A country's diet depends on natural resources, but also on interaction with other peoples and the technological level the population has attained.
In the case of Portugal four main factors have historically influenced dietary habits: the Roman occupation of the Peninsula, Arab contributions, the discoveries and modern improvement of transportation and food processing.
We know very little about the early inhabitants of the area that is now Portugal, but vestiges exist that show they were mainly food gatherers, not food producers.
The Iberians, Lusitanians among them, practised some rudimentary fishing and agriculture, grew wheat and barley, knew how to make wine and beer, but based a good part of their sustenance on game, shellfish, goat meat and honey. They also gathered nuts, which they roasted and made into bread.
The Roman invasions revolutionized living conditions. Roads were built, animals were used in daily work, agriculture was systematized and new products were introduced. All this naturally changed the dietary habits of the Peninsula.
The Arabs, settling mainly in what is now Southern Portugal, brought with them numerous botanical species from the East, as well as irrigation techniques which vastly contributed to a larger food production. Spanish and Portuguese discoveries also made new products available in the Peninsula, among them turkeys, potatoes, tomatoes, corn, cocoa, coffee, tea and a variety of spices and tropical fruits.
Actually, one of the main drives of Portuguese expansion overseas was the search for spices, much needed in Europe to preserve foodstuffs.
Modern means of transportation facilitated the adoption of foods from other areas. On the other hand, canning, freezing and other forms of food processing made certain foods much more accessible to the population at large.
Since the Portuguese are 96% Catholic and Christianity has not prohibited any foods in particular (except, in a very limited way, on special occasions) the Portuguese are truly omnivorous. Their diet depends naturally on the social, regional and economic factors that shape traditional dishes.
Some of the staples of truly Portuguese cuisine are based on inexpensive, less prized victuals. It is easily understood, for example, that a peasant would sell the best meat of the pig he slaughtered for the table of the rich, reserving for himself the least desirable parts such as feet, ears, snouts or liver. In late years, however, there has been a notable upgrading of dishes formerly associated with disadvantaged classes.
Let us now examine some of the most popular items of traditional Portuguese fare and search for historical correlations to their use.
Bread is undoubtedly the basic foodstuff consumed by the Portuguese, the only one eaten daily. Bread acquired an almost mythical value, as it equals sustenance and the source of life. Ganhar o pão means to make a living.
Also, according to the dogma of transubstantiation, bread symbolizes the body of Christ. No wonder, then, that in many families a piece of bread is kissed when it falls on the ground.
Bread may be made of corn or rye in rural areas of Northern Portugal. Cornbread is also eaten in the Azores, but it shows a finer texture than the Northern broa.
Millet was grown in Portugal during the Middle Ages. Corn, however, was only introduced, possibly through Spain, after the discovery of America. Traditionally, in Continental Portugal, it is only consumed after it has been milled.
In any case, most bread in Portugal is made of wheat. Apparently, Egyptians were the first (possibly by accident) to discover a method of leavening bread. Wheat was introduced by the Romans in the Peninsula, as its Portuguese or Spanish name, trigo, from the Latin triticu indicates, and soon wheat bread was widely accepted.
Together with meat, it constituted the basic nourishment for the upper classes during the Middle Ages. A slab of meat would be served on top of a round flat loaf. Leftover bread, soaked with meat juice, was given to the servants and the dogs.
Meat and bread are thus in the origin of the Holy Ghost celebrations, which apparently began in Portugal in the thirteenth century. Since it was the staple food of the time, it must have been what Queen Elizabeth (Rainha Santa Isabel) served to the beggars, afterwards crowned as emperors, as a sign of humility on the part of royalty. Bread and meat are still the main components of the sopas do Espírito Santo.
The Azorean massa sovada (or Portuguese sweet bread as it is known in Hawaii, where it was taken by Azorean immigrants in the nineteenth century) is another treat associated with the Holy Ghost festival, as are brindeiras.
The origin of the term massa sovada is rather obscure. Some claim that sovada refers to the kneading process applied to the dough, while others believe the word should be cevada or enriched.
Bread is also the main ingredient of açorda, a Southern dish of Arabic origin. In its primitive form it consisted only of stale bread boiled with olive oil and garlic, a common food of peasants in Alentejo. Nowadays ritzy typical restaurants serve açorda de bacalhau or açorda de mariscos, cod or shellfish being added to the basic bread mush.
