Cernelha de Montemor
Also known as: Cernelhas of Montemor-o-Novo
An Alentejo tart with a paper-thin shell and a sweet requeijão-and-egg filling.
- Origin
- Montemor-o-Novo · Alentejo
- Place
- Montemor-o-Novo
- Region
- The Alentejo
- Category
- Convent Sweets
- Season
- Year-round
- Evidence
- Well documented
Cernelha de Montemor is a small tart of about 35 grams, made with a very thin pastry case and a filling of requeijão, sugar, eggs and butter. Its top turns golden and lightly caramelised while the pale delicate wall holds a moist, tender centre.
The pastry uses flour, fat, egg and warm salted water. It is worked until elastic, rolled thin, cut into circles and fitted into small moulds before being filled.
- requeijão
- sugar
- eggs
- butter
- wheat flour
- fat
- salt
Creamy and milky, with eggy sweetness and a contrast between its toasted top and thin pastry.
Queijada de Montemor is the fresh sheep's-cheese variant; Cernelha uses requeijão.
At pastry shops and regional-food stores in and around Montemor-o-Novo.
Espresso, black tea or an Alentejo fortified wine.
According to the history collected by DGADR, its predecessor was a seasonal tart made with fresh sheep's cheese, chiefly available from January to July. About 35 years before that record, pastry cook Sampaio is said to have replaced the cheese with year-round requeijão. First called Repimpão, the sweet was renamed Cernelha at the suggestion of D. Isabel Branquinho. The bullfighting connection of the name is semantically plausible: documentation from Montemor's Bullfighting Interpretation Centre uses pega de cernelha for a grapple performed in that position, but it is not independent proof of the sweet's authorship.
Well documented
Identity supported by institutional, specialist or corroborating sources.
- tradicional.dgadr.gov.pt/pt/cat/doces-e-produtos-de-pastelaria/172-cernelha (opens in a new tab)
- tauromaquiapatrimonio.pt/w/images/2/21/Projecto_Centro_Interpretativo.pdf (opens in a new tab)
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