Sericaia

Deep cracks run across a brown surface covered in cinnamon, and pale yellow batter shows through beneath. Sericaia is a baked sweet of eggs and milk handed down in Portugal’s Alentejo region. It is also known for being served as a soft slice, puffed up in a shallow earthenware dish, accompanied by Elvas plums in syrup. The texture of the batter, a custard cooked with egg yolks into which beaten egg whites are folded, is different from both pudding and sponge cake.

Folding egg-white foam into a yolk batter and baking in earthenware

In the Alentejo method, the milk is first infused with the aroma of lemon peel. Sugar, flour and egg yolks are mixed separately, the hot milk is added little by little to even out the temperature, and the mixture is returned to the pan to thicken. The egg yolks give the batter richness and a yellow color. Once this flour-based batter is ready, the egg whites are whipped.

Stiffly beaten egg whites are folded into the slightly cooled batter. After air has been worked into the thick custard, it is transferred to an earthenware dish, covered completely with cinnamon and baked at a high temperature. As the inside rises, the top surface, which has dried first, splits open. In the recipe (proportions of ingredients and method of preparation) handed down at the Lisbon school of tourism and hospitality, small slits are made in the surface partway through baking before the dish goes back into the oven. The deep cracks are not a sign of failure but part of the finish that gives this sweet its appearance.

In Elvas, there is also a handed-down technique of placing spoonfuls of batter in a shallow dish while alternating the direction of the spoon between vertical and horizontal. The batter placed in the dish keeps its undulations and rises unevenly in the heat of the oven. It is said that tin plates from manor houses were used in the past and later replaced by earthenware, and that bakers’ wood-fired ovens were also used to obtain a sufficiently high heat. The dish serves both as the baking vessel and as the plate carried to the table, which has also led to the custom of selling the sweet dish and all.

Freshly baked sericaia. The brown surface has split, revealing the pale interior. Photo: Chedlund808, November 2, 2023, location unknown. Original image / CC BY-SA 4.0. Unprocessed.

Served with Elvas plums in syrup

Sericaia, handed down as one of the convent sweets, is known through recipes that serve it cooled. When the dry cinnamon surface is broken with a spoon, soft, airy batter remains inside. Served with Elvas plums in syrup, the gentle flavor of milk and egg is joined by the deep sweetness of the fruit and its syrup.

The fruit is not baked into the batter but is paired with it at the time of eating.

A 2013 record of the food culture of Elvas preserves the account of Luís Silveirinha of a workshop that makes plum sweets. It is the testimony of a single shop, stating that his father and the manager of a lodging combined sericaia and plums in the 1970s. It is not a record that establishes when the pairing began to be eaten across the whole region, but it conveys how the two sweets came together on one plate. Besides the visual contrast between the bright yellow slice and the dark, round plums, the difference between the light texture of the batter and the firm texture of the fruit also shapes this local pairing.

The legend of transmission from Malacca to Portugal

The Portuguese dictionary Priberam links the origin of the name to the Malay serikaya. Malay srikaya and Portuguese sericaia have in common that they are sweets made with eggs and sugar, but they differ in whether coconut milk is used and in how they are made. Different milk-and-egg sweets developed under the same name.

At the center of the transmission legend is Constantino de Bragança, who governed Portuguese India in the 16th century. The story that he brought the recipe back from the East was also included in a 2001 collection of traditional products. A note accompanying the recipe handed down at the Convent of Santa Clara in Elvas describes an even longer route. According to it, the sweet traveled from Malacca to Goa, passed from the Jesuits to nuns and then to Constantino’s table, and reached Vila Viçosa in 1562 and Elvas in 1584. It was a story linking ports, convents and aristocratic tables.

However, parts of this route do not fit the chronology. The Convent of Santa Monica in Goa, named as one of the intermediaries, was not founded until 1606 or later. It therefore could not have been a stop on the route in 1562. This contradiction has also been pointed out in historical research at the University of Malaya.

On the other hand, a travel and hagiographical work by João dos Santos published in 1609 preserves a miracle story about an attempt in Malacca in the 1560s to poison a bishop using this sweet. This miracle story preserves an old name for a sweet used in Southeast Asia. A late-17th-century Portuguese cookbook also contains two names that suggest one version made with milk and another made with pastry dough, indicating that methods had diverged even after the sweet’s migration.

In 19th-century Brazil, there were also layers of bread

The 1895 edition of the Brazilian book Doceiro Nacional contains two different methods. “Siracaia” uses fresh Minas cheese and thin bread soaked in milk. Sugar and cinnamon are sprinkled over the bottom of a buttered dish, then cheese, sugar and bread are layered with cheese on top, and the dish is baked until browned. It is finished with a sprinkling of cinnamon and brought to the table warm. It differs from Alentejo sericaia, which contains egg-white foam, both in what makes it rise and in its layered structure.

The next item is “Another siricaia.” The whites of 3 eggs and the yolks of 6 eggs are whipped and combined with milk, 3 spoonfuls of flour, ground cinnamon and the juice of 1 lemon, then poured into a buttered deep dish and baked in a moderate oven. Whereas the first recipe consists of layers of milk-soaked bread and cheese, here a batter of eggs and flour sets into a single mass. As early as the 19th century, layers of bread and cheese were also being baked under this name.

Whipped egg whites in southern Brazil and abundant egg yolks in Bahia

The regional recipes collected by the folklorist Luís da Câmara Cascudo also differ. The formula recorded in Arminda Mendonça Detroyat’s Doces de Pelotas, published in 1959, calls for 5 egg yolks, 1 cup of milk, the whites of 2 eggs, sugar to taste and 1 spoonful of butter. The egg whites are whipped and combined with the other ingredients, and the mixture is baked in a greased mold and served either warm or cold.

Hildegardes Vianna’s 1955 Bahian method uses 12 egg yolks. For sweetening, either rapadura, a non-centrifugal sugar, or coarse sugar is used, and butter, milk or coconut milk, and vanilla are added before the batter is baked in small molds in a water bath. Unlike in the south, the egg whites are not whipped; instead, a batter made with plenty of yolks is set by the gentle heat of the water.

Cascudo’s records also include regional names: doce de velhas in the south and doce ligeiro in Rio Grande do Norte. Not only the methods but also the names of the sweet vary from place to place.

Modern water-bath baking with sweetened condensed milk

The method published in 2021 by Marialva, a restaurant in São Paulo, combines egg yolks with sweetened condensed milk, milk, melted butter and other ingredients and sets the mixture in a water bath in the oven. The egg whites are not whipped, and no flour is used. Compared with Alentejo sericaia, the difference lies not only in the dairy products used but also in whether the batter is baked with air worked into it or a yolk batter is set gently in a water bath.

Modern Minas-style sericaia with bread and cheese

There are also examples that use bread or cheese. The version Izabel Alvares called “Minas-style” on a 2015 cooking show used bread, contained no cinnamon, and was baked in small soufflé molds and served with bacon caramel. The judges also commented on the saltiness of the cheese. Whereas the bread-and-cheese method was recorded in the 19th century, this modern example pairs a small baked sweet with a savory accompaniment.

A batter lightened with egg whites, a yolk batter set in a water bath, layers of milk-soaked bread and cheese: the methods vary widely. The name sericaia has been passed on from a single earthenware dish in Portugal to sweets in various parts of Brazil that differ in ingredients and methods.

Glossary