Madd — Senegal

Madd is the fruit of a savanna liana (Saba senegalensis) that grows wild across Senegal and neighbouring parts of West Africa, prized for its thick, sour-sweet pulp packed around large seeds inside a tough green-to-yellow rind that hardens as the fruit ripens on the vine. It is reported from markets, roadside stalls and family compounds throughout Senegal, where it is sold in season by the piece or the basket and eaten as a snack rather than a cooked dish, often by children on their way home from school as well as adults, and it is also carried into towns from the countryside where the liana grows most freely. To eat it, the fruit is cracked or cut open and the pulp is scooped or sucked from around the seeds, usually dipped first into a small mound of salt mixed with ground chili, or into a paste of crushed peanuts, chili and salt, which tempers the fruit's sharp acidity and rounds out its flavor. What distinguishes each version of madd served this way is mainly the dip: some households favour plain chili salt, others a peanut paste, and the fruit itself varies in sweetness and fibrousness from one liana or one season to the next, without changing the basic way of eating it.