Carob
The dried pod of a Mediterranean tree, roasted and ground into a sweet brown powder that is sold as a cocoa substitute and is not one. Carob drinks are a Levantine and Cypriot tradition in their own right, long predating the comparison to chocolate.
Identity
- Botanical name
- Ceratonia siliqua
- Family
- Fabaceae
- Part used
- Fruit
- Origin
- The Mediterranean basin, particularly Cyprus, Portugal and the Levant
- Drunk in
- Cyprus, Lebanon, Portugal, Malta
Character
Very sweet and raisin-like with a roasted depth, and no bitterness or fat at all — which is precisely why it does not taste like chocolate however it is marketed.
Notes: molasses, raisin, cocoa
History
The carat, the jeweller’s weight, takes its name from the carob seed, which is unusually consistent in mass. The tree grows on poor dry ground where little else will, and Cyprus and Malta built export industries on it in the nineteenth century.
How it is drunk
Kharrub syrup and cold carob drinks are sold across the Levant, particularly in Ramadan; Cyprus makes a molasses called pastelli; and Sicily and Malta use the pods in confectionery. The cocoa-substitute market is an entirely separate twentieth-century development.
Production
Pods are harvested by beating the tree, dried, deseeded and roasted before grinding. The seeds are processed separately into locust bean gum, a thickener that is a larger industry than the pod flour.
Preparation
Decoction · Steeped with milk
Boiling and decoction
1–3 g/100 ml · 98–100 °C · 10 min
What gets confused
Not a cocoa substitute in any meaningful sense: cocoa’s character comes from fat and bitterness and carob has neither. Judged on its own terms it is a good drink and a poor imitation.
Common mistakes
- Buying it expecting chocolate. The comparison sets up a disappointment the plant does not deserve.
Related botanicals
- Cacao husk — Sold as a cocoa substitute and is not one. Cocoa’s character comes from fat and bitterness, and carob has neither.
- Jujube — Dried pods and fruits with a raisin-molasses sweetness and no acidity at all.
Comparisons
- Carob vs cacao husk — Carob is sold as a cocoa substitute and is not one, and cacao husk is the actual by-product of chocolate making. Comparing them shows exactly what carob is missing and why the marketing sets up a disappointment.
- Acorn vs carob — Two roasted materials that stood in for something else — coffee and cocoa — and neither of which really resembles what it replaced.
Evidence for this page
This page is TeaHQ synthesis throughout. No external source stands behind any statement on it, including the botanical name. Twenty of the 150 botanicals have had their names and distribution checked against a taxonomic authority and this is not one of them.
Brewing parameters here are typical practice for the category rather than measurements of this plant, and each set says so.
This page makes no safety claim. It describes what Carob is, where it comes from and how it is prepared — not what it does to a person. The absence of a safety note here is not a statement that the plant is safe. How TeaHQ handles this.