Confectionery is another Portuguese top quality gastronomic sector. When we speak about confectionery we also have to speak about convent and regional confectionery, being this Portuguese producer sector an heir of this ancient knowledge. In the convent confectionery, whose secrets of preparation still remain since the time when nuns lived in the Convents, we have such a variety and flavors, which are unique in the world.
Therefore, the concept of ‘convent confectionery’ is intimately related with the use of sugar in the kitchens of monasteries from the end of XX century. It was mainly in the convents that the preparation of sweets reached its greatest name.

It was in the convent confectionery that companies, which currently produce in industrial quantities, got the knowledge and practice and that it is why many are the ones that today make cakes and sweets of finest quality and it is consumers’ acceptation that made them export what they best produce. Before using sugar in Portugal, sweets were prepared with honey. Until Middle Age, sugar had an exclusive use for medicine purposes. In 1456, the first sugar from Madeira is exported to England and after Brazil’s discovery and colonization the intensive culture of sugar begins.