Restaurants, bars and museums in Lisbon · Page 28

Casa dos Ovos Moles em Lisboa

Chiado · Bakeries & Pastry Shops

Casa dos Ovos Moles em Lisboa is a small café and pastry shop in the Chiado neighbourhood of Lisbon, at Calçada do Sacramento 25, 1200-393 Lisboa. It opens Monday to Saturday from 12:00 to 19:00. The shop is devoted to conventual pastry, called doçaria conventual, a tradition that began around 500 years ago in Portuguese convents. The shop describes itself as a patroness of this heritage, which spans five centuries. Wherever a convent stood, from north to south, a recipe survives to be tasted. The recipes reach the shop daily from the places and people who inherited them, together with their techniques and cooking secrets. The venue says it wants to bring this heritage to everyone's taste. Dozens of centuries-old recipes are still made every day with the accuracy of the Franciscan and Carmelite nuns who prepared them until the 19th century. Sweets named by the venue include Ovos Moles de Aveiro, Celeste, Encharcada, Pão de Ló, Pastel de Santa Clara, Pudim Abade de Priscos, Sericaia and Trouxa de Ovos. Another source adds Fidalgo and Toucinho do Céu, served with a Ginjinha, a Port Wine or a Moscatel. The recipes come from Amarante, Alcobaça, Aveiro, Braga, Caldas da Rainha, Coimbra, Évora, Guimarães, Lagos, Ovar, Portalegre, Santarém, Tentúgal and Vila Real. The ovos moles, or soft eggs, consist of sweet egg yolk enclosed in a wafer shell. They have a conventual origin in the 16th century, at the Convent of Jesus in Aveiro. In the convents, egg whites served for chores such as ironing clothes, while yolks had no known use until sugar was added, after which the nuns devised an egg dessert that led to the Aveiro ovos moles. The wafers take shapes that recall Aveiro's fishing tradition and nearby sea, such as fish and shells. The sweet is also presented in small hand-painted barrels, and traditionally sold in wooden barrels painted outside with moliceiro boats and other motifs of the Ria de Aveiro. Since the Porto-Lisbon railway line was built, soft eggs have traditionally been sold at the Aveiro station stop by women in regional costumes. According to the venue, chicken eggs were brought to the convents as payment for land grants. Mixing sugar with the yolks preserves them, and the nuns added local ingredients such as figs, almonds, sweet potatoes, nuts, oranges and pumpkins. Their creations, the venue says, enchanted Kings, inspired poets and earned a place in Portuguese history. Eça de Queiroz referred to the ovos moles of Aveiro in Os Maias.

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