Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Herb guide to Baobab leaves along with all the Baobab leaves containing recipes presented on this site, with 7 recipes in total.

e This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain Baobab leaves as a major herb flavouring.

The Baobab, Adansonia digitata, (also known as boab, boaboa, bottle tree, kuka [Nigeria] and monkey bread tree) is a drought-tolerant tree common to much of sub-Saharan Africa. The species reach heights of between 5–25 m (exceptionally 30 m) tall, and up to 7 m (exceptionally 11 m) in trunk diameter. They are noted for storing water inside the swollen trunk, with the capacity to store up to 120,000 litres of water to endure the harsh drought conditions particular to the regions of Africa near the Saharan, Kalahari and Namib deserts. This is a very versatile tree and the young leaves (image, left) which can either be palmate or simple are often picked and eaten as form of spinach. The leaves are also dried and powdered, either as a fine powder (right, top) or as a coarser 'tisane' powder, (right, bottom). Like the American sassafras these are used as thickeners for soups and stews (particularly in West Africa). The most famous of these 'soups' being Nigerian kuka soup (kuka is the Nigerian for Baobab [see recipe below]). The leaves are also often as both a flavouring and thickener for couscous. To encourage leaf growth baobabs may be pollarded and large fields of young baobabs are frequently grown for their leaves alone.



Senegal is one of the largest commercial producers of baobab leaf powder and this is a staple of 'country' cuisine but is very difficult to find in the larger cities, unless you go to the larger markets. Baobab leaves are very high in vitamin C and this form an important supplement in the West African diet, where young leaves are eaten raw and older leaves are steamed as a vegetable.



The dried leaf powder acts as a thickener (in a similar manner to American sassafras and European linden leaves) and in Nigeria it is used to make kuka soups (stews).



The African baobab, Adansonia digitaga honours Michel Adanson, the French naturalist and explorer who first described A digitata. The baobab is occasionally referred to colloquially as the 'upside-down tree', a name derived from the Arabic legend which claims that the devil pulled out the tree and planted it upside down. This legend probably derives from an older African creation tale. This myth relates that after the creation of the world each of the animals was given a tree to plant and the hyena (according to its nature) planted the baobab upside-down. The baobab is also considered the world's large succulent plant.