Aframomum melegueta
Encyclopedia
Aframomum melegueta is a species in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae
. This spice
, commonly known as grains of paradise, melegueta pepper, alligator pepper, Guinea grains or Guinea pepper
, is obtained from the ground seeds; it gives a pungent, peppery
flavour. Although it is native to West Africa
, it is an important cash crop in the Basketo special woreda of southern Ethiopia
.
perennial plant
native to swampy habitats along the West African coast. Its trumpet-shaped, purple flower
s develop into 5 to 7 cm long pods containing numerous small, reddish-brown seed
s.
The pungent, peppery taste of the seeds is caused by aromatic
ketone
s; e.g., (6)-paradol
(systematic name: 1-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-decan-3-one). Essential oil
s, which are the dominating flavor components in the closely related cardamom
, occur only in traces.
Melegueta is commonly employed in the cuisines of West
and North Africa
, where it has been traditionally imported via caravan
routes through the Sahara
desert, and whence they were distributed to Sicily and Italy. Mentioned by Pliny
as "African pepper" but subsequently forgotten in Europe, they were renamed "grains of paradise" and became a popular substitute for black pepper
in Europe in the 14th- and 15th-centuries. The Ménagier de Paris recommends it for improving wine that "smells stale". Through the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period, the theory of the Four Humours
governed theorizing about nourishment on the part of doctors, herbalists and druggists: in this context, John Russell characterized Grains of Paradise, in The Boke of Nurture as hot and moist.
In 1469, King Afonso V of Portugal
granted the monopoly of trade in the Gulf of Guinea
to Lisbon merchant Fernão Gomes
, including the exclusive trade of Aframomum melegueta, then called "malagueta" pepper - which was granted by 100 000 real
-annually in exchange for exploring 100 miles of the coast of Africa a year for five years. After Christopher Columbus
reached the New World in 1492 and brought the first samples of Capsicum frutescens
, the name malagueta was then taken to the new chilli "pepper".
The importance of the spice is shown by the designation of the area from the St Johns River (present day Buchanan) to Harper in Liberia as the "Grain Coast" in honor of the availability of grains of paradise. Later, the craze for the spice waned, and its uses were reduced to a flavoring for sausages and beer. In the eighteenth century, its importation to Great Britain collapsed after a Parliamentary act of George III forbade its use in malt liquor, aqua vita and cordials. In 1855, England imported about 15,000 to 19,000 lbs per year legally(duty paid). By 1880, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th edition) was reporting, "Grains of paradise are to some extent used in veterinary practice but for the most part illegally to give a fictitious strength to malt liquors, gin and cordials".
Today, it is largely unknown outside of West and North Africa, except for its use as a flavoring in some beer
s (including Samuel Adams
Summer Ale), gin
s, and Norwegian akvavit
. In America, grains of paradise are starting to enjoy a slight resurgence in popularity due to their use by some well-known chefs. Alton Brown
is a fan of its use, and he uses it in his apple pie recipe on an episode of the TV cooking show Good Eats
. They are also used by people on certain diets, such as a raw food diet
, because they are less irritating to digestion than black pepper.
, grains of paradise are valued for their warming and digestive properties, and among the Efik people in Nigeria have been used for divination and ordeals determining guilt. A. melegueta has been introduced to the Caribbean
Islands, where it is used as medicine and for religious (voodoo) rites.
Zingiberaceae
Zingiberaceae, or the Ginger family, is a family of flowering plants consisting of aromatic perennial herbs with creeping horizontal or tuberous rhizomes, comprising ca. 52 genera and more than 1300 species, distributed throughout tropical Africa, Asia, and the Americas.Many species are important...
. This spice
Spice
A spice is a dried seed, fruit, root, bark, or vegetative substance used in nutritionally insignificant quantities as a food additive for flavor, color, or as a preservative that kills harmful bacteria or prevents their growth. It may be used to flavour a dish or to hide other flavours...
, commonly known as grains of paradise, melegueta pepper, alligator pepper, Guinea grains or Guinea pepper
Guinea pepper
Guinea pepper is the name for several unrelated pepper-like spices traded from the general region of West Africa:* Aframomum melegueta from the ginger family...
, is obtained from the ground seeds; it gives a pungent, peppery
Black pepper
Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is approximately in diameter, dark red when fully mature, and, like all drupes, contains a single seed...
flavour. Although it is native to West Africa
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
, it is an important cash crop in the Basketo special woreda of southern Ethiopia
Ethiopia
Ethiopia , officially known as the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, is a country located in the Horn of Africa. It is the second-most populous nation in Africa, with over 82 million inhabitants, and the tenth-largest by area, occupying 1,100,000 km2...
.
