Get healthy with the African cucumber

Celebrate Heritage Day with homegrown fresh vegetables like the African cucumber or the horned melon. This is a beautiful and strange fruit that is a traditional food plant indigenous to Southern and Central Africa.

It is naturally grown in Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and Swaziland.  But not many South Africans are aware of the treasure that this African fruit holds.

Inside contains a lot of seeds covered in a gelatin-like substance and it has a slight sweetness. The taste is described as a combination of cucumber and zucchini or a combination of banana, cucumber and lemon.

The fruit is edible and it is believed the Khoisan roasted the fruit and strained the flesh.

Different ways to eat it:

• It can be eaten fresh, made into a juice, cut open, sprinkled with sugar/salt (to enhance flavour) and scooped out of the shell with a spoon/ or used in fruit salad.
• A jelly can be made from the fruit by boiling it until soft, straining it and boiling the fruit pulp again with a cup of sugar for each cup of water.
• The fruit can also be cubed and pickled in vinegar.
• The seeds are edible and some eat the skin as well.

It’s good for you!

• The skin of the African Horned Cucumber is rich in vitamin C and fibre.
• The fruit contains saponin – a kind of oily glycoside that foams freely when shaken with water.
• It is believed the Shona tribe used a decoction of the root for relief of pain after childbirth.
• It is also alleged that the boiled root is a very good gonorrhea cure.