Cameos

Also known as: Walnut camafeus · Azorean cameos

Tiny sugar-and-walnut cameos, hand-set like jewels upon the table.

Origin: 19th century · Conventual confectionery of Terceira island (Angra do Heroísmo)
Place: Angra do Heroísmo
Region: The Azores
Category: Convent Sweets
Season: Year-round · especially at Christmas and festivities
Evidence: Well documented

Sweetness

Richness

Difficulty

The camafeus are tiny sweets from Terceira island, no bigger than a walnut, concentrating the full intensity of the Azorean nut. The filling begins with a sugar syrup brought to the right stage, to which grated walnuts and eggs are added, stirred over the heat until the paste is firm enough to be shaped by hand into perfect little balls.

Each ball is dipped in a beaten sugar icing that, as it dries, dresses the sweet in a white, matt mantle perfumed with a few drops of lemon. On top sits a walnut half, placed in relief in a gesture that gives the sweet its name and its jewel-like silhouette.

They are served in small paper doily cases, lined up in boxes like miniature pieces of goldsmithery — proper to celebration tables, baptisms and the Terceira Christmas.

Ingredients

Ground walnuts
Sugar
Egg yolks
Egg whites
Water
Lemon juice
Walnut halves (to decorate)

Taste & texture

Intensely walnut and deeply sweet: the centre is soft and faintly grainy, wrapped in a glacé shell that crackles lightly and melts into sugar. A whisper of lemon cuts the sweetness just enough to keep it lively.

Variations

The classic version always uses walnut, but you will find camafeus scented with cinnamon or a touch of liqueur, and each Angra pastry shop guards its own syrup stage and thickness of glaze.

Where to try it

Seek them out in the traditional pastry shops of Angra do Heroísmo on Terceira, such as Athanásio or O Forno, and at Azorean celebration tables, especially at Christmas.

Pairs well with

They call for a strong coffee or a small glass of Pico wine or liqueur, which balance their concentrated sweetness.

History

The camafeu belongs to the rich conventual confectionery of Terceira, heir to the convents of Angra do Heroísmo — among them the Convent of São Gonçalo, the city's oldest, and the Convent of Esperança. When the religious orders were suppressed in Portugal in 1834, the nuns' recipes passed to the women who worked in the convents and, with them, into the domestic and commercial confectionery of the island, sustained by the sugar that arrived in abundance and by the egg yolks plentiful in a land of great egg production.

The name evokes cameos — small pieces of carved stone, in bas-relief, that adorned the jewellery and feminine ornaments of the nineteenth century, worn at the breast on ribbons. The walnut half crowning the white icing recreates, in edible miniature, that figure in relief, and fixed the sweet as one of the emblems of Terceira confectionery.

Documentary basis

Well documented

3 sources

Identity supported by institutional, specialist or corroborating sources.

How we assess sources and uncertainty →

Well documented

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