Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Aidan Fruit along with all the Aidan Fruit containing recipes presented on this site, with 1 recipes in total.

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 as a major flavouring.

Aidan fruit, Tetrapleura tetraptera (also known as Osakirisa or Oshosho [Igbo], Aidan [Yoruba], Prekese [Twi, Ghana]) represents the fruit or pod of the Aidan tree, a member of the Fabaceae (pea) family of flowering plants. Tetrapleura tetraptera is deciduous tree reaching some 22m in height and a girth of about 2m. The bole is slender and older trees have very small, low, sharp buttresses. In the forest, the crown is fairly small, thin and rounded, becoming flat when old, but it tends to spread when in the open. The bark is smooth, very thin and grey-brown in colour. Twigs and young foliage virtually glabrous or minutely hairy. Leaves are sessile, glabrous or minutely hairy with a common stalk about 15–30 cm long, slightly channelled on the upper surface. The pinnae are in 5–9 pairs, 5–10 cm long, mostly opposite but sometimes alternate with 6–12 leaflets on each side of the pinna stalk that are always alternate, 12-25 mm long, 6–12 mm broad, slightly elongated, elliptic or slightly obovate, rounded at both ends, the apex sometimes very slightly notched, the base usually unequal, practically glabrous, with slender stalks about 2 mm long; lateral nerves indistinct, running at a wide angle to the prominent midrib. Flowers are pinkish-cream turning to orange and are densely crowded in spikelike racemes 5–20 cm long, usually in pairs in the upper leaf axils; individual flowers with slender stalks and 10 short stamens, the anthers carrying a gland at the apex. Fruit is very persistent, hanging at the ends of branches on stout stalks 25 cm long. It is shiny, glabrous, dark purple-brown, usually slightly curved, 15–25 cm long by about 5 cm across, with 4 longitudinal, winglike ridges nearly 3 cm broad. Two of the wings are woody (and contain the seeds) the other 2 filled with soft, sugary pulp, oily and aromatic. The seeds, which rattle in the pods, are small, black, hard, flat, about 8mm long, embedded in the body of the pod, which does not split open. The kernel contains oil.

The plant is native to fringe of the West African rainforest belt. Trees are widespread in tropical Africa, in forest, especially secondary forest, and they are at their best in the rainforest. The species is found throughout the high forest zone, in riverian forest, in the southern savannah-woodland and in the forest outliers in the African plains and are native to Benin, Burkina Faso, Cambodia, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Togo and Uganda. Use in traditional medicine is widespread (where the leaves, bark, roots and the kernels are used) and in Ghana, particularly the fruit and flowers are used as perfumes and in pomades prepared from palm oil. In Nigeria, particularly in Igbo culture, the fruit (broken into pieces) and the seeds (often fermented) are used as a spice to flavour soups. In Nigeria, the ground fruit pod is being investigated as a meat preservative for sausages (at a concentration of 10% per 100g meat, in conjunction with garlic and sodium nitrite). In Ghana, there is a move to increase the usage of the fruit, and it's being added to chocolate, made into jam and used as a flavouring for biscuits. Like many other beans in Nigeria, the dried beans of Tetrapleura tetraptera are fermented by certain Igbo groups and used as a condiment or flavouring.

The fruit of Tetrapleura tetraptera is widely used in African traditional medicine for the management and/or control of an array of human ailments, including schistosomiasis, asthma, ulcer, Staphylococcus aureus, epilepsy, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, convulsion, leprosy, inflammation and/ or rheumatoid pains. Some of the authenticated biological activities of this plant include as molluscicide (to control slugs and snails), in schistosomiasis, in gastro-intestinal ulcer, as antimicrobial (especially against Staphylococcus aureus), anticonvulsant, in hypertension (to lower blood pressure), and as contraceptive. Recent in Nigeria have shown that the fruit extract of Tetrapleura tetraptera (in alcohol) possesses significant anti-malarial, analgesic and anticonvulsant activities.