[Sca-cooks] Re: The Food of Portugal & Egg & Sugar Sweets

[Liz Courts]

There are several in the book, including Toucinho do Ceu ("bacon from 
heaven", an egg-and-almond sweet), Sopa Dourada ("Soup of Gold", kind of 
like a bread pudding), Pao-de-Lo (a sponge cake), Bolo Podre ("Putrid 
cake" - podre can also mean depraved or corrupt - referring to the 
intense sweetness of this particular dish), Ovos moles (sweet soft eggs, 
used as a filling, icing, and other things).

As far as how old the dishes are, I'm not certain. I know that the 
toucinho do ceu (along with several other egg yolk-sugar confections) 
was made by convent nuns, who apparently were making it or got the idea 
for it from the Moors - there's a brief discussion of it in the glossary 
section of the book.

Apparently the Portuguese have an insane sweet tooth - reading some of 
these recipes make my teeth hurt!

Another good Portuguese recipe is Caldo Verde ("green soup") that's made 
with kale (leading to the very green...VERY green color of the dish), 
onions, and chorizo (chourico, I think, is the Portuguese spelling for 
this spicy sausage).

All the Portuguese cookbooks I've ran across (and I haven't run across 
many) don't give dates or anything (and the local library is noticeably 
deficient in the Historical Foods/Food History category). Does anyone 
else have any resources or books on that particular region that's 
in-period? (Although it is conceivable that the Portuguese, depending on 
what century you were looking at, would have access to more New World 
type stuff, due to that country's expansionist policies during later 
Period.)

Ignia il Nomade

>Selene Colfox mentioned:
>  
>
>>> I have that book (The Food of Portugal).  Jean Anderson was a good friend of my late aunt,
>>> Evelyn Heyward, who appears in the acknowlegements.  One has to wonder
>>> how far back some of those recipes go?  Lots of them have a good
>>> historical "feel" to them but of course there's no dates mentioned.
>>>   <sigh>  Those eggy sugary sweets must be very old.
>>    
>>
>Okay, *which* eggy sugary sweets? I don't have the book. meringues? 
>puddings? or an egg drink of some kind? These sound like they might be 
>interesting.
>