An inside look at the francesinha, Porto's iconic sandwich.
It’s impossible to describe the francesinha without offending someone. A quintessentially northern Portuguese dish from Porto, “francesinha” loosely translates into “the little French girl” and consists of an abundance of what Anthony Bourdain called “the immortal combination.” That is, meat, cheese, fat and bread. Specifically: bread, cheese, ham, sausage, steak, mortadella, bread, egg and cheese, drowned in spiced tomato and beer sauce.
Layered and assembled like an elaborate sandwich, the francesinha has been called many things by foreign food and travel writers over the years, from “gut bomb” , it’s a dish that has invited controversy since its inception.
What’s perhaps more interesting about the dish is that it was subject to a gender divide when it was invented. In his 2020 paper, “The Slow Cultural Cooking of the ‘Francesinha,’”notes that when the dish first came on the scene, it was considered a snack. Throughout the ‘50s and ‘60s, it remained a dish to be enjoyed by young men; it was to be “served after hours when groups of friends gathered to have a bite to eat late at night.
By contrast, writes Fernandes, older men were “conservative” in their food choices, but women who dared to try it got a bad reputation. At the time, it was believed to be unbecoming for women to be seen eating spicy foods in public—a cultural taboo spawned by the myth that eating spicy foods changed a woman’s behavior.throughout Porto listing it on their menus.
Akanksha Singh is a journalist based between Mumbai, India, and Lisbon, Portugal. Her work has appeared in Bon Appétit, CNN, Lonely Planet, Saveur and more. Read her workAugust 1, 2024 | 5:51pm
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