Kacang Tanah

Arachis hypogaea. Remember that kacang in Indonesian means both bean and nut. The name of this one translates into English quite literally as ‘ground-nut’, so called, of course, because the flowers of Arachis have the remarkable habit of diving back towards the soil and burying their seed-pods in it. Like so many other useful plants, the ground-nut or peanut evolved in Central America and the basin of the Parana River; it was one of the first prizes that Columbus’ men and their successors brought back to Europe. Dialect names for the plant, however, suggest that it may have reached the East in Spanish or Portuguese ships across the Pacific. Certainly peanuts have been an important crop in Java for at least 200 years. Raffles says that in the early 1800s they were grown near all the large towns, principally for their oil, which I suppose was used for cooking. Peanut oil is indeed very good for this purpose, though personally I prefer corn or coconut oil.