Bread and cakes are associated with some Catholic holidays, and even lead to the early January tradition of young men going from house to house singing and asking for pão por Deus. The ring shaped bolo-rei is eaten for Christmas, but mainly on Dia de Reis, January 6.An interesting tradition is associated with this cake. A dry fava bean is added to the dough and whoever finds it is supposed to buy the next cake.
For Easter we have the folar. Together with the egg-shaped sugar coated almonds also eaten for this festivity, the boiled eggs in it symbolize resurrection.
Broas, a traditional Christmas fare, are made with flour and honey, as were Medieval pastries. Dar as broas also became synonymous with giving somebody money as a Christmas gift. Rabanadas or French toast, although not a specifically Portuguese delicacy, are also eaten at Christmas.
One of the best known soups in Portuguese cuisine is caldo verde, which has originated in the province of Minho. It is made with finely shredded collard greens, pureed potatoes, olive oil and a few slices of chouriço or pork sausage. In some variants it also takes presunto, hard ham, and it should be eaten together with broa or corn bread.
This is a truly peasant soup, as its ingredients may all easily come from the small farms that are characteristic of the area. It is somewhat related to the Azorean cabbage soup or caldo de couves. Incidentally, another typical Azorean soup is the sopa de funcho, or fennel soup.
Canja is a chicken broth with rice and gizzards. In old times it would also include the underdeveloped eggs often found inside the chicken killed for the occasion. Since its name is of Asian origin, either Concani or Malay, it is to be presumed that the recipe was brought to Portugal by sixteenth century navigators.
Chicken soup, like in other areas, was considered a good cure for the flu or other ailments. "Cautela e caldos de galinha nunca fizeram mal a ninguém", which translates as caution and chicken soup never brought harm to anybody, is a popular saying reflecting this practice.
Considering traffic in an opposite direction, bean soup was brought to Hawaii by Portuguese immigrants and is now a regular item on the menus of many restaurants.
Sopa de pedra or rock soup is typical of the Almeirim area, on the left bank of the Tagus river. It contains vegetables, meat, sausage and practically anything else the cook will fancy. And a rock in the middle of each dish.
The recipe -- or at least its basic concept -- alludes to a folk tale common to Portugal and other European countries. In it, a mendicant friar knocks at a door in some village he goes through and asks for water to make soup with a rock he brings out. Of course the person he asks finds it strange and inquires if the soup just takes water and a rock. "Well, a little olive oil helps". "Olive oil and water only?", the other wonders. "Well, we might add a couple of cabbage leaves if you could spare them". This goes on and on, and potatoes, carrots, meat, sausage, salt pork, etc. are thrown into the pot. Then the friar ends up with an extremely rich soup. When he finishes, he washes the rock and says he is saving it for his next meal.
Before rapid means of transportation were developed, fresh seafood consumption depended mainly on local availability. Some of the species that abound in Portuguese waters are sardines, carapau (also known as chicharro in the Azores), peixe-espada or ribbon fish, tamboril or monkfish, squid and octopus.
Sardines roasted on an open grill and served with boiled potatoes and roasted bell peppers used to be found only in poor neighborhoods. Nowadays cooking a sardinhada in a backyard is considered rather elegant by the bourgeoisie, although probably not applauded by neighbors, due to the acrid smell. Small sardines seem to be tastier, thus the proverb "A mulher e a sardinha querem-se da pequenina", which roughly means that small sardines and petite women are more desirable.
They are reputed to be fatter by mid summer: "Pelo São João a sardinha pinga no pão". In other words, around June 24, St. John's day, their fat drips on the bread. Of course eating sardines and a piece of bread, preferably broa, with one's fingers is the way to do it. The last Prime Minister before the 1974 revolution, Marcelo Caetano, became popular among fishermen because one day, during a political tour, he sat down among them and did just that.
A few decades ago in Lisbon, varinas, the women from Ovar, near Aveiro, would trot up and down the steep streets of the city crying "Ó viva da Costa!" What they were selling on the baskets they balanced on their heads were fresh sardines (so fresh that they were "alive") brought in by the half moon shaped boats from Costa da Caparica.
Fried or grilled ribbon fish, cut in diagonal steaks, and served with boiled potatoes or lettuce, is a favorite dish in Portugal. Together with grilled sardines, it was a common Sunday fare for nineteenth century Lisbonites who liked to picnic at the hortas or vegetable gardens around Lisbon.
