São Lázaro Cavacórios

Also known as: Cavacórios · Vila Real Cavacórios

The little white chalice you steep in Port.

Origin: Trás-os-Montes · Vila Real · tied to the chapel of São Lázaro in the Bairro dos Ferreiros (founded in 1520)
Region: Vila Real
Season: Feast of São Lázaro · the Sunday before Palm Sunday (the pre-Easter period)

Sweetness

Richness

Difficulty

The cavacório is a concave sweet shaped rather like a cup or a shell, a close cousin of the Trás-os-Montes cavaca. Beneath a smooth, brilliantly white fondant shell lies a dry, airy interior, fissured as though ribbed — the hard casing cracks at the first touch and dissolves to sweet powder in the mouth.

It is a festive confection, sold above all beside the chapel of São Lázaro in the Bairro dos Ferreiros of Vila Real during the days of the Lázaros festival. They are piled in dozens on the stalls, white and gleaming, offered to the saint and eagerly sought by pilgrims.

It is almost always served with a glass of Port wine. The traditional gesture is to prick the fondant lightly with a fork and let the wine seep into the hollow — the practice known as enxaropar (steeping) — moistening a sweet that is, by nature, dry.

Ingredients

Egg whites
White sugar
Flour
Olive oil
Water
Sugar for the fondant glaze
Lemon juice

Taste & texture

Intensely sweet and emphatically dry: the fondant shell cracks and dissolves almost to powder, revealing a light, airy crumb. It is a sweet that begs for liquid, which is exactly why the wine that softens it suits it so well.

Variations

The cavacório is, in essence, a cavaca given a concave shape and a festive calling. Across the region you find flatter cavacas with a thicker shell, and the size and whiteness of the glaze shift from tray to tray, according to the hand that makes them.

Where to try it

Seek them out in Vila Real during the São Lázaro festivities, on the Sunday before Palm Sunday, at the stalls beside the chapel in the Bairro dos Ferreiros. Out of season, they turn up in the town's pastry shops and cafés, chiefly in the run-up to Easter.

Pairs well with

Port wine, ideally a sweet Port, or another fortified Douro wine — the classic, near-obligatory match of the festival.

History

There are no solid documentary records of the cavacório's origins; it took root in Vila Real's tradition by paths now lost. The sweet is inseparably linked to the cult of São Lázaro, venerated as protector against skin diseases — smallpox, blisters and the like — and credited with saving the Bairro dos Ferreiros from an epidemic. The chapel dedicated to him dates to 1520.

Two symbolic readings, both unconfirmed, associate the concave shape either with the suffering of Christ or with the hand of São Lázaro extended in charity. What is certain is that the cavacório, alongside the bexigas (blister-shaped sweets), has established itself as the sweet par excellence of the Lázaros festival, celebrated on the Sunday before Palm Sunday, with Mass, auctions and a solemn procession through the streets of the neighbourhood and across the iron bridge.

Sources: folclore.pt · otorgador.pt · viagens.sapo.pt · universidade.fm

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