Characteristics
A. melegueta is a herbaceousHerbaceous plant
A herbaceous plant is a plant that has leaves and stems that die down at the end of the growing season to the soil level. They have no persistent woody stem above ground...
perennial plant
Perennial plant
A perennial plant or simply perennial is a plant that lives for more than two years. The term is often used to differentiate a plant from shorter lived annuals and biennials. The term is sometimes misused by commercial gardeners or horticulturalists to describe only herbaceous perennials...
native to swampy habitats along the West African coast. Its trumpet-shaped, purple flower
Flower
A flower, sometimes known as a bloom or blossom, is the reproductive structure found in flowering plants . The biological function of a flower is to effect reproduction, usually by providing a mechanism for the union of sperm with eggs...
s develop into 5 to 7 cm long pods containing numerous small, reddish-brown seed
Seed
A seed is a small embryonic plant enclosed in a covering called the seed coat, usually with some stored food. It is the product of the ripened ovule of gymnosperm and angiosperm plants which occurs after fertilization and some growth within the mother plant...
s.
The pungent, peppery taste of the seeds is caused by aromatic
Aromaticity
In organic chemistry, Aromaticity is a chemical property in which a conjugated ring of unsaturated bonds, lone pairs, or empty orbitals exhibit a stabilization stronger than would be expected by the stabilization of conjugation alone. The earliest use of the term was in an article by August...
ketone
Ketone
In organic chemistry, a ketone is an organic compound with the structure RCR', where R and R' can be a variety of atoms and groups of atoms. It features a carbonyl group bonded to two other carbon atoms. Many ketones are known and many are of great importance in industry and in biology...
s; e.g., (6)-paradol
Paradol
Paradol is the active flavor constituent of the seeds of Guinea pepper . The seed is also known as Grains of paradise. Paradol has been found to have antioxidative and antitumor promoting effects....
(systematic name: 1-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-decan-3-one). Essential oil
Essential oil
An essential oil is a concentrated hydrophobic liquid containing volatile aroma compounds from plants. Essential oils are also known as volatile oils, ethereal oils or aetherolea, or simply as the "oil of" the plant from which they were extracted, such as oil of clove...
s, which are the dominating flavor components in the closely related cardamom
Cardamom
Cardamom refers to several plants of the genera Elettaria and Amomum in the ginger family Zingiberaceae. Both genera are native to India and Bhutan; they are recognised by their small seed pod, triangular in cross-section and spindle-shaped, with a thin papery outer shell and small black seeds...
, occur only in traces.
Uses
West Africa
West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Geopolitically, the UN definition of Western Africa includes the following 16 countries and an area of approximately 5 million square km:-Flags of West Africa:...
and North Africa
North Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
, where it has been traditionally imported via caravan
Camel train
A camel train is a series of camels carrying goods or passengers in a group as part of a regular or semi-regular service between two points. Although they rarely travelled faster than the walking speed of a man, camels' ability to handle harsh conditions made camel trains a vital part of...
routes through the Sahara
Sahara
The Sahara is the world's second largest desert, after Antarctica. At over , it covers most of Northern Africa, making it almost as large as Europe or the United States. The Sahara stretches from the Red Sea, including parts of the Mediterranean coasts, to the outskirts of the Atlantic Ocean...
desert, and whence they were distributed to Sicily and Italy. Mentioned by Pliny
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
as "African pepper" but subsequently forgotten in Europe, they were renamed "grains of paradise" and became a popular substitute for black pepper
Black pepper
Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit, known as a peppercorn when dried, is approximately in diameter, dark red when fully mature, and, like all drupes, contains a single seed...
in Europe in the 14th- and 15th-centuries. The Ménagier de Paris recommends it for improving wine that "smells stale". Through the Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period, the theory of the Four Humours
Humorism
Humorism, or humoralism, is a now discredited theory of the makeup and workings of the human body, adopted by Greek and Roman physicians and philosophers, positing that an excess or deficiency of any of four distinct bodily fluids in a person directly influences their temperament and health...
governed theorizing about nourishment on the part of doctors, herbalists and druggists: in this context, John Russell characterized Grains of Paradise, in The Boke of Nurture as hot and moist.
In 1469, King Afonso V of Portugal
Afonso V of Portugal
Afonso V KG , called the African , was the twelfth King of Portugal and the Algarves. His sobriquet refers to his conquests in Northern Africa.-Early life:...
granted the monopoly of trade in the Gulf of Guinea
Gulf of Guinea
The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean between Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian is in the gulf....
to Lisbon merchant Fernão Gomes
Fernão Gomes
Fernão Gomes was a Portuguese merchant and explorer from Lisbon, the son of Tristão Gomes de Brito .In 1469, King Afonso V of Portugal granted him the monopoly on trade in the Gulf of Guinea...
