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The town of Elvas, a jewel in the glorious region of the Alentejo, is a gorgeous garrison town, forever within sight of Spain, boasting some spectacular fortifications and sweeping views over the plains. Which was kind of convenient when Spain tried to invade. Summers are on the torrid side of hot, which helps explain why this very fertile region produces some exquisite, juicy, rich fruit. And so much of it. However, there aren’t a lot of people around, which creates a conundrum: should more people be imported, or should the fruit be exported? Several Portuguese kings tried (and failed) to

The use of pulses in confectionery isn’t as common along the Mediterranean as it is in Portugal and… the Far East. The Gold Rush has received approving comments from visitors from China, Japan, Thailand and Taiwan (and I am sure there are others) who reminisce about traditional sweets from their childhood when they try ours. Whether that tradition started in Portugal or in Asia, Portuguese traders must have been involved, as they were responsible for so much more cultural and gastronomic exchange, from the 16th century onwards, precisely with locations where beans are used in confectionery too. We can’t imagine

When the Gold Rush decided to launch a brand of Portuguese confectionery in the UK, the name of the brand was of course one of the first questions to arise. We took inspiration from the colour of Portuguese sweets, which, because of all the egg yolk they contain, are invariably yellow. Sometimes orange. Golden, even. But never dull. So we thought we should make this our own make-believe Gold Rush, our little Eldorado of the suburbs, trading in bite-sized nuggets, and the name caught on. Much has been said and written about the use of eggs, mainly the yolk, in

Hello, greetings from lockdown (still). Portuguese confectionery comes in many forms, as any visit to Portugal will prove within the first few minutes – The Gold Rush can usually be seen shortly after landing in Porto at the grubby bar in the arrivals area, where they have some not-too-bad pastries (!). In our quest to search for superb confectionery, we have come across some incredible things, and today we will discuss why we can’t have some of them. In other posts in the future we will talk about the ones we do have. I will start with those that are

Welcome to the first post in The Gold Rush blog! We have tried to make the most of the lockdown to think about how we did in our first year of operation and where we want to take this adventure. Well, we did better than expected, and we want to go global, obviously! When we started at the beginning of 2019, we thought that bringing amazing produce from Portugal would be enough, and that our products, because they are so amazing, would simply fly off the shelves. It didn’t quite work that way… The first surprise we had when we