Feijoada a brasileira (lit. Portuguese for “Brazilian-style feijoada”) is a dish that consists of a stew of black beans with various types of pork and beef. It is served with farofa, white rice, sauteed kale, and sliced oranges, among other sides. It is a popular dish, typical of Brazilian cuisine.
The first known mention of “feijoada a brasileira” was in Recife, Pernambuco, in 1827.
Feijoada is a common name given to dishes from Portuguese-speaking countries such as Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique, and Macau, where it is made from a mixture of white or red beans and meat, usually accompanied by rice. The Brazilian version of the delicacy is probably an adaptation of the Portuguese stew which originated in the north of this country.
The creation and name of feijoada are related to Portuguese ways of making it, from the regions of Estremadura, Beiras, Tras-os-Montes and Alto Douro, which mix various types of beans – except black beans (of American origin) – sausages, ears and pigs’ feet.
The Portuguese version of feijoada originates mainly in the north of the country, where it is cooked with white beans in the northwest (Minho and Douro) or red beans in the northeast (Tras-os-Montes), and usually also includes other vegetables (tomatoes, carrots or kale) along with pork or beef, to which chorizo, blood sausage or farinheira can be added.
In Brazil, the first mention of the dish dates back to the beginning of the 19th century in an advertisement published in no. 47 of the Diario de Pernambuco, in the city of Recife, on March 2, 1827, stating that at the Locanda da Aguia d’Ouro, in das Cruzes Street, on Thursdays “excellent Brazilian-style feijoada would be served, all for a comfortable price.”
On August 7, 1833, also in Recife, the advertisement for the newly opened Hotel Theatre, published in the Diario de Pernambuco, stated that “Feijoada a brasileira” would be served on Thursdays.
On March 3, 1840, still in the Diario de Pernambuco, Father Carapuceiro published an article in which he said:
In families where true gastronomy is unknown, where they have gatherings, it is usual and common practice to convert the leftovers of the previous day’s dinner into feijoada, which they call ‘the burial of the bones’ […] Leftover turkey, roast suckling pigs, bacon and ham cutouts are thrown into a large pot or cauldron, as well as a good few pieces of dried meat, known as ceara, all mixed with the indispensable beans: everything is reduced to a grease!
In 1848, the same Recife newspaper announced the sale of “bacon meat, suitable for feijoadas, at 80 reis a pound”. On January 6, 1849, the Jornal do Commercio, from Rio de Janeiro, announced that the newly installed “Novo Cafe do Commercio” restaurant, next to the “Fama do Cafe com Leite” bar, would serve “A Bella Feijoada a Brazilleira” every Tuesday and Thursday, at the request of many customers.
On page two of the October 1st, 1860 edition of the Ceara newspaper D. Pedro II, in a pamphlet entitled “Amor d’um Escravo”, Oscar Comettant describes feijoada as follows: “This food consists of salted meat, dried in the sun, black beans, small but very good, bacon, and to combine everything, a very coarse flour, which is made from the cassava root. From the mixture of these ingredients, a kind of dark porridge is formed, which looks disgusting but has a very pleasant taste. Feijoada (that is what that mixture is called) is the important dish of every modest dinner in Brazil: it is the meat pot [a reference to the French pot-au-feu] among us, and the puchero in Spain.”
There is also a receipt for a purchase by the Imperial Household, dated April 30, 1889, from a butcher in the city of Petropolis, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, which shows that green meat, veal, mutton, pork, sausage, blood sausage, liver, kidneys, tongue, brains, offal, and tripe sauces were consumed. This proves that it was not only slaves who ate these ingredients and that they were considered delicacies. In 1817, Jean-Baptiste Debret already reported on the regulation of the profession of “tripeiro” (“triper”) in the city of Rio de Janeiro, who were street vendors who obtained these animal parts from cattle and pig slaughterhouses. Debret also reports that the brains went to hospitals and that the liver, heart, and guts (of cows, oxen, and pigs) were used to make angu (a type of porridge), which was commonly sold by female slaves or freedwomen in the city’s squares and streets. This practice gave rise to what in Rio de Janeiro is known as “angu a baiana”, mainly because it contains dende oil (palm oil).
The most widespread popular legend about the origin of feijoada is that the masters gave their slaves the “leftovers” of the pigs when they were being slaughtered. Cooking these ingredients with beans and water gave rise to the recipe. This version, however, is not supported either by culinary tradition or by the slightest historical research. For example, pig’s feet were part of Portuguese eating habits, judging by Camilo Castelo Branco’s novel A Brasileira de Prazins, published in 1882, where it reads: “[…] he preferred the butter of his country, like veal, and the loin of the pig in Portuguese sausages, and the pig’s foot in Portuguese tripe.” According to historian Carlos Augusto Ditadi, in an article published in Gula magazine in May 1998, this myth is born of modern folklore, in a romanticized vision of the social and cultural relations of slavery in Brazil.
The feijoada completa (“complete feijoada”), as it is known, accompanied by rice, sliced oranges, sauteed kale and farofa, was very popular at the Rio de Janeiro restaurant G. Lobo, which was located at 135 General Camara Street in downtown Rio de Janeiro. The establishment, founded at the end of the 19th century, but disappeared in 1905 with the widening of Uruguaiana Street.
In his books Bau de Ossos and Chao de Ferro, Pedro Nava describes G. Lobo’s feijoada, praising the one prepared by Mestre Lobo. The contemporary recipe would have migrated from the kitchen of the G. Lobo’s kitchen to the whole country. But Pedro Nava points out that it is (…) “rather the venerable evolution of Latin dishes”.
(…) It can’t be said to have been a spontaneous creation. Rather, it is the venerable evolution of Latin dishes such as the French cassoulet – a white bean ragu with goose, duck or mutton meat – which requires a stoneware pot – cassole – to be prepared.”
The feijoada, in any case, became popular among all social strata in Brazil, always in a spirit of festivity and celebration, far from recalling scarcity. Those prepared at the end of the 19th century and beginning of the 20th century in Rio de Janeiro by the Bahian woman Tia Ciata were famous.
And earlier, the writer Joaquim Jose de Franca Junior, in a text from 1867, fictitiously describes a picnic in the Cadeia Velha field, where a feijoada was served with “(…) loin, pig’s head, tripe, mocotos, Rio Grande tongue, ham, dried meat, paio, bacon, sausages (…)”, and, in 1878, he describes a feijoada in Paqueta: “The word feijoada, whose origin is lost in the night of the times of El-Rei Our Lord, does not always designate the same thing. In the common sense, feijoada is the appetizing and succulent delicacy of our ancestors, the bulwark of the poor man’s table, the ephemeral whim of the rich man’s banquet, the essentially national dish, like Martins Pena’s theater, and the thrush of Goncalves Dias’ heartfelt poetry. In the figurative sense, the word refers to a patuscada, that is, ‘a function among friends held in a remote or inconspicuous place.”
The dish has spread throughout the country as the most representative recipe of Brazilian cuisine. Revised, expanded, and enriched, feijoada is no longer just a dish. Today, as Camara Cascudo also noted, it is a complete meal.
In Pernambuco, where it was first described and used, it was modified over time because Pernambucans prefer brown beans to black beans. This modified dish is called Feijoada pernambucana.