, including the exclusive trade of Aframomum melegueta, then called "malagueta" pepper - which was granted by 100 000 real
Portuguese real
The real was the unit of currency of Portugal from around 1430 until 1911. It replaced the dinheiro at the rate of 1 real = 840 dinheiros and was itself replaced by the escudo at a rate of 1 escudo = 1000 réis...
-annually in exchange for exploring 100 miles of the coast of Africa a year for five years. After Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
reached the New World in 1492 and brought the first samples of Capsicum frutescens
Capsicum frutescens
Capsicum frutescens is a species of chili pepper that includes the following cultivar and varieties:*Piri piri, also called African Bird's Eye or African devil* Kambuzi pepper, Malawian pepper*Malagueta pepper*Tabasco pepper, used to make Tabasco sauce...
, the name malagueta was then taken to the new chilli "pepper".
The importance of the spice is shown by the designation of the area from the St Johns River (present day Buchanan) to Harper in Liberia as the "Grain Coast" in honor of the availability of grains of paradise. Later, the craze for the spice waned, and its uses were reduced to a flavoring for sausages and beer. In the eighteenth century, its importation to Great Britain collapsed after a Parliamentary act of George III forbade its use in malt liquor, aqua vita and cordials. In 1855, England imported about 15,000 to 19,000 lbs per year legally(duty paid). By 1880, the Encyclopaedia Britannica (9th edition) was reporting, "Grains of paradise are to some extent used in veterinary practice but for the most part illegally to give a fictitious strength to malt liquors, gin and cordials".
Today, it is largely unknown outside of West and North Africa, except for its use as a flavoring in some beer
Beer
Beer is the world's most widely consumed andprobably oldest alcoholic beverage; it is the third most popular drink overall, after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of sugars, mainly derived from malted cereal grains, most commonly malted barley and malted wheat...
s (including Samuel Adams
Boston Beer Company
Samuel Adams is an American brand of beer brewed by the Boston Beer Company and its associated contract brewers. The company was founded in 1984 by Jim Koch, Harry M. Rubin, and Lorenzo Lamadrid in Boston, Massachusetts, USA...
Summer Ale), gin
Gin
Gin is a spirit which derives its predominant flavour from juniper berries . Although several different styles of gin have existed since its origins, it is broadly differentiated into two basic legal categories...
s, and Norwegian akvavit
Akvavit
Akvavit or aquavit is a traditional flavoured spirit that is principally produced in Scandinavia, where it has been produced since the 15th century....
. In America, grains of paradise are starting to enjoy a slight resurgence in popularity due to their use by some well-known chefs. Alton Brown
Alton Brown
Alton Crawford Brown is an American television personality, author, actor, and cinematographer. He is the creator and host of the Food Network television show Good Eats and the mini-series Feasting on Asphalt and Feasting on Waves, and he is the host and main commentator on Iron Chef America...
is a fan of its use, and he uses it in his apple pie recipe on an episode of the TV cooking show Good Eats
Good Eats
Good Eats is a television cooking show created and hosted by Alton Brown which airs in North America on Food Network. Likened to television science educators Mr. Wizard and Bill Nye, Brown explores the science and technique behind the cooking, the history of different foods, and the advantages of...
. They are also used by people on certain diets, such as a raw food diet
Raw foodism
Raw foodism is the practice of consuming uncooked, unprocessed, and often organic foods as a large percentage of the diet....
, because they are less irritating to digestion than black pepper.
Properties
In West African folk medicineFolk medicine
-Description:Refers to healing practices and ideas of body physiology and health preservation known to a limited segment of the population in a culture, transmitted informally as general knowledge, and practiced or applied by anyone in the culture having prior experience.All cultures and societies...
, grains of paradise are valued for their warming and digestive properties, and among the Efik people in Nigeria have been used for divination and ordeals determining guilt. A. melegueta has been introduced to the Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
Islands, where it is used as medicine and for religious (voodoo) rites.
See also
- Aframomum corrorimaAframomum corrorimaAframomum corrorima is a species in the ginger family, Zingiberaceae. The spice, known as korarima, Ethiopian cardamom, or false cardamom, is obtained from the plant's seeds , and is extensively used in Ethiopian and Eritrean cuisine. It is an ingredient in berbere, mitmita, awaze, and other...
- Grains of SelimGrains of SelimThe term Grains of Selim refers to the seeds of a shrubby tree, Xylopia aethiopica, found in Africa. It is also known as kimba pepper, African pepper, Moor pepper, Negro pepper, Kani pepper, Kili pepper, Sénégal pepper, Ethiopian pepper and Guinea pepper. The seeds have a musky flavor and are used...
- List of culinary herbs and spices
- PhytotherapyPhytotherapyPhytotherapy is the study of the use of extracts from natural origin as medicines or health-promoting agents.Traditional phytotherapy is often used as synonym for herbalism and regarded as "alternative medicine" by much of Western medicine, although effects of many substances found in plants have...