Arbre à Paine
Breadfruit
Artocarpus incisa
In 1788, the French brought the seedless breadfruit to the Belin plantation in Limbé; before their expulsion by Dessalines they had also introduced the seeded breadfruit and the jackfruit from Jamaica. Subsequently, the breadfruits have become two of the chief starchy foods of the moist lowlands. Of the two principal varieties of breadfruit, the seeded (arbre à pain) and the seedless (arbre véritable), the latter is more abundant. Just the converse is true in the Dominican Republic, where, however, neither variety is so significant in the diet as in Haiti. The seeded variety is grown from seed, which is usually planted in the autumN, and the seedless arbre véritable is propagated by severing a section of the root from the tree, which causes sprouts to spring up which can be transplanted.
Usually, the seeded breadfruit is allowed to fall to the ground after which the nuts are extracted, roasted or boiled, peeled and eaten. On the Les Cayes Plain in 1952, the uncooked nuts sold for two to three cents per five-pound lard tin. Two varieties of véritable are recognized by the locals, Musquette and Cochon. The Cochon is larger and comes from a tree with more deeply lobed leaves. When the fruit is mature, it is gathered from the tree and is baked or boiled for eating. Boiled véritable mashed in a mortar is eaten by dipping a finger into the sticky dough and dunking the blob into a sauce of meat and okra. Reminiscent of Hawaiian poi, this preparation is called tam tam, from the sound of the pestle in the mortar. Descourtilz, the French naturalist who owed his life to the intercession of Madame Dessalines, described tum tum as a mixture of sweet potatoes and ripe plantains boiled and mashed in a mortar. In Ghana, taro, plantains and sweet potatoes are given the same culinary treatment under the name of fufu.
In the hinterland of Jérémie, the véritable are so plentiful and so cheap that the country folk have ample leisure for bamboche, a "good time" dancing and drinking. M. Villedrouin, a highway engineer, told the author that when he was supervising construction in the Grand Anse in the mid-1930s, he had difficulty with absenteeism, when wages were raised from ten cents to fifteen cents a day, because the lower wage was quite adequate to purchase food for a family - with véritable at sixteen for one cent and plantains at six cents a bunch.
Hogs are fed the raw breadfruit.
The lower trunks of the breadfruit trees are scarred with numerous machete cuts made to obtain breadfruit gum and on the supposition that slashing improves production. To treat an ailment called tomber bisquette, characterized by vomiting and fever, breadfruit gum is a specific. The appellation tomnber bisquette is derived from the belief that the illness is caused by the falling of a bone, the bisquette, within the body. For the treatment of Ghana, rheumatism, the gum is cooked, dried and powdered, and applied to the sleeping mat or clothing of the afflicted. Another use of the gum is for bird lime. Although the breadfruit is scarce and recently introduced in Africa, the trapping of birds with bird lime from other sources is an old and widespread practice in Guinea.
The trunks of the breadfruit are sawed into planks.
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