Nun's Throats
Also known as: Nun's Throats · Nun's Throat
Egg threads rolled in a wafer and glazed in syrup, in the lee of the Serra da Estrela.
- Origin
- Early 20th century · Covilhã, from a recipe of convent origin
- Region
- Covilhã
- Season
- Year-round
Gargantas-de-freira are among the most delicate convent refinements of Covilhã: small cigars of golden, gleaming egg threads, enclosed in a fine sheet of wafer (the obreia) and glazed in a pearl-point sugar syrup. Each piece is barely a finger's length, the wafer yielding at the slightest touch to the soft skein of egg thread it conceals within.
To the eye they resemble cigarettes of pale paper, their ends hinting at the lustrous threads inside; to the palate they are pure sugar and yolk, with the barely perceptible crackle of the wafer contrasting with the moisture of the syrup. They are served at room temperature, in small numbers, as the close of a meal or to accompany coffee — a sweet of small measure and great richness, made to be savoured slowly.
- Egg yolks
- Sugar
- Water
- Wafer sheet (host/obreia)
Very sweet and pronouncedly eggy, with the silky, fibrous texture of the egg threads wrapped in a glossy syrup; the wafer adds an almost paper-light crispness that melts away on the tongue.
It is a simple, fairly fixed recipe, so variations are mostly of shape and size — longer or shorter cigars, depending on how the wafer is cut — and of the syrup's set, more or less glazed.
Look for them in the traditional pastry shops and confectioners of Covilhã, where they appear as a regional speciality; their delicate, handmade nature makes them hard to find beyond the town and its mountain surroundings.
They call for a short, strong coffee, or a glass of fortified wine — a Moscatel or a Port — to balance their intense sweetness.
The recipe for gargantas-de-freira is, as the name suggests, of convent origin, heir to the long tradition of egg-based confectionery that flourished in Portuguese convents, where yolks were used to make use of the whites consumed in starching and clarifying. Its establishment in Covilhã, however, owes itself to a more recent episode.
The story goes that the sweet was introduced to the town by a Spaniard, Francisco Muñoz Gomes, who opened a pastry shop there in the early twentieth century and made the recipe known, having brought it from a convent. From that starting point, gargantas-de-freira became a regional speciality of Covilhã, a mountain town of the Beira Interior beside the Serra da Estrela, and they appear today as part of the local confectionery heritage.
Sources: visitcovilha.com · cozinhatradicional.com · sobremesasdeportugal.pt · lifecooler.com
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