Monkfish with rice, arroz de tamboril, is also quite popular. Rocaz or rock cod is especially prized in the Azores.
In Madeira black ribbon fish is a local delicacy. It is said that nobody has ever seen one of these fishes still alive. Since they are brought in from the depth of the ocean they die before they reach the surface.
Fish stews are familiar to Southern European cuisines, be they called bouillabaisse, scioppino, zarzuela de pescado, etc.
The Portuguese version is the caldeirada, which seems to have been created by the fragateiros or River Tagus bargemen. The fragatas were the graceful red sail barges that used to move all sorts of goods around the Lisbon harbor and upriver. The caldeirada was then made with whatever fish the crew could catch, plus the potatoes, onions, tomatoes and bell peppers they would obtain from the peasants in Ribatejo. The dish was then cooked aboard, on a bed of bread slices.
Nowadays caldeirada is at its best in the riverside restaurants of Ginjal, across the Tagus from Lisbon. It is said that true caldeirada should contain 24 different kinds of seafood, but the practically of this recipe is obviously rather disputable.
In Southern Portugal, namely in the Algarve, a province bordered by water in three of its four sides, fishing is a main activity.
It was there that a special utensil was developed to prepare seafood, the cataplana, a flying saucer shaped casserole that may be clamped down for steam cooking. It is mainly used for a typical clam dish, amêijoas na cataplana, which also takes crushed pork sausage, chopped hard ham, tomatoes, onions and spices.
The need to bring fish to remote areas led to several forms of processing. A special case is bacalhau, or cod. One of the most popular fishes in Portugal, it is, paradoxically, a native of foreign waters. Bacalhau, as all of us know, is always eaten in its salted, dried form.
As early as 1353 Portugal signed a treaty with England by which Portuguese ships would be allowed to fish for cod in English waters. Later, the Portuguese and the French were the first Europeans to bring in cod from Newfoundland, a Terra dos Bacalhaus, as it was known in Portugal at the time.
From the early sixteenth century to the mid twentieth century ships sailed to the Newfoundland banks from numerous Portuguese ports to catch the prized bacalhau. Individual fishermen would leave the mother ship in small dories and fish with hook and line. Sometimes the fog was so dense that the only way to return to the ship was to sail towards the direction the sound of her siren would come from.
Cod was one of the staples in the long voyages to India. Incidentally, the lack of fresh vegetables and fruit on board, leading to an excessive consumption of dried foods caused scurvy, a disease that plagued sailors at the time and even deserved a dramatic mention in The Lusiads.
The Portuguese discovered that eating oranges and lemons prevented scurvy, but evidently the fruit would not last long aboard ship.
Cod later became an affordable item for the poor, who, for that reason, named it o fiel amigo, the faithful friend. It was viewed in such low esteem that an idiom referring to it was coined: "para quem é, bacalhau basta!", roughly translated as "he doesn't deserve anything better than cod."
It used to be widely consumed during Lent, at the end of which in many towns a festivity known as o enterro do bacalhau or the funeral of the cod was celebrated.
Nowadays the species is becoming extremely scarce in Canadian waters. Canada first barred foreign fishing boats from her territorial waters (the Portuguese had to buy it at St. John's harbor) and finally banned its fishing.
Cod may be cooked in a variety of ways. Many years ago a cook book titled Cem Maneiras de Cozinhar Bacalhau (One Hundred Ways to Cook Cod) was published and soon became a best seller. Since then another hundred recipes were probably created.
One of the classics is, however, bacalhau à Gomes de Sá. Gomes de Sá was the son of a rich nineteenth century merchant (apparently he dealt in cod) in Oporto. The family fortune dwindled and the son had to find a job as a manager or probably maître d' at the famous Restaurante Lisbonense in downtown Oporto. It was there that he created the now well known recipe.
Sardines used to be preserved in brine for sale in rural areas. Later sardine canneries developed all along the Portuguese coast. Ray fish is dried in the sun in Northern Portugal. Practically only canned tuna is available in Continental Portugal. Tuna used to be plentiful in the Algarve waters. It was trapped in fixed nets when it passed the Portuguese southern coast to spawn in the Mediterranean, and again when it returned to the Atlantic.
Portuguese writer Raul Brandão, in his book Os Pescadores has an almost epic description of the catch, as he tells how the tuna is hooked from the raised net into the boats, and how the fishermen would amuse themselves riding the larger fish around the net.
Fresh tuna, however, is eaten in Madeira, where bifes de atum are an important item in local cuisine. Canned sardines or tuna, served with boiled potatoes and eggs constitute a convenient meal when the housewife does not have time to prepare anything more elaborate.
Eating meat and poultry on a daily basis has been historically a privilege of the upper classes. We have already seen how meat was a staple at a nobleman's table during the Middle Ages. A Portuguese Renaissance chronicler, Garcia de Resende, describes how an entrée at a royal banquet was composed of a whole roasted ox garnished with a circle of chickens.
A common Portuguese dish, mainly eaten in Winter, is the cozido à portuguesa, which somewhat parallels the French pot au feu, the Spanish cocido, the New England boiled dinner or the Costa Rican casado.
Its composition depends on the cook's imagination and budget. A really lavish cozido may take beef, pork, pork sausage, blood sausage, salt pork, pig's feet, hard ham, potatoes, carrots, turnips, chickpeas, cabbage and rice.
This would be originally a favorite food of the affluent farmer, which later reached the tables of the urban bourgeoisie and typical restaurants.
Tripas à moda do Porto, tripe with white beans, is said to have originated in the fourteenth century, when the Castilians set siege to Lisbon and blockaded the Tagus entrance. Portuguese chronicler Fernão Lopes dramatically recounts how starvation spread all over the city. Food prices rose astronomically, and small boys would go to the former wheat market place in search of a few grains on the ground, which they would eagerly put in their mouths when found.
Old and sick people, as well as prostitutes, in short anybody who would not be able to aid in the city's defense, were sent out to the Castilian camp, only to be returned to Lisbon by the invaders. It was at this point that the citizens of Oporto decided to organize a supply fleet that managed to slip through the river blockade.
Apparently, since all available meat was sent to the capital, for a while Oporto residents were limited to tripe and other organs. Others claim that it was only in 1415 that Oporto deprived itself of meat to supply the expedition that conquered the city of Ceuta, in North Africa.
Whatever the case may be, since at least the seventeenth century to our days people from Oporto have been known as tripeiros or tripe eaters.
Many other meat dishes are included in Portuguese cuisine. Alcatra, beef marinated in red wine and garlic and then roasted, is a favorite of Terceirans. In continental Portugal alcatra, an Arabic word meaning piece or bit, refers only to a certain expensive meat cut. Carne de porco à alentejana, fried pork with clams, is a popular dish with a misleading name as it did originate in the Algarve, not in Alentejo. Alentejo is a vast, agricultural province, with only a sizable fishing port, Sines, and shellfish would not in the past reach the inland areas.
On the other hand, all points in Algarve are relatively close to the coast, and pigs used to be fed with fish. So clams were added to the fried pork to disguise the fishy taste of the meat. Nowadays, however, nobody would dare to call it carne de porco à algarvia.
The Portuguese steak, bife, is a thin slice of fried beef or pork served with fried potatoes and black olives. To add a few more calories to this dish an egg, sunny side up, may be placed on top of the meat, in which case the dish acquires a new name, bife com um ovo a cavalo, steak with an egg on horseback.
Iscas, fried liver, were a favorite request in old Lisbon taverns. Sometimes they were called iscas com elas, the elas referring to sautéed potatoes. Small beef or pork steaks in a roll (respectively pregos or bifanas) are popular snacks, often served at beer halls with a large mug of beer.
In modern days, however, when time and economy demand their toll, a prego or bifana, eaten at a snack bar counter, may constitute the lunch of a white collar worker. Espetada, a sort of shishkabob, is very popular in Madeira.
Alheiras, a yellowish sausage from Trás-os-Montes, served with fried potatoes and a fried egg, have an interesting story.
In the late fifteenth century King Manuel of Portugal ordered all resident Jews to convert to Christianity or leave the country. The King did not really want to expel the Jews, who constituted the economic and professional élite of the kingdom, but was forced to do so by outside pressures. So, when the deadline arrived, he announced that no ships were available for those who refused conversion -- the vast majority -- and had men, women and children dragged to churches for a forced mass baptism. Obviously, most Jews maintained their religion secretly, but tried to show an image of being good Christians. Since avoiding pork was a telltale practice in the eyes of the Inquisition, conversos devised a type of sausage that would give the appearance of being made with pork, but really only contained heavily spiced game and chicken. Nowadays, however, tradition has been broken, and pork has been added to the alheiras.
Jewish influence may have determined some other practices in food preparation and eating habits. Different kinds of unleavened bread and cakes, such as the arrufadas de Coimbra, are baked all over Continental Portugal and the Azores.
In the islands meat is often repeatedly rinsed in water to clean it of any trace of blood.
After chickens are killed, they may be hung up upside down, so the blood may be drained, however, paradoxically, it can be used later for cabidela. Blood spilled on the ground is sometimes covered with dirt, as the Leviticus directs Jews to do.
Scaleless seafood, such as morays, may be shunned in some areas. And, finally, a point is made of slaughtering animals with a very sharp knife, a practice also exacted by rabbinical law.
Poultry, easily raised around a peasant's home, was at first considered quality food. Turkeys were only eaten for Christmas or on special occasions such as wedding receptions or banquets.
Up to the nineteen thirties, around Christmas time, the saloios or farmers from the outskirts of Lisbon, would bring herds of turkeys to the city streets for sale. Before being killed, a stiff dose of brandy was forced down the birds'throats to make meat more tender, and, hopefully, to ensure a happy state of mind when the time would come for the use of a sharp knife.
Poor people ate chicken almost only when they were sick. Nowadays mass production in poultry farms makes these meats accessible to all classes. Thus bifes de peru, turkey steaks, became a recent addition to Portuguese tables.
Rice, potatoes and dry beans have been widely used in Portugal, probably due to the fact that they can be preserved for longer periods than fresh vegetables. Rice has its origins in Asia, where it grew wild. It was probably domesticated in Africa and brought into the Peninsula by the Arabs, as the origin of the name shows.
Rice is cooked in several ways and even used as a dessert, namely the extremely popular arroz doce or rice pudding.
Incidentally, a less well known cousin of arroz doce is aletria doce, prepared in the same way but with vermicelli. Aletria is also a word of Arabic origin.
Potatoes came from the Andes area, and were introduced in Europe by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century. Thought at first to be poisonous or cause leprosy, it was with great reluctance that Europeans took to them. Their popularity in the Old Continent was due mainly to the eighteenth century French botanist Parmentier, a very unlikely candidate indeed to its propagation, as he had been subjected to a constant potato diet while a prisoner in Germany during the Seven Year War.
To disseminate their use in France Parmentier had some planted in a royal plot and guarded by armed sentinels. As foreseen, the people soon suspected that they must be a valuable crop. The sentinels were instructed to look the other way when somebody tried to steal some potatoes to have them planted in their gardens. Later bags of seed potatoes were given out to farmers. This seems to account for the Madeiran term for potatoes, semelha, from the Spanish word for seed, semilla
. Potatoes, introduced from Spain, were grown in Continental Portugal since the seventeenth century, but only as animal feed. It was only towards the end of the following century that they began to be used for human consumption, but soon became a staple in rural areas and replaced chestnuts as the pièce de résistance of a peasant's meal.
On the other hand, they were grown as early as 1554 in the island of Terceira to feed slaves. According to the anonymous author who then described the product, they tasted almost like chestnuts.
Nowadays they are cooked in a variety of ways and eaten with most dishes. A national variant is batatas a murro, oven baked potatoes punched with a closed fist.
Beans, including chickpeas, peas and fava beans, are also an important part of a Portuguese diet. The feijoada à transmontana is made with white beans, as opposed to its Brazilian cousin, which uses black beans, and also takes different kinds of meat and sausage.
Fava beans are served in small dishes at Terceiran taverns bordering the streets where touradas à corda (something similar to the Spanish running of the bulls) take place. Since these beans are usually eaten without the benefit of a fork, they acquire the rather uncomplimentary name of favas com molho de unha (nail sauce favas). Fava rica, fava beans cooked with blood sausage, used to be sold on Lisbon streets by black slave women.
Tremoços or salted lupini beans are a popular appetizer at beer halls. The technique for eating them always baffles foreign visitors, who do not realize that you have first to bite off one end of the outer shell and then pop the bean into your mouth.
Honey was the only sweetening agent used during the Middle Ages. Later sugar, originally from India, and introduced in Europe through the Middle East and Venice, began to be used, even as a seasoning for meat. Due to its scarcity, it was sold at extremely high prices.
In the fifteenth century the Portuguese obtained sugar cane from Crete and tried their cultivation in the Atlantic islands. Due to adverse climatic conditions, the experiment failed in the Azores and Cape Verde. It did, however, attain considerable success in Madeira and São Tomé. (Let us remember that it was as a buyer for sugar that Columbus first made contact with Madeira and the Portuguese.)
The total production was however limited, and it was not until New Christians brought this crop into Brazil that sugar consumption boomed in Portugal, mainly accounting for the rise of a wealthy merchant class.
With the easy availability of sugar, new sweets began to appear all over the country, mainly developed and produced in convents. It is due to these circumstances that to this day many Portuguese pastries and sweets bear names with religious implications: papos de anjo, barrigas de freira, toucinho do céu, pastéis de Santa Clara, jesuítas, celestes and so forth.
Ironically enough, the sweets made by the nuns also contributed to the flourishing of poetry. The seventeenth and eighteenth century so-called outeiros were poetic competitions in the cloisters of convents. The best productions were rewarded with trays of sweets sent out by the nuns through their servants.
Regional pastries may also be conditioned by the local prevailing crop. Such is the case with the pastéis de laranja from Setúbal, the pastéis de feijão from Torres Vedras and the various almond based pastries from the Algarve. Queijadas de Sintra, made with cheese, eggs and sugar, date back at least to the fourteenth century. A document of the time stated that the annual rent paid to a certain landlord had to include a number of queijadas. Pastéis de nata, custard pies, are typical of Lisbon. The very best are called pastéis de Belém, made at that Lisbon neighborhood by a pastry bakery dating back to the mid eighteenth century.
Marmelada is an old and prized quince paste, already part of the rations received by crew members and passengers on the India route galleons. The Portuguese name was adopted by the English, although marmalade is made with sour oranges and not with marmelos or quince. The technique for making marmelada was also brought to Brazil, where a tropical fruit, guava, was used instead, thus giving place to a similar paste, goiabada.
A kind of fried doughnuts, filhós (and not filhoses as they are often called), known as malassadas in the island of São Miguel, is eaten mainly for Christmas. These, like other Portuguese products, travelled to Hawaii, where they kept their native name and are nowadays extremely popular.
An analysis of Portuguese eating habits reminds us of a well known historical fact, the transplanting of edible plants by the Portuguese from one continent to the other during the age of overseas expansion. Thus, just to give a few examples, bananas (then called figos da Índia or Indian figs) were brought from India to Africa and then to Brazil and Madeira, this island being for a long time the main source of the fruit sold in continental Portugal. (Remember the Portuguese expression "levar bananas para a Madeira", the equivalent of taking coals to Newcastle.) Rice, corn and beans, among other products, were brought to Brazil and the Portuguese colonies in Africa.
On a slightly different level, coffee, originally from the Arabian peninsula and disseminated in Portugal in the eighteenth century, became one of Brazil's main exports. Tea, brought from the Far East, was apparently made known to the English aristocracy by the Portuguese when Catherine of Braganza married Charles II. Madeira wine and port are now known all over the world.
Food is also part of Portuguese folklore in many ways. Some of them are the numerous taboos associated with eating. No one would even dare think of eating a swallow, as these birds are said to have protected the flight of the Holy Family from Egypt. Many people believe that having one's hair cut, shaving, clipping one's nails, taking a bath or making love after eating may lead to a fatal stroke. An Azorean proverb dictates that "depois de comer nem uma carta ler", that is to say even reading a letter while digestion is in progress is not advisable. Some believe that eating a citrus fruit and drinking milk within a short period may cause harm to the body. Even the simple act of eating an orange may be good or bad according the time of the day: "A laranja de manhã é de ouro, de tarde prata e à noite mata". In other words, an orange in the morning is as good as gold, in the afternoon it is as good as silver, but in the evening it will kill you.
It is often said albeit often half jokingly, that cheese makes one forgetful.
On the other hand, the virtues of some foods are stressed: "a cenoura faz os olhos bonitos". Of course, carrots may not give you pretty eyes, but they could improve your night vision, due to their vitamin A contents. In the Middle Ages there was the belief that eating buzzard meat would endow one with magical powers.
Thus food is not just what nourishes you. It is also an important component of a rich cultural tradition. Studying food may not be as enjoyable as eating it, but at