Annatto

annatto Bixa orellana, a small to medium-sized tree, native to tropical America. This is often grown for purely ornamental purposes because of its red-veined leaves, clusters of pink flowers, and thick, spiny pods which open to reveal scarlet seeds. But it is also useful in other, including food, contexts.

In the Caribbean the seeds were used extensively in the past by the Caribs as body paint (hence ‘redskins’ as a name for American Indians) and for medicinal purposes (they are a rich source of vitamin A) but food colouring is the principal use. Annatto oil or lard is made from the hard orange-red pulp surrounding the seeds. The coloured and flavoured lard (manteca de achiote) is used in a number of Caribbean islands, e.g. to colour codfish cakes in Jamaica. Where palm oil was not available, slave societies used it to produced a red-coloured oil to remind them of their ancestral cooking medium.