The Santo Amaro (St Maurus) neighbourhood traces its origins back to 1681, when Major Luís do Rego Barros built, on the ruins of Fort Salinas, a chapel dedicated to St Maurus of Salinas, whose patronage gave the name to the neighbourhood.

The first sugar mills – made up of sugar planters and their families, farmers, chaplains, factories, bankers and slaves – appeared on the banks of the Capibaribe river, becoming large population centres whose slave quarters multiplied, giving rise to villages.

It went towards Cabo, made a curve towards the Motocolombó Bridge, where it emptied into the sea east of Nogueira Island at a place called Mercatudo. According to the 1746 Description of Pernambuco, there were four leather tanneries there with 42 slaves.

Located in the municipality of São Lourenço da Mata, it was founded in 1881 by Jovino Bandeira de Melo under the name of Engenho Central São Lourenço da Mata (St Lawrence of the Forest Central Plantation).

Originating in the houses where the mills’ owners lived, its recipe is a result of the mixture of ingredients, techniques and cultural habits of the Portuguese colonizers, the indigenous people who lived here and the African slaves, witnessing the mixing of the three main people.