Aletria

The story

Aletria, a sweet dessert of thin angel hair noodles cooked in milk with eggs, shares with arroz doce the same tradition of cinnamon patterns across the top, and its name comes from the Arabic word for noodles—a trace of the centuries of Moorish rule and influence on the Iberian Peninsula that brought pasta into Portuguese cooking before it came to be known as “Italian” food. The noodles are cooked briefly in sweetened milk with lemon peel, and the mixture is then thickened by adding beaten egg yolks, a technique similar to the one used in Greek avgolemono, only in a sweet variation instead of a savory one. Aletria is served chilled, on shallow platters, with the same decorative lines of cinnamon as arroz doce. For Portuguese families in the diaspora, aletria is often less well known outside the community than arroz doce, which makes it an especially prized “insider” dessert, one that guests from outside Portuguese culture have rarely tried before.