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Conventual sweets (Portuguese: Doçaria Conventual) are a typical part of the Portuguese cuisine and a generic term to a variety of sweets in Portugal. As the name implies, conventual sweets were made by nuns who lived in the Portuguese convents and monasteries. Starting in the 15th century, these sweets have since integrated in the Portuguese cuisine and in former Portuguese colonies. Conventual sweets have sugar, egg yolks and almond as ingredients of choice.
Conventual sweets have always been present in the meals that were served in the convents, but only from the 15th century, with the dissemination and expansion of sugar, did they reach notoriety. Sugar cane production was tried in the Algarve, followed by Madeira in the 15th century. At the time Portugal was one of the largest egg producers in Europe and the excess amount of egg yolks was initially thrown away or given to animals as food. With the expansion of the Portuguese empire and the large-scale arrival of sugar from the Portuguese colonies, a new destination was given to the egg yolks. From the 16th century, the art of confectionery is cultivated, with great refinement, by almost all Monasteries and Convents in the country. From the middle of the 19th century, when the extinction of Religious Orders in Portugal was decreed, nuns and monks were faced with the need to raise money for their livelihood. The sale of Conventual sweets was one of the ways found to minimize their financial situation. These recipes were then passed from generation to generation and have since integrated in the Portuguese cuisine.[1][2][3][4]
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