Portugal & Hawaii
Malassadas
(two s's) originated
on the island of São Miguel which was a Portuguese colony.
Apparently, Azorians on the other
eight islands called them filhós.
Beginning in 1878 and continuing on for a decade, Hawaii solicited
immigrant workers from Portugal. They brought the desire (and the
recipes) for malassadas with them.
Many
Portuguese families had their own recipes and malassadas were made
in their homes whenever they had the craving, but especially on Strove
Tuesday when the consumption of something truly indulgent is okay.
In 1952, Frank Leonard Rego founded Leonard's Bakery in Hawaii. It
was the first commercial offering of malassadas. No one knows when
malassadas began to be spelled with one "s" instead of two,
but the photo of the sign outside Leonard's Bakery at left offers
a hint.
Since
then, malassadas have become an Island standard. Many have strong opinions
about who offers the best ones. It's also big business. For example,
in 1996 at the annual two-day Punahou Carnival, an estimated 320,000
where sold requiring the efforts of 480
workers over the course of 10 shifts. On July 19, 2003, over 4,400
OSO-ONO malassadas were
sold by the Hukilau
at the 8-hour Sounds
of Hawaii event in the San Francisco Bay Area.
To
find out more about the history of the malasada and other fried dough
desserts, click here.
The
best malassadas are made with OSO-ONO
Fried Dessert Dough.
In
addition to malassadas, OSO-ONO Fried Dessert Dough is the basis for
the following ethnic fried desserts: andagi, baursaki, beignets, bunuelos,
filhos, fritoles, koeksisters, krapfen, langos, lokmas, loukoumades,
oliebollen, paczki, sopapillas, struffolis, sufganiyot, vetkoek, and
zeppoles. Click here
for details.
Email
us a comment about this page
On
2/22/04, we received the following comment from JAC in Middleton,
Idaho:
"I am of Azorean descendent - 2nd generation removed. As a child
growing up in a totally Portuguese family, February was traditionally
the month to make filhos. And since it was my birthday month, I just
naturally assumed there was a correlation ! Actually, the final preparations
for Lent had much more to do with it than me. I have since moved away
from my family. Married a non-Portuguese sweetheart and have two handsome
halfbreed boys. I try to instill as much of the Portuguese traditions
as possible into their lives. Soooo, today we made filhos. I called
my mother yesterday for her recipe (old methodology) and then surfed
the net for research sake (data, data, data). The results were terrific.
Ok, ok so where do you guys come into the picture? In my research
I stumbled onto your website which gave us the history of fried dough
and the historical contribution of the Azoreans to this sweet treat.
Thanks for your research and pulling it all together - I for one am
grateful you crawled into Alice's rabbit hole.
