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A rustic bowl of açorda à alentejana with soaked bread, cilantro and a poached egg.
Soups

Açorda à Alentejana (Garlic and Cilantro Bread Soup with Poached Egg)

Leonor Perreira · Updated Nov 12, 2026
Prep
10 min
Total
20 min
Servings
2
Calories
485 kcal
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Açorda à alentejana is almost a magic trick: day-old bread, garlic, olive oil, cilantro and water become one of Portugal’s best-loved soups. The secret is the quality of those few ingredients.

The word comes from the Arabic tharid, bread broken into broth. It was the food of farm workers in the Alentejo, who spent weeks on the plains with hard bread, olive oil and whatever herbs they found, and only needed to boil water.

Recipe

Açorda à Alentejana

Alentejo bread in a broth of crushed garlic and cilantro, with a poached egg on top. A humble dish, and a very comforting one.

Ingredients

2 servings

Method

  1. 1
    Wash the cilantro (or pennyroyal) leaves well. Peel the garlic cloves.
  2. 2
    In a mortar, put the coarse salt, the garlic and most of the cilantro leaves. Pound hard until you have a fragrant green paste. (Without a mortar, chop everything very finely and crush it with the flat of a knife.)
  3. 3
    Put the paste in the bottom of a soup tureen. Pour over the olive oil and mix well.
  4. 4
    Bring the water to a boil in a pan. When it's simmering gently, stir to make a whirlpool and carefully slip in the eggs to poach them. They take about 3 to 4 minutes (the yolk should stay runny).
  5. 5
    Lift out the eggs with a slotted spoon and set them aside on a plate.
  6. 6
    Now pour the boiling water straight into the tureen over the paste of olive oil, garlic and cilantro. Stir at once; the smell is wonderful.
  7. 7
    Add the slices of bread to the broth to soak.
  8. 8
    Serve quickly: put slices of bread in each bowl, ladle the fragrant broth over them and carefully set a poached egg on top.
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Tips

Nothing is fried. The boiling water goes straight onto the raw paste of garlic, salt and herbs, which is what gives açorda its fresh, strong flavor.

Poach the eggs in the same water before you pour it over the bread.

Cut the bread into thin slices so it soaks up the broth without falling apart.

It’s often served with salt cod: poach a cod steak in the soup water, flake it and add it to the bowls with the bread.

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