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“Great-grandma Elisa Ramires was a promising cook at an inn. The job was her only opportunity to raise Grandma on her own, so she made herself famous with a buttery, delicately savory fubá cake recipe. Dona Elizabete Molina had been at the inn longer than Great-grandma, and she was also famous for her own recipe. Milk pudding. It was said to be so smooth it slid on your tongue. The two were often at odds. They each wanted to prove to the neighborhood who was the best cook in town, and the opportunity came about with a cooking contest. The night before the contest, Great-grandma and Dona Elizabete were busy preparing their entry dishes and tending to the many guests at the inn. It was a busy night, with many tourists in town for Carnival. Nerves frazzled, shoulder to shoulder, and vying for space in the small kitchen, the story goes that the cooks accidentally tripped each other and sent their cake and pudding flying off the trays. Miraculously, the layers stacked up. Dona Elizabete's milk pudding landed atop Great-grandma's fubá cake. Maybe Dona Elizabete held the tray at the right angle until the last second and the pudding had enough surface tension to just slide off the right way without breaking. Maybe Great-grandma's cake was firm enough to hold the delicate layer of pudding atop. Whatever the case, they tried this new, accidental two-layered cake and realized that their recipes complemented each other beautifully. When they passed samples around to the guests, their reaction was proof that they'd produced perfection. No one remembers if they still entered the contest. Because from that moment on, the only thing everyone could talk about was their new recipe, the one they called "Salt and Sugar". One layer fubá cake, one layer pudding.” — Rebecca Carvalho