Mapping the variability in physical, cooking, and nutritional properties of Zamnè, a wild food in Burkina Faso

Zamnè is an Acacia seed used as a terroir food in Burkina Faso. It has been introduced as a famine-resilience crop and has become a cultural diet. However, little is known about its culinary and nutritional properties. This study aimed to explore the cooking and nutritional properties of Zamnè (Senegalia macrostachya (Reichenb. ex DC.) Kyal. & Boatwr.). Zamnè presented characteristics of medium size, flattened, dry, and hard-to-cook legume. The moisture, cylindrical ratio, diameter, thickness, weight, true density, coat percentage, coat thickness, and cooking time of the seeds were in the range of 4.5–5.8%, 1.1, 7.4–8.0 mm, 1.6–1.8 mm, 65.0–76.4 mg, 1.1 g/ml, 16.8–22.2%, 9.0–11.9 mg/cm(2), and 180 min, respectively. The raw Zamnè showed 39.8–43.6, 9.7–11.5, 16.6–29.4, 13.3–20.2, 16.6–26.4, and 3.7–3.9 (g/100 g dry weight) of protein, fat, total dietary fiber, insoluble dietary fiber, digestible carbohydrate, and ash contents, respectively. The traditional cooking process improved most of the parameters determining the proximate compositions but resulted in 51–52% of protein and 47–50% carbohydrate losses into the cooking wastewater. Besides, pseudoZamnè, a famine-emergency crop similar to Zamnè, revealed inferior cooking quality than Zamnè. The data reported here provide a basis for alternative cooking techniques and further investigations of Zamnè and pseudoZamnè seeds’ nutritional quality.