Thua nao vs Dawadawa
The short answer
The same kind of fermentation on two continents and two different seeds. Both are boiled seeds left to Bacillus bacteria without salt, both turn alkaline and smell of ammonia, and both are pressed and dried to keep. Dawadawa is the seed of the African locust bean tree and seasons the soups of the West African savanna; thua nao is soybean and seasons the cooking of northern Thailand and the Shan country. Thai food scientists name dawadawa among the foods thua nao resembles.
Side by side
| Thua nao | Dawadawa | |
|---|---|---|
| Botanical identity | Glycine max (L.) Merr. | Parkia biglobosa (Jacq.) R.Br. ex G.Don |
| Part used | seed | seed |
| Origin | Not established | The Sudanian and Guinean savanna belt of West Africa, from Senegal to Nigeria and beyond. |
| Flavour notes | savoury, pungent, nutty, bitter | savoury, pungent, ammoniacal, fermented, umami |
| Heat | Scoville does not apply | Scoville does not apply |
| Flavour | Savoury, with some bitterness, and not salty: it is made without salt, which the papers contrast with shrimp paste. A study read in abstract found both a starter-made and a naturally fermented thua nao far richer in free amino acids than the cooked beans, and attributed the bitterness mainly to the hydrophobic and basic amino acids and the savouriness mainly to the acidic ones. | Intensely savoury and slightly bitter, with a lingering fermented depth. In a finished soup it tastes less of itself than of meat or stock. |
| Aroma | Strong, and described by those who study it in blunt terms. A review calls the ripe beans strongly ammonia-like and compares the traditional product to fish sauce; one group writes of a strong meaty aroma, another of a smell often described as pungent or rotten. The name carries the same idea: the review glosses thua as soybean and nao as spoiled. The dried disc smells different. In discs made in one laboratory the compounds that counted most towards the smell were grouped as green and fatty, nutty and roasted, sweet, sulphurous, woody and smoky, sour and fermented, and floral. | Strong, pungent and ammoniacal, with a deep savoury character — the smell of protein breakdown by Bacillus, and chemically a relative of natto. Much of the ammonia cooks off in the pot; the savouriness stays. |