Casabe or cassava bread is a flatbread made of cassava, eaten across the Caribbean Basin and the Amazon. It is usually made of bitter cassava, which is toxic before processing. Some cultures use mashed, fermented cassava, while others use cassava starch (tapioca), and additional ingredients may be used for flavor. The flatbread bakes for a few minutes on a flat surface known as a budare. Casabe is thin and crispy. When dried, it lasts several months. It may be eaten with various dishes or sweets. It is high in fiber and does not contain fat or gluten.
Casabe may have originated in Caribbean South America thousands of years ago before spreading to the Antilles. It was eaten by the Taíno and other Pre-Columbian cultures, being useful for its portability. Spanish colonists encountered casabe in the 1490s and also considered it useful, despite disliking its taste. European explorers, soldiers, and buccaneers adopted casabe in the sixteenth century, and it was produced and traded at large scales. However, its consumption was limited to a small region, and Europeans preferred wheat bread. After a decline in popularity, casabe has seen a revival since the 1990s, in part due to its health value. Casabe was recognized as UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage in a multinational listing inscribed in 2024.
Casabe is consumed by many indigenous peoples of South America and is a staple food for some groups in the Amazon. It is common in Venezuelan cuisine, particularly in the eastern region and among Indigenous and Afro-Venezuelans, and has spread across the country. In Suriname, it is eaten by all ethnic groups. It has also spread across Cuba from the central and eastern regions. For the Garifuna people in Central America, casabe (known as ereba) is a culturally important dish. It is also eaten across the Dominican Republic and neighboring Haiti, as well as other parts of the Caribbean.
Etymology In the Arawakan languages, the word casabe—also spelled , , or —refers to a baked good made of cassava flour. The English cassava derives from this word, as a metonym extending the name of the product to the ingredient. This conflation originated among English-speaking observers such as Francis Drake, who referred to the crop as cassavia and the flatbread as cassado. Some writers adopted the term cassado, while others used cassava to refer to the flatbread, before the usage of cassava for the crop became standard. In Spanish, however, the word casabe refers only to the flatbread, as writers did not conflate it with the crop; the word entered Spanish in the 18th century.
The Portuguese term for casabe is . In Haiti, it is known as . The Garifuna people call it . Other regional terms for the bread include cassava bread, , and . Spanish colonists used the term ().
Preparation Casabe is a flatbread made of cassava flour, which is made by peeling, grating, squeezing, and sifting cassava. Either bitter or sweet varieties of cassava may be used for casabe. Bitter varieties are more common. Both varieties of cassava contain the compound linamarin, which produces cyanide, although the bitter variety contains much more. Bitter cassava is toxic unless it undergoes complicated processing into casabe or a porridge known as farinha. This process requires extracting the water, as cyanide is soluble in water. It may involve extracting the toxins using a sieve known as a matapi.
One kilogram of cassava yields about one-third of a kilogram of casabe. Cassava flour is mixed with water and forms a smooth dough. Optional additions include coconut, cinnamon, anise, mocambo seeds, or sweeteners such as sugar or panela. The dough is shaped into large circles with a thickness of , against a hot, flat surface known as a budare. The budare allows the temperature to be controlled. It bakes for a few minutes, and water evaporates, resulting in a cohesive, solid flatbread.
Casabe is round, thin, crispy, and dry, resembling a cracker, with a mild earthy flavor. It may be white or golden brown. It is similar to the arepa, but thinner, and it is larger than a tortilla.
There are many types of casabe with differing varieties of cassava, lengths of fermentation, preparation methods, and sizes. —made with mashed, fermented cassava—is eaten by some Amazonian cultures including the Witoto and Nonuya, while —made with tapioca, the starch of the plant—is eaten by others including the Andoque and Muinane. is a very thin casabe made of fine flour and, in its modern form, sweetened. Cultures such as the Tucanoan peoples do not distinguish between types of bread made of cassava, referring to all of them as casabe, though color, taste, and texture vary between producers. Some communities in the Dominican Republic add lard to casabe for flavor. Haitian has distinctive flavorings added during baking, including various combinations of salt, sugar, cinnamon, coconut, ginger, condensed milk, pineapple, and herring.
Use
Casabe is often baked in batches, with as many as 30 flatbreads at once, enough to last one week for a household. Communities including the Ye'kuana prefer to prepare it the day it is eaten, requiring time-intensive work. Casabe can be dried to last months or years. Its softness can be restored by soaking it in liquid.
Casabe may be eaten for any meal. It may be topped with other foods used as a spoon, and it is less commonly eaten by itself. Its flavor pairs well with meat or fish, and it is also served with sweet foods such as coconut. Since it is dry, it is paired with moist foods. It is sometimes used as a spoon for pepperpot, a stew made from cassava juice. In Cuba, it is paired with eggs, vegetables, chocolate, or coffee. Casabito, eaten along the Caribbean coast of Colombia, is a sweet type of casabe folded over a filling of either coconut or , which is a mixture of banana, guava, and mamey. In parts of the Amazon, consists of casabe mixed with dried fish.
Casabe is also the basis of the alcoholic beverage parakari, made by mixing pieces of burnt casabe with water and a fermentation starter. Casabe is also used for a similar, non-alcoholic beverage, known among the Macushi people as .
Nutrition and physical qualities A 100-gram serving of casabe contains 265 dietary calories. It has a high fiber content, ranging from 7% to 19%, differing based on the variety of cassava. It is low in protein, but it is paired with protein-rich foods such as milk or cheese. It contains vitamins including thiamin—with 62 micrograms per 100-gram serving—as well as niacin. It also contains minerals including phosphorus and calcium. However, the calcium binds with fiber, making it less bioavailable, and the calcium content of casabe is less than that of other vegetable fibers unless enzymes are added. It does not contain fat, sodium, cholesterol, or gluten. It has an estimated glycemic index of 118 and insulinemic index of 132, with both responses being similar to plain cassava. Although raw cassava contains cyanogenic toxins, the final product contains only 2 to 8 percent of the initial content.
Though properties of casabe may vary between producers, a crispy texture is typically desired. Some people instead prefer a moist texture, so they add water before eating. The preference among the Tucanoan peoples is for casabe to be thick and mildly sour, qualities achieved by using bitter cassava. Bitter cassava also results in a longer-lasting product. A hypothesis by Donald Lathrap states that bitter cassava varieties are cultivated because of their preferable qualities for products including casabe.
History Prehistory Bitter cassava was the main staple of the Pre-Columbian Antilles, and ancient peoples developed methods to discard the toxin or utilize it for poisoned arrows. Casabe may have existed as early as 2000 BC. According to food writer Richard Foss, it originated in the region of the modern-day Colombia–Venezuela border and spread across Caribbean South America. It is possible that, as cultures from South America expanded, they introduced casabe to pre-agricultural cultures of the Antilles.
Archaeological sites of the Saladoid culture of modern-day Venezuela, dating to the Archaic Period, feature clay griddles that could have been used for casabe, though these were likely used for other foods. In the following Ceramic Period, casabe is associated with an archaeological complex in the Antilles and Caribbean South America, characterized by hemispheric pots—although casabe itself was not made with pots. Casabe is also associated with the presence of budares, found only in agricultural societies, although other baked products existed in hunter-gatherer societies.
Casabe was likely a common provision in the Antilles, including among the Taíno people of Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. It was produced at large scales, and a by-product was turned into cassareep, served alongside casabe as a dipping sauce. Taíno production of casabe may have been the cause of cassava being a staple. Within the gendered division of labor of the Taíno, women made the griddles used for casabe. In Taíno mythology, the major deity Yúcahu was associated with the knowledge of producing casabe, and Taíno shamans gave casabe as offerings to zemi spirits during an annual festival, whose participants received small pieces to keep for a year.
The Arawak of northern South America, a culture related to the Taíno, similarly consumed casabe. It was also consumed by the Carib people, including the Mainland Carib of South America and the Island Carib (Kalinago) of the Lesser Antilles; they ate it with pepperpot. The Island Caribs made a fermented beverage called by chewing and spitting out casabe, using spit as a fermentation starter. Ceramic griddles, likely used for casabe, were common in the Orinoco Basin before the colonial era. Casabe was not found in some nearby regions, such as the Isthmus of Panama, where cornbread was instead consumed.
According to geographer Francisco Watlington, cassava production in parts of the Caribbean was over , so the bread was produced at a rate of at least . The requirement for firewood contributed to deforestation in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico. For people who conducted lengthy voyages for hunting, fishing, trading, or visiting relatives, casabe was useful as a portable food. The Igneri people, whose trading colonies spanned from the Orinoco to Puerto Rico, filled canoes and warehouses with the bread. Archaeological excavations in the Antilles have found griddles with unique designs that may have indicated social groups.
Adoption by Spanish colonists
Once Spanish colonists came to the Americas, casabe was one of the first local foods they adopted. The Taíno gave casabe to Christopher Columbus, who arrived in Hispaniola in 1492 and shared a meal with the Taíno leader Guacanagaríx. He brought cassava flour to make casabe on his 1496 return voyage to Spain. Spanish writers—beginning with , who reached Hispaniola in 1494—referred to casabe as bread. Pané also noted the role of casabe in mythology. Naturalist Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo wrote a detailed description of casabe making in the 1520s. He wrote that the Taíno could live twenty days without eating, or longer if they ate casabe. Noting that casabe was easy to produce, transport, and store, Oviedo demonstrated its usefulness for sailors by bringing samples to Spain. He also considered it a highly demanded and profitable product, recording how supply and demand affected the price of casabe in the city of Santo Domingo, Hispaniola. Both Oviedo and Bartolomé de las Casas wrote that the common people of the Antilles ate thick casabe, while the nobility ate thin, white casabe. Columbus and Las Casas noted that the Taíno of Hispaniola had storehouses filled with dried casabe.