Doces Conventuais

Portuguese convent sweets are made from egg yolks, sugar and often almonds, and the reason is practical. Convents and monasteries used egg whites in quantity - for starching habits, and for clarifying wine, which was done with albumen - which left large numbers of yolks to be used up, and sugar was arriving cheaply from Madeira and Brazil. Nuns turned the two into an enormous family of sweets, sold to fund the houses, and when the religious orders were dissolved in 1834 the recipes went out into the towns with the women who knew them. The names are the other half: barriga de freira, nun's belly; papos de anjo, angel's double chins; toucinho do céu, bacon from heaven, which contains no bacon but originally used lard. Pastéis de nata come from the same tradition, made at the Jerónimos monastery before 1834. They are uniformly very sweet.

What to look for

• The egg yolk base - sweets built from the yolks left over by convent laundries and winemaking.
• The names - nun's belly, angel's double chin, bacon from heaven.
• The 1834 dissolution - recipes leaving the convents into the towns.
• The pastel de nata - the best-known survivor, from the Jerónimos monastery.

When to go

Year-round. Bought at any pastelaria. Regional versions differ - Aveiro, Sintra, Évora and the Alentejo towns all have their own.

Practical notes

Uniformly extremely sweet, and one or two is the sensible number. Everything contains eggs, most contain almonds, and many contain gluten. The names are often more interesting than the differences between them. Industrial versions in supermarkets are much inferior.

Nearby

Aveiro, Sintra, Évora and Tomar all have their own protected local versions.