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Best Papo-de-anjo in San Francisco
“Whipped egg yolks that swell to double their volume, baked tender, then boiled in sugar syrup. A 500-year-old recipe born from doing laundry.”
What the real thing tastes like
Papo de anjo or papo-de-anjo, roughly translated as "angel's double chin", is a traditional Portuguese dessert made chiefly from whipped egg yolks, baked and then boiled in sugar syrup. Like fios de ovos and several other classical Portuguese sweets based on egg yolks, papo de anjo is believed to have been created by Portuguese nuns around the 14th or 15th centuries. Laundry was a common service performed by convents and monasteries, and their use of egg whites for "starching" clothes created a large surplus of yolks. According to most recipes, the yolks must be whipped until they swell to double their original volume. Some recipes also call for egg whites (1--2 whites for each 10 yolks), beaten separately to stiff peaks consistency and gently mixed into the yolks. The mixture is then poured into greased muffin forms (about 1/2 tablespoon each) and baked until they are firm but still without crust. The pieces are then boiled lightly in the syrup, which may be flavored with rum, vanil
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Papo de anjo—literally "angel's double chin"—is a Portuguese dessert born from convent resourcefulness in the 14th or 15th centuries. Nuns whipped surplus egg yolks into clouds, baked them gently into tender puffs, then bathed them in fragrant sugar syrup touched with rum, vanilla, or orange. The result is delicate, custardy, and soaked through with sweetness—a small cake that feels almost impossibly light on the spoon.
Order it here when it has
- delicate texture from careful whipping
- centuries-old tradition
- aromatic syrup options
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