The Portuguese Canon
Fifty-three entries
Bacalhau
Five entries
Salt cod arrives at the table in many forms: fried into small oval cakes, shredded and bound with egg and potato, baked under cream, roasted under cornbread, or dressed with olive oil from the press. Each preparation begins with the same act — the long desalting of dried salt cod — and branches from that foundation into distinct and canonical results.
Bread soups and boiled dinners form the structural base of this chapter, preparations built on poverty-larder logic that became national emblems. Salt cod, pork, and the rice dishes that carry both appear next, followed by the sandwiches and street foods that codified themselves into the canonical record. The chapter closes with pastry, the egg-custard tradition, and the regional sweets whose techniques are as fixed as any savoury doctrine.