Womens Gold ▏Shea Butter Oil ▏ Cooking ▏

Shea butter is a multi purpose cooking oil when food grade oil is used in this baked mixed nut recipe. Using shea butter oil for cooking is healthy.

Shea butter is a fat extracted from the nut of the African shea tree. Shea Butter is rich in Vitamins A, D, E, and K and is high in essential fatty oleic, stearic, linoleic and palmitic acids. Shea Butter, also known as Women's Gold in Africa plays a very important role in cooking and earning living wages for millions of African women.

Shea butter is a multi-purpose cooking oil when food grade oil is used in the recipe. It takes approximately 20 years for a tree to bear fruit and produce nuts, maturing on average at 45 years. Most trees will continue to produce nuts for up to 200 years after reaching maturity.

Shea tree nuts

Eight African countries produce high quantities of Shea nuts; they are in order Burkina Faso, Mali, Ghana, Nigeria, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, Togo and Guinea. The nuts of shea tree can be collected and processed by crushing and grinding by hand or a machine to yield shea butter.

Shea has long been recognized for its emollient and healing properties, ideal for soothing skin in the dry climate of the region. Reports of its use go back as far as the 14th century.

African Shea Butter is made from the nut of the Shea Tree

How to use African Shea butter for cooking

Mixing Shea Butter by Hand

African shea butter has been used for centuries for cooking. Most raw and unrefined Shea butter comes from producers in Africa who export the product for further refining. Raw shea butter is butter is shea butter which has not been filtered or molded into shapes and unrefined shea butter is filtered and sometimes molded. Food grade raw shea butter oil is edible and used in many food recipes. Shea butter oil has a very strong nutty taste and scent.

African Shea Butter

Shea Butter Oil Coconut Curry Mixed Nuts Ingredients
2 tablespoons food grade raw shea butter
2 cups raw walnuts halves
1 cup raw whole almonds
1/2 cup sweet flaked coconut (optional)
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon dried curry powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Directions
Preheat the oven to 300°. Add shea butter to a 13- x 9- x 2-inch baking pan; set the pan in the oven to melt the shea butter. Remove the pan from the oven; add nuts and Worcestershire sauce to the melted shea oil. Gently stir until well mixed. Bake the nut mixture until it is toasted, stirring occasionally, about 30 minutes. Mix all spices and coconut in a small bowl. Remove the nuts from the oven and sprinkle the mixture evenly with spices. Toss until well mixed. Transfer the warm nuts to a bowl and serve immediately, or let cool and store them at room temperature in an airtight container until ready to serve.

Food grade raw shea butter is edible and used in many food recipes. Shea butter has a very strong nutty taste and scent.

AGFA ID: LX001 | Collection: Language & Foodways | Original Publication: 2018-02-01 | Archival Enhancement: 2026-02-05 | Page Views: 9,000+

Cultural Index: Ten African Food Proverbs as Systems of Knowledge

An archival collection treating food proverbs as codified cultural wisdom — preserving the philosophy, ethics, and social logic embedded in the language of sustenance.

Archival Context: Proverbs as Intangible Heritage

This entry departs from documenting tangible foodways—recipes, techniques, ingredients—to archive a dimension of intangible culinary heritage: the language and philosophy that surrounds food. African food proverbs are not merely sayings; they are dense packets of cultural logic. They encode values concerning risk, community, patience, scarcity, reciprocity, and the human condition, using the universally relatable domain of food as their medium.

Archival Principle: In many African oral traditions, proverbs are considered the "horses of conversation"—they carry meaning to its destination. This collection archives ten such "horses," focusing on the cultural knowledge they carry about food's role beyond nutrition.

Each proverb below is presented as a cultural artifact. The original text is preserved, followed by a brief archival analysis that unpacks its primary domains of wisdom—be it social ethics, risk management, or philosophical insight. The goal is not to provide a single, definitive interpretation, but to map the landscape of meaning these proverbs inhabit.

The Collection: Ten Proverbs, Analyzed

A palm wine tapper does not stop tapping palm wine because he once fell from the top of a palm wine tree.

Domains of Wisdom

Resilience & Risk: Acknowledges the inherent danger in procuring food (climbing tall trees). Persistence: Argues that failure or accident should not end a vital practice. Context: Rooted in communities where palm wine tapping is a skilled, dangerous livelihood. The proverb uses a specific food-gathering technique to teach a universal lesson about perseverance.

An onion shared with a friend tastes like roast lamb.

Domains of Wisdom

Community & Transformation: Centers the alchemy of sharing. A humble, common ingredient (onion) is sensorially and emotionally transformed through the act of generosity into something luxurious (roast lamb). Value Theory: Suggests the social context of a meal can outweigh the material quality of its components.

Rather a piece of bread with a happy heart than wealth with grief.

Domains of Wisdom

Well-being vs. Wealth: Presents a clear philosophical choice between simple sustenance with peace and abundance with misery. Food as Metaphor: Uses "bread" as a metonym for basic needs and simple living, positioning it as superior to complex, grief-laden prosperity.

A juicy bone is useless to a dog with no teeth.

Domains of Wisdom

Opportunity & Capacity: A stark observation on the disconnect between a valuable resource and the ability to utilize it. Practical Wisdom: Highlights that value is not intrinsic but relational—dependent on the condition of the receiver. Often applied to discussions of inheritance, opportunity, and preparedness.

Man is like palm-wine: when young, sweet but without strength; in old age, strong but harsh.

Domains of Wisdom

Life Stages & Metaphor: Employs the natural fermentation process of palm wine (which turns from sweet and non-alcoholic to strong, sour, and alcoholic) as a direct analogy for human aging. Observation & Acceptance: Shows deep ecological observation turned into cultural wisdom, accepting the trade-offs inherent in different phases of life.

A bowl should not laugh when a calabash breaks.

Domains of Wisdom

Solidarity & Humility: Both bowl and calabash are food containers, subject to the same fate. The proverb warns against schadenfreude or pride, emphasizing common vulnerability. Community Ethics: Reinforces interdependence, teaching that those in similar positions or trades should not revel in another's misfortune.

A child's fingers are not scalded by a piece of hot yam that his mother puts into his palm.

Domains of Wisdom

Trust & Nurture: The mother's care mediates potential harm. The child's trust in this care prevents injury. Social Transmission: This is often cited in contexts of knowledge transfer or leadership—implying that guidance given with care and authority protects the recipient from the "heat" of new responsibilities or difficult truths.

A fallen branch cannot bear fruits on its own.

Domains of Wisdom

Connection & Systems: A clear ecological truth applied to human society. The branch's potential is dependent on its connection to the tree—the larger system. Interdependence: Warns against individualism that severs community ties, stating unequivocally that such separation leads to barrenness.

A guest who breaks the dishes of his host is not soon forgotten.

Domains of Wisdom

Hospