Commentary: The fermented foods of the Sudan

Abstract

Indigenous fermented foods of the Sudan are numerous and varied. The raw materials from which these foods are prepared include sorghum, pearl millet, dates, honey, milk, fish, meat, wild plants, marginal food crops and even skins, hooves, bones, caterpillars, locusts, frogs and cow urine. Most of the foods are preserved by the double method of fermentation and sun‐drying. Sorghum foods are by far the most important and the most sophisticated and are prepared by the most complicated procedures. The preparation and storage of fermented foods are strongly dictated by the ecology of a hostile environment of drought, desertification and recurrent food shortage. Thus a number of fermented foods are famine or survival foods.