fork tines, brushed with beaten egg, they go into the oven just long enough to acquire a golden crust. They emerge firm — almost hard — and harden further with the days: a quality, not a fault, for it was that long keeping that made them last from All Saints' Day right through to Christmas Eve.
They are served dusted with icing sugar on the Ribatejo Christmas table, alongside filhoses and sonhos, or kept in a tin where they wait patiently, growing denser and more fragrant with honey as the days pass.
- Wheat flour
- Honey
- Olive oil
- Brown sugar
- Water
- Walnut kernels
- Aniseed
- Cinnamon
- Beaten egg (for glazing)
- Icing sugar (for dusting)
Deeply sweet with honey and brown sugar, warmed by cinnamon and lifted by the anise-fresh note of aniseed, with the earthy bitterness of walnut running through. The texture is firm and compact, almost hard, softening in the mouth as the honey dissolves.
Every kitchen keeps its own: some add coffee alongside the honey, others blend wheat flour with cornmeal, some favour aniseed while others stay with cinnamon, and nearly all carry walnut, though some fold in almond too. The olive-oil broas of Abrantes and sweet-potato broas are close cousins from the same Ribatejo repertoire.
Look for them in the traditional bakeries and confectioners of Santarém, Torres Novas and Abrantes in the weeks before Christmas and All Saints' Day, or at the region's traditional-pastry fairs around the Médio Tejo. At home they are made in batches to last the whole festive season.
They call for a glass of Port or Moscatel, or a strong coffee to cut the sweetness. On the Christmas table they sit happily beside filhoses, sonhos and the region's other fried sweets.
The tradition of broas in Santarém is attributed to the nuns of the Convent of São Domingos das Donas, one of the city's oldest, founded in 1348 and inhabited by Dominican sisters until the death of the last nun in 1895. As in so many Portuguese convents, enclosed hands refined recipes of honey and spices for holy days, and the "broas de Santarém" became associated with that conventual heritage, distinct from the broas of other regions.
The boiling method spread throughout the Ribatejo, taking particular root in Torres Novas and Abrantes, where it became a customary presence in the months before Christmas. Every family keeps its own version — some with more walnut, others with coffee, some made only with wheat, others blended with cornmeal — passed from grandmother to granddaughter as part of the region's festive confectionery.
Sources: ruralea.com · portugal-aptece.com · pt.wikipedia.org · pt.petitchef.com · outrascomidas.blogspot.com
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