Beans have been a fundamental part of human food for millennia. Yet, at least in Western
societies, they were associated with poverty and rusticity, not appearing on the tables of the ruling
classes. With the increase in the incomes of the western European population, in which the Portuguese
is included, its consumption decreased while that of other foodstuffs increased (e.g., meat, once only
available on a regular basis to the well-off). At the same time, in recent decades, beans have been
associated with the rediscovery of regional and local cuisines, a movement that also finds a wide
expression in Portugal.
This text begins by providing some indications about the historical importance of beans in Portuguese
food, looking at the social dimension of their consumption, and then briefly examining one of the
gastronomic festivals that have emerged in the last decades, celebrating one of them: the grass pea.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio