Jambu is a potent, electrifying herb that is beginning to tingle tastebuds across the country, with a mouth-numbing effect similar to – but stronger than – the Chinese spice.
It takes about three seconds for the prickly buzz of electricity, numbness, and intense salivation to kick in, and then it all happens at once. It has the same unbearable yet pleasurable intensity as chilli pepper, but instead of heat, it has a cool, numbing sensation that takes a long time to wear off and leaves you wanting more.
This Brazilian herb, which has been used in medicine and gastronomy for centuries in the Amazon, has a mouth-numbing effect similar to Sichuan pepper. While the latter is a staple of Chinese cuisine, jambu has only recently begun to tingle tastebuds across the country.
“When I first discovered jambu, it was so exciting,” said Fabio La Pietra, creative director of the award-winning So Paulo cocktail bar SubAstor. “It introduced me to Brazil’s incredible biodiversity.”
Jambu, also known as acmella oleracea and by a variety of English-language names (including paracress, buzz buttons, and electric daisy), grows and looks like a weed. During the summer, however, its unassuming appearance is offset by tiny, button-like clusters of yellow blooms.
These fuzzy flowers have the highest concentration of the compound responsible for jambu’s numbing effects: spilanthol, a fatty acid. The compound is structurally similar to the active ingredient in Sichuan pepper, but the latter has a much milder effect.
Spilanthol is so potent, in fact, that jambu is also used for medicinal purposes, hence one of its English aliases: “toothache plant”. For centuries, indigenous peoples have used jambu to treat mouth ulcers and dental problems.
Until recently, the herb was virtually unknown outside of Brazil’s Amazon region, where it is used in traditional dishes such as tacacá, a sour prawn broth in which jambu emphasises the sharp, savoury notes of wild cassava roots. Jambu is now transitioning from an obscure regional staple to a national symbol of Brazilian biodiversity, aided by a broader, growing interest in Brazilian ingredients and products. The recent trend of combining the electric herb with cachaça is the main driving force behind this. A sugarcane spirit associated with Brazilian culture.
“When people started using jambu, I thought, ‘wow, about time,'” said Néli Pereira, a mixologist in So Paulo who has known about jambu for longer than most. “Of course, they’ve been using it forever in Belém,” she continued, referring to the capital of Pará, a state in northern Brazil where the lower Amazon river flows to the sea.
Pereira first encountered jambu at a Dona Onete show in 2014. The Brazilian singer and cultural icon from Pará has a famous song about jambu in which the word “treme,” which means “it trembles,” is repeated in a deliciously rhythmic manner. During this song, concert organisers began spraying cachaça jambu into the mouths of willing participants.
It’s pop, it’s traditional, it’s gastronomy, but it’s also playful – there’s a whole vibe to it
Jambu not only enhances the alcohol’s fiery notes, but its numbing properties make jambu cachaça “interesting to kiss with,” according to Pereira. In other words, it’s the ideal party drink. “It’s pop, it’s traditional, it’s gastronomy, but it’s also playful – there’s a whole vibe to it,” she said.
Leodoro Porto, the owner of Belém’s Meu Garoto bar, is credited with creating the first jambu-infused cachaça in 2011. While Pereira was an early adopter, incorporating it into cocktail creations following her 2014 concert experience, it wasn’t until around 2018 that jambu cachaça brands began to emerge outside of Pará, introducing the herb to a national audience. “The last few years have made a lot of difference to jambu,” said Rodrigo França, co-founder of Jós Brasil, a So Paulo-based drinks brand that was one of the first to produce cachaça jambu outside of Pará.
We know so much about products from other countries, but not about those that are truly Brazilian
França and his three co-founders discovered jambu cachaça while on vacation in Alter do Cho, a freshwater resort town in Pará, in late 2017. “It was the only bar open and they only had one drink,” França explained. The friends had never heard of jambu before and were taken aback by their first collective encounter with its “trembling” effect.
They started making their own jambu cachaça at a distillery in the state of So Paulo after failing to find the spirit back home in So Paulo, the world’s fourth largest city where almost everything is usually available. They were, however, surprised that so few people knew about such a uniquely Brazilian product. “How does something become a cultural phenomenon in northern Brazil?” but not in So Paulo?” França inquired. “We know a lot about products from other countries, but not so much about Brazilian products.”
Jambu’s recent success is inextricably linked to a broader, growing interest in Brazilian ingredients and cultural identity.
“We learned what is good and what is not from abroad,” said Felipe Jannuzzi, founder of BR ME, an online store specialising in Brazilian ingredients. “What was cool was what was foreign,” Jannuzzi continued, “but the younger generation is finding a new cool – we are learning how to appreciate our own culture.”
Jannuzzi excitedly gathered Brazilian coffee, olive oils, and botanicals to show me when I met him recently at his offices in downtown So Paulo. He then poured me a gin he made with pacová, an indigenous spice similar to cardamom. “If you ask anyone here about it, no one has heard of it,” he said. “In Brazil, we used to use pacová, but it was replaced by cardamom from abroad, so I created this gin to talk about Brazilian tradition and diversity.”
Brazil is the world’s champion of biodiversity. It is home to more plant species than any other place on the planet, as well as several critically important ecosystems. The Amazon is the star. However, there is also the Atlantic Forest, which runs along Brazil’s coast; the Cerrado, a vast tropical savannah twice the size of Egypt; and the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland area. These ecosystems are home to a plethora of unique plant species, many of which are edible.
Sabor De Fazenda, a plant nursery in the north of São Paulo, grows a number of these obscure, edible plants, or what are referred to in Brazil as PANCs – an acronym in Portuguese for “non-conventional edible plants”.
PANC, which was coined in 2007 by biologist Valdely Kinupp, has since evolved into a nationwide movement that seeks to elevate the hundreds of edible plant species that have been pushed out of our diets by industrialised food habits.