Moi moi Period COrigin theory CVerified

Moi moi is a Nigerian dish of cowpeas (black-eyed peas) ground to a paste, wrapped in leaves or a mould, and steamed until set. Its character lies in this: the beans are not boiled but worked into a smooth paste and steamed.

The main ingredient, the cowpea, is a long-established West African crop. In central Ghana, charred remains of the bean have been found dating to the second millennium BC, so people had this bean to hand from very early on. Dried beans are soaked until they swell, the skins are slipped off, and the beans are ground into a smooth paste. This is poured into banana leaves or a mould and steamed until firm. It is this laborious sequence, soak, skin, grind, steam, that has turned the land's bean into a plate of moi moi.

Moi moi today often carries the heat of chilli. Chilli is a seasoning brought from the New World across the Atlantic, spreading into West Africa after 1500. It is a later addition, and the dish stands without it.

Moi moi is eaten widely across the Yoruba lands of south-western Nigeria and the parts of West Africa around them, and it comes to the table as everyday home food.

Moi moi is known as a dish of the Yoruba people of south-western Nigeria, and its place of origin is given as Yorubaland, the region where they live. Both the name moi moi (mọ́yín-mọyín) and its other name, olele (ọ̀lẹ̀lẹ̀), are Yoruba words.

A similar bean dish crossed the Atlantic. Akara, the fried bean fritter, was carried to Brazil by enslaved Yoruba people and became acarajé, and its steamed form, abará, closely resembles moi moi; Brazilians of Yoruba descent call moi moi abará. The trade of the women who make and sell acarajé in Bahia is registered as intangible cultural heritage by IPHAN, Brazil's national heritage institute.

An early instance of the name in writing is a Yoruba vocabulary by Samuel Crowther and others, published in London in 1852. It lists both Moi-Moi and Olelle as "a kind of cake." T. J. Bowen's Yoruba dictionary, published in the United States in 1858, gives moi-moi the same gloss, and under the English word cake it lists àkara, moimoi, and olele. By the middle of the nineteenth century, then, the name was current as the Yoruba name of a food. Neither dictionary says anything about ingredients or method, though, so they cannot tell us whether the moi-moi they list was the ground, steamed bean dish of today.

The view that moi moi is a Yoruba dish is the leading one, but no pre-modern document or excavation has been put forward that shows when or where this form, beans ground and steamed, took shape. When the present form of moi moi settled is still not known.