By Joel Denker
The bountiful evergreen captivated the Jesuit priest: “It furnished food and household remedies for the poor, a refreshing beverage to the sick, a sweetmeat for tables richly served, and resin and good timber for industrial uses.” The cashew tree that excited Father J.S. Tavares on his travels through Brazil in the early 1900s is parent to the familiar nut. It also bears an unusual-looking apple—a mystery to most Westerners, but a delight to people of the tropics. Many of them throw the nut away and eagerly hold on to the apple.
The object of their affection, the cashew, is a member of the curious family of plants that includes poison ivy, as well as the mango and pistachio. All exude irritating, sometimes harmful liquids.
Native to Brazil, the cashew was known to the Tupi-Guarani Indians as acaju. They drank the invigorating juice of the apple “for the conservation of the stomach,” according to the 16th century plantation owner Gabriel Soares de Souza. “For a good breath,” he observed, they ate the nuts in the morning and fermented the apples to make a “fragrant and delicious wine.”
The Indians instructed the Portuguese settlers in the ways of the cashew. The colonists, who called the tree “caju,” learned how to burn off the shell’s caustic fluids by roasting the nut over an open fire. They also acquired a taste for the Guarani’s potent brew, and they increased its punch by distilling the cashew wine into brandy.
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To learn more about cashews, see The Carrot Purple and Other Curious Stories of the Food We Eat, coming in October from Rowman & Littlefield: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781442248861/The-Carrot-Purple-and-Other-Curious-Stories-of-the-Food-We-Eat.
