What casabe is, and why UNESCO listed it in 2024

The bread the Taínos gave Christopher Columbus in 1492 is still made in Boca de Yuma and Miches much the way it was then, and in December 2024 UNESCO declared it Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, on a nomination that brought together Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Venezuela and Honduras. Few single recipes have five countries as coauthors.

What it is

Casabe is made from grated bitter cassava, processed to remove its natural poison, pressed, and baked in flat rounds on a budare, a clay griddle. At the 1492 encounter the Taínos shared it with Columbus and his crew on Hispaniola, with the cacique Guacanagarí, an episode documented in the chronicles and also recorded by Leiden University’s NEXUS1492 project.

The date that exists, and the one that does not

The casabe tradition is millennia old as a pan-Caribbean practice, rooted in the South American domestication of cassava. But a specific dated archaeological find on Hispaniola does not reach that far back: the dated sites that do exist, El Flaco and La Luperona in the northwest, are from the 14th century. Any claim of “millennia-old casabe on Hispaniola” needs that qualification: millennia old as a tradition, not as a dated find on the island itself.

The best documented case of industrial casabe production in the region is later than 1492: Isla de Mona, between the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, worked as an export center of cassava bread for the Spanish gold and pearl mines in the first half of the 16th century.

Sources

• Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic (2024). cultura.gob.do
• Berman, M. J. et al., Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory (2019). link.springer.com
• “Molecular evidence for new foodways in the early colonial Caribbean”, Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences (2023). link.springer.com

Casabe replaces the pasta in casabe lasagna, the first Fusion recipe in this kitchen.