Food Alphabet
Senegalese pepper (Moorish pepper, kumba)
Senegalese (Moorish) pepper is the fruit of the plant Xylopia ethiopica, which grows in tropical Africa (Ethiopia and Ghana). As a spice, use round shiny small, often smoked, pods with a length of 2.5-5 cm and a thickness of 4-6 mm. At the same time, each pod contains from 5 to 8 grains.
The spicy taste is the shell of Senegalese pepper, and not its grains. In general, this pepper has a delicate, spicy, slightly bitter aroma, reminiscent of a mixture of cubeba pepper and nutmeg.
In the traditional cuisine of Western (Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Mauritania) and North Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia), as well as in Spain, it is used as a seasoning for meat, vegetable and flour dishes.
A few centuries ago, Senegalese pepper was well known to Europeans and was used along with kubeba and African pepper as a substitute for too expensive black pepper. Then it suddenly became popular during World War II. However, by the sixties, the demand for it came to naught, and now of all European countries, it is used only in Spain.
