Acarajé

Acarajé is a fritter made from cowpea (feijão-fradinho) dough, onion and salt, fried in dendê oil until golden and crispy on the outside. It is then split open and filled, at the buyer’s request, with vatapá, caruru, dried shrimp, tomato salad and chili. The name comes from Yoruba: akará means ball of fire, and jé means to eat.

The recipe came from West Africa, where similar bean fritters are still made. In Bahia it became strongly associated with candomblé: acarajé is food for the orixás, offered especially to Iansã. At the same time it became street food. Enslaved women sold snacks in the streets of Salvador, and through that work many bought their own freedom and that of relatives.

IPHAN registered the craft of the baianas de acarajé in the Book of Knowledges as Cultural Heritage of Brazil. The registration includes the preparation, the tray, the white dress, turbans and beaded strings, and the places where the baianas set up. In Salvador, a municipal law declares acarajé itself a cultural heritage of the city.

The baiana’s tray also carries other snacks, like abará, made from the same dough but steamed wrapped in banana leaf, and bolinho de estudante, a tapioca-and-coconut sweet. Baianas usually set up in squares, wide plazas and along the city’s shoreline, especially late in the afternoon.

When ordering, the baiana asks whether the acarajé will be hot or cold: the word refers to the amount of chili, not the temperature. It is eaten by hand, while still hot, right after being filled.