Brazilian Indian use of cashew nuts and apples is well documented in French, Portuguese and Dutch accounts between 1550 and 1650. The Tupi name acaju became caju in Portuguese and cashew in English.
The juice of the cashew apple has been and still is fermented to make wine. In 1558, Thevet published a drawing of Indians harvesting what were unmistakably cashew fruits and squeezing the juice from apples.The cashew was probably spread by the Indians as a dooryard garden tree, but there is nor record of systematic planting. It may have been spread by prehistoric Indians into Guianas and eastern Venezuela.
It was probably a dooryard garden plant of the Caribs in the Lesser Antilles. It was not among the plants of the Arawaks of the Greater Antilles, nor was it in Colombia, Central America, or Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. First Spanish accounts were from Venezuela in the mid 16th century.
The Indians roasted cashew nuts in open fires, burning off the caustic shell oil. The Portuguese were quick to adopt the simple Indian techniques of roasting the nuts and making wine from the cashew apples. They occasionally sent some nuts to Lisbon as early as the mid-17th century.
By 1750, cashews quickly were widely planted throughout tropical America, not just for the nuts but as a multiple-purpose garden tree. It made a fine dooryard shade tree, provided the lower branches were pruned.
It was evergreen and pest free, the sap of the trunk should be tapped for an insect repellent, protective varnish. The cashew apple yielded tasty, fresh juice and could be made into preserves. The wine could be distilled for brandy. Excess volunteer trees were cut for firewood and charcoal. Commercial cashew plantations in tropical America were not begun until the 20th century.
Meanwhile, the species had become pantropical. The Portuguese introduced it into India in the 1560s, perhaps more as a source of wine and brandy than for the nuts. Cashew trees were reported in gardens of Cochin on the Malabar Coast and Goa in the 1570s and 1580s. Four hundred years later India remained the world’s main producer of cashew liquor at a rate of about 250,000 gallons a year.
Cashew Apples and Cashew Nuts – the History
