A sweet recipe supposedly produced in a women’s convent in the 18th century and which is kept at the National Library may, after all, be a forgery that gave historical support to the idea of conventual sweets, a scientific investigation concluded.
The “Book of recipes for sweets and various dishes from this convent of Santa Clara d’Évora”, dated 1729, is a small manuscript with just ten recipes that has been in the collection of the National Library since 1959, which purchased it at auction, and which was used several times to give historical support to the idea and concept of conventual sweets and the myths associated with it.
The manuscript was one of the few recipes known from the 18th century, this one with the particularity of having a sentence that pointed to a certain secrecy of conventual recipes: “This book will not be given to anyone other than a member of this house, not even on loan, for affecting the profits from making sweets that are made in this house”.
Its authenticity is now called into question by an investigation, the preliminary results of which were presented on Tuesday, at a conference at the National Library, by the professor at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Lisbon Isabel Drumond Braga and the professor at the Escola Superior de Educação de Coimbra João Pedro Gomes, both with academic work on the history of food and, in particular, Portuguese sweets.
Isabel Drumond Braga had used that manuscript in the past for a book on conventual recipes and, in 2015, she thought, “but didn’t say”, that there would be “some things” in that small recipe book that seemed strange to her, but which, at the time, , understood “as pioneers and not as fraud”.
More recently, João Pedro Gomes, when working on his doctorate dedicated to the history of Portuguese sweets, in which Isabel Drumond Braga was one of the co-supervisors, dared to question the authenticity of the document.
“He managed to be more radical than me and at a good time he did so”, the historian told the Lusa agency.
After defending the thesis by João Pedro Gomes, in 2023, which, among other issues, argued that the idea of conventual sweets is a “constructed myth”, the two researchers set out this year for more detailed and well-founded work to question the veracity of that manuscript.
João Pedro Gomes, who had managed to relate that document to other manuscripts existing between the 16th and 18th centuries, understood that the prescription was “completely dissonant”, with elements that seemed out of time and others that made it, at the very least, peculiar. .
The manuscript had only ten recipes and all of them were sweets (the known conventual manuscripts are larger and more diverse in their recipes, also containing references to domestic utensils).
Expressions used in recipes raise suspicion
However, what revealed the anachronism and deepened researchers’ doubts about its authenticity were the expressions used in the recipes.
In the recipe, there are references to “cocoa powder”, when cocoa was only used in bars and only for drinks, “potato grater” or “rolling pin”, also words out of their time (rolling pin was called straw).
There are also other anachronistic expressions, such as “pilé sugar” or “cup”, a word that already existed, but was not used at the time as a unit of measurement, the same thing happening with “soup spoon”.
The researchers sought several ways to ascertain the authenticity of the manuscript, such as, for example, seeing if the ink could increase doubts, but this hypothesis was discarded (the ink was ferrogallic, used for centuries).
With this loose end, the two researchers used the work of a specialist in paleography (study of ancient manuscripts), Susana Tavares Pedro, who concluded that the recipe book would have been produced in the second half of the 19th century, when the manuscript was dated 1729.
“It is an extremely striking discrepancy”, highlighted the historian.
When analyzing the revenues, other questions arose.
There are three that are considered specialties from other convents, “which is strange in itself”, and several appear later, in books printed in 1780 and 1788, when the process was the opposite, noted João Pedro Gomes.
Among these recipes, there is one that draws attention – that of egg bundles (which appears in the book “Modern Cook”, by Queen Maria I’s cook, Lucas Rigaud, in 1780).
“Lucas Rigaud’s Egg Bunches are written in Lucas Rigaud’s style. How does someone write exactly like Lucas Rigaud and Lucas Rigaud only appears 60 years later?” asked the professor.
However, there is one fact that further highlights doubts about the authenticity of the manuscript.
Isabel Drumond Braga consulted the registration records of the nuns at the Convent of Santa Clara de Évora and came across two important pieces of information found in the manuscript: the recipes would have been compiled by order of the abbess Maria Leocádia do Monte do Carmo and the record was carried out by the clerk Inês Maria do Rosário.
The problem is that, based on the convent’s documentation, there is no abbess with that name in 1729 and no clerk named Inês Maria do Rosário during the entire 18th century.
“There is a Maria Leocádia do Monte do Carmo, yes, but she professed on January 23, 1783, was a clerk between 1799 and 1807 and abbess between 1808 and 1811”, said the historian.
The document, before becoming part of the collection of the National Library, was in the possession of Francisco Lage, who belonged to the Secretariat of National Propaganda of the Estado Novo.
Investigators do not believe that Francisco Lage was the author of the forgery, but that he acquired the book thinking it would be authentic.
“It seems to us that he was deceived and that the National Library, when it acquired him, was gullible, just as I was and so many others were for a long time”, said Isabel Drumond Braga.
