Blancmange

Soft and milky, with a restrained, moderate sweetness far from the intense sugar of egg-yolk sweets. The texture is dense, creamy and faintly gelatinous, like a firm pudding; orange blossom lends a floral perfume, while the chicken contributes only body and a quiet background note, never a meaty taste.

Meatless versions exist, thickened only with rice flour or starch, alongside almond-milk variants closer to the medieval dish. The Portalegre version dropped the meat, while Coimbra kept the chicken, staying closer to the old recipe. In Coimbra it is linked to the "maminha de freira" tradition, in which the sweet is shaped into a rounded dome evoking a breast. In Brazil, "manjar branco" came to mean a coconut-milk pudding with prune sauce, entirely divorced from its chicken ancestry.

This is a rare sweet, hard to find in everyday pastry shops. Seek it in Coimbra, home of the conventual sweets that keep it alive: Pastelaria Briosa and Pastelaria Vénus are among the houses where it tends to appear, alongside traditional-pastry fairs. It is worth calling ahead, as many makers prepare it only to order or at certain times of year.

It calls for a sweet, perfumed wine such as Moscatel de Setúbal or a white Port, or simply a short espresso to cut its gentle sweetness.