The origins of modem day kallaloo

Aimery Caron

Dear Editor,

I wish to make the following comments concerning Mr. Olasee Davis’ letter recommending that “kallaloo” be adopted as the Virgin Islands national dish.

Kallaloo is a delicious Caribbean dish, which has been part of the culture of the Virgin Islands for over 200 years. Do we need the Tourism Department, the Legislature or the Governor to confirm it?

According to the “Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage”, edited by Richard Allsopp and informants from the whole Caribbean and West Africa, several dishes deemed “unique” to a particular location are common to a number of islands: oil-down is common to Grenada, Tobago and Trinidad; pepper-pot is common to Barbados, Grenada and Guyana; mountain-chicken is common to Dominica and Montserrat; salt-fish and green bananas is common to all the Lesser Antilles etc.

Similarly, calalou, callalou, kalalou, kallalou, calalu, callalu, kalaloo, and kallaloo, however it is spelled, is essentially the same dish and is common to all the Lesser Antilles, Jamaica and Haiti.

The word “cararou” was recorded by Father Raymond Breton during his stay with the Caribs of Dominica in the 1650s in his “Dictionnaire caraïbe-français,” published in 1665. It is defined as the scales of turtle shells, which were used to stir cassava mush and cut calalou leaves during the preparation of the dish. Cararou and calalou represent the same word, because the Caribs pronounced the “r” so softly that it was often confused with an “l.” Thus, Father Jean-Baptiste Labat observed in 1694 that “essentially only Negroes, bondmen and the poor, in addition to Creole girls and women, eat [okra] that is added to a stew, which is particular to them and which is called ‘callarou’, with all sorts of herbs, especially bad tasting and disgusting.” (“Nouveau voyage aux isles françoises de l’Amérique”, Paris, J.B. Delespine, 1742).

Note that the French Creole language, in imitation of the Caribs, also requires pronouncing the “r” very softly. In French Creole, the words calalou and “zèbe-calalou” are defined as the dasheen and the tania leaves (Xanthosoma brasiliense and sagitaefolium), which are native to the islands (Jacques Fournet, “Flore de Guadeloupe et de Martinique”, Paris, Institut national de la recherche agronomique, 1978).

Initially, the calalou dish included — besides calalou leaves, Amaranthus dubius orspinach (épinard-pays and zépinard-pays in French Creole) — various herbs, cassava in the form of flour (all native to the islands), coconut milk, okra from Africa and Antillean land crab, a favorite Carib food, which they named “itourourou”, “itouloulou”, “toulourou”, or “touloulou”, but not “kallaloo.”

Later, salt-pork, salt-beef, and/or fish and shellfish were added, while “fungee” replaced the cassava flour.

Considering the fact that the word cararou or calalou was part of the Carib and French Creole vocabulary as early as the 1650s and that it involves mostly ingredients native to the Antilles, makes it highly probable that the calalou dish originated in the French Lesser Antillles. This does not exclude the possibility that the Twi borrowed the calalou word and dish from the French islands, just like West Africa borrowed peanuts, cassava and fungee among other foods from the Antilles.

Today, there is no standard or unique recipe for calalou. All good Antillean cooks have developed their own calalou recipe variation, such that no island has a unique calalou recipe. This could be best exemplified and celebrated by holding an annual calalou contest, just like the Texans hold an annual chili contest. Perhaps such a contest could be part of the Crucian Christmas Festival on St. Croix, since calalou is traditionally served on Old Year’s Night?

— Aimery Caron, St. Thomas, is a former UVI chemistry professor and author of several scholarly publications.

Aimery Caron