Àkàrà and acarajé share a cowpea base and a food history that connects Yoruba kitchens with Brazil. In Bahia, the fritter belongs to a documented craft of food trading, religious practice and knowledge passed between generations.
The basic ingredient connects the two. Cowpeas are soaked and their seed coats removed before they are processed into paste. The paste can become fried àkàrà or steamed moin-moin. An OECD account of cowpea foods identifies àkàrà as a breakfast food and snack, including a Nigerian serving tucked into a bread roll.
The New York Botanical Garden places those fritters within a wider African food diaspora. It identifies Akara as a Yoruba name used in West Africa, alongside Acaraje in Brazil and Accra in Haiti. The black-eyed pea, with its distinctive dark spot, is a cultivar of the cowpea, Vigna unguiculata.
That food history extends across several countries and communities. Cowpeas are used in West African meals and in Brazil, the Caribbean and the southern United States. Their preparations range from whole cooked beans to ground pastes, with frying and steaming producing different foods from the same crop.
Brazil’s Ministry of Culture traces acarajé to the Gulf of Benin in West Africa. In an account published on 15 September 2026, it describes knowledge carried to Brazil by enslaved Africans and preserved principally by Black women.
In Bahia, that knowledge supported livelihoods as well as religious observance. The state’s heritage institute, IPAC, records how enslaved and freed women sold food from trays in the streets. Their work helped support themselves and their families, while maintaining community relationships and obligations within Candomblé religious houses.
Bahian acarajé combines black-eyed peas and onion, shaped and fried in dendê, or palm oil. IPAC lists accompaniments including pepper, shrimp, vatapá, salad and caruru. The selling tray can also carry abará, sweets and other preparations, so the women’s trade encompasses a wider repertoire than the fritter alone.
Dress forms part of the documented practice. IPAC describes full skirts, a cloth draped across the body, a headwrap, a blouse and necklaces associated with the wearer’s orixás. These belong to the public presentation of the baiana and her tray.
One practitioner, Rita Santos, learned the trade from Clarice Souza dos Anjos in 2001, through a course offered via the Brazilian small-business support agency Sebrae. Speaking to the Ministry of Culture, Santos identified Clarice as the founder of Abam, the association representing baianas and related traders.
Santos, described in the September account as Abam’s national coordinator, called for recognition to produce protection, income and better working conditions. “The title must not be merely symbolic,” she said, translated from Portuguese.
Brazil registered the Ofício das Baianas de Acarajé, or craft of the baianas, in IPHAN’s Book of Knowledge in 2005. The protected practice includes food preparation, religious knowledge, dress and selling from the tray.
The heritage council revalidated the title in 2022 and extended its geographical scope across Brazil wherever the practice had been or might be identified. The registration covers the practitioners’ combined knowledge and work, rather than a recipe alone.
Archive àkàrà photograph, 11 July 2013: Atimukoh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Not Rita Santos or food made by her. Cropped and resized; photographic adaptations retain the same licence.
