Cowpea

The cowpea is a warm-season annual legume that may be bushy, trailing or climbing, with trifoliate leaves and pale flowers. Pods are long and slim and hold several kidney-shaped seeds, which vary in colour from cream with a black patch around the eye, to red, brown, purple and speckled. The black-eyed type is the best known in the West.

Cooked cowpeas are tender and creamy with an earthy, slightly sweet flavour. They are sold dried, canned and frozen, and as flour used for fritters. Young pods and leaves are also eaten as vegetables, and a long-podded subspecies, the yardlong bean, is a popular vegetable in Asia.

Cowpea originated in Africa, and wild forms occur across the continent's savannas. Domestication probably occurred in West Africa several thousand years ago, with archaeological finds suggesting early cultivation in the Sahel and in Ghana.

The crop spread to North Africa, the Mediterranean, India and Southeast Asia, and during the transatlantic slave trade, it was carried to the Caribbean and the Americas. The common name cowpea is said to reflect its use as animal fodder in the American South, while black-eyed pea refers to the dark scar, or hilum, on the seed.

Cowpeas have fed African farming communities for millennia, thriving in hot, dry areas where other legumes fail. Traders took them across the Sahara and the Indian Ocean, and they were known in India by ancient times and in the Mediterranean by classical antiquity.

The enslaved Africans carried to the Americas brought both the crop and its culinary traditions. In the southern United States black-eyed peas became linked with Black foodways and with the dish Hoppin' John, traditionally eaten on New Year's Day for luck. In Brazil, the cowpea is central to acaraje fritters of Afro-Brazilian cuisine, and in the Caribbean to rice-and-peas.

In Africa, cowpea is now a vital source of protein for tens of millions of people. Nigeria and Niger are the largest producers, grown mostly by smallholders. Breeding programmes address pests such as the pod borer, and drought tolerance makes the crop valuable under climate change. In Nigeria, bean cakes called akara and steamed moin moin are everyday foods.

Cowpeas are boiled into stews and soups, cooked with rice in dishes such as Hoppin' John and Caribbean rice and peas, and mashed or ground into paste for fritters such as Nigerian akara, Brazilian acaraje and steamed moin moin. In India, lobia is cooked as a curry or dal. The young leaves are cooked as greens in Africa, and fresh green pods are eaten as vegetables.

The plant is also grown as fodder and as a green manure that fixes nitrogen. Cowpea flour is used in gluten-free baking. Dried peas are best soaked and then simmered until soft.

Cowpeas supply plant protein, fibre, folate, iron, zinc and slowly digested carbohydrate. Eating pulses regularly is associated with better cholesterol levels and blood sugar control as part of an overall healthy diet, and cowpeas are an affordable way to meet protein needs in many regions.

Like other pulses they contain raffinose sugars that can cause gas, which soaking and thorough cooking reduce. Cowpeas are a versatile staple, but they are not a medicine and benefits depend on the overall diet.