Spanish & Portuguese desserts

Iberian dessert — Spanish and Portuguese — is dominated by two themes: the convent legacy and the egg yolk. Centuries of monastic baking left a vast inheritance of yolk-rich sweets — yemas, tocino de cielo, the Portuguese doces conventuais like pastéis de nata, ovos moles, fios de ovos — many of which originated in convents that used egg whites for wine clarification and were left with mountains of yolks to use up.

The other major strand is the deep tradition of fried doughs and syrup- finished sweets — torrija (the Spanish French toast of Holy Week), pestiños, churros, rosquillas, mantecados, polvorones, and the long-stewed arroz doce of Portugal. Quince paste (membrillo, marmelada), nougat (turrón, mantecadas), and toasted almond sweets round out the canon.

The two countries also exported their dessert grammar across the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking worlds — leche flan in the Philippines, dulce de leche across Latin America, brigadeiros in Brazil — all carry the marks of the Iberian sweet kitchen.