Pastéis de nata are custard tarts that trace back to pastéis de Belém, made by monks at the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon before the 18th century. Convents used large amounts of egg whites to starch clothing, so they had plenty of leftover yolks to turn into cakes and pastries. After the 1820 Liberal Revolution led to monasteries closing, the monks sold the pastry at a nearby sugar refinery to raise money. The monastery closed in 1834 and the recipe was sold, and the refinery's owners opened the Fábrica de Pastéis de Belém in 1837. The original recipe is said to be kept in a secret room, and the shop still sells thousands of pastries a day.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.