Roasted breadfruit and jackfish

A fruit brought from Tahiti

Breadfruit is not native to the Caribbean. Northwestern University reports that Bligh docked HMS Providence in Kingstown in 1793 with several hundred breadfruit saplings, intended as a cheap food for the enslaved people who laboured on the islands’ sugar plantations; his first attempt, aboard HMS Bounty, had ended with the mutiny of April 1789. The SVG Ministry of Tourism likewise says the fruit was brought to feed the enslaved because it was cheap.

The Botanic Gardens in Kingstown, established in 1765, still grow a third-generation breadfruit tree descended from one of Bligh’s plants, as Wikipedia and CARICOM Today both note. A 2023 study led by Northwestern, the Chicago Botanic Garden and the St Vincent Botanical Gardens traced five major lineages of Caribbean breadfruit back to that single introduction. The SVG Tourism Authority says the fruit quickly became a staple crop even after emancipation, and that the country now has over 25 varieties.

Roast, peel and slice

A leaflet from the Education Committee of the St. Vincent and Grenadines Association of Toronto, drawing in part on a 2004 booklet by the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, says the most popular way to roast a breadfruit in St Vincent is to set it on an open charcoal or wood fire outdoors and turn it until it is charred all over. The fruit is done when a skewer pushed through it comes out clean; the leaflet’s alternative is about an hour and a half in a moderate oven, with the fruit pierced first. Caribbean Beat quotes Dr Laura Roberts-Nkrumah of the University of the West Indies as saying that people in Jamaica and in St Vincent roast breadfruit, while oil down is the favourite in Trinidad and Tobago and in Grenada.

Fried jackfish

In the leaflet’s recipe, the jackfish is cleaned, left for about 15 minutes in lime or lemon juice, rubbed with minced onion, chive, garlic and thyme with salt, coated in flour and fried for about four minutes a side until brown. It is served with the sliced breadfruit and, optionally, a sauce of onion, garlic, thyme and tomato. The leaflet adds that saltfish is a favourite alternative to jackfish, often served as buljol with tomatoes, sweet peppers and onions, and that tri tri, a tiny fish fried into cakes, is another popular accompaniment when in season.

A national dish and a festival

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs names roasted breadfruit and fried jack fish as the national dish in a note published on 22 February 2012, and the Ministry of Tourism and the University of the West Indies’ Open Campus centre in Kingstown give the same dish. The Breadfruit Festival, held every August during Emancipation Month, takes place in communities in North Leeward, according to the SVG Tourism Authority; the Ministry of Tourism describes weekend events in different communities across St Vincent, with breadfruit cheese pie, puffs, pizza and lasagne alongside dancing, drumming and calypso. A first-person piece in Searchlight in 2004, credited to “An NLTA Well-Wisher”, said the breadfruit dishes at the North Leeward festival included bull-jowl, jack fish, breadfruit pudding, breadfruit salad and breadfruit pie, alongside a breadfruit punch.

In Emblem World, the dish sits in the Saint Vincent and the Grenadines food collection alongside buljol and souse, where people discover and rate local food, drink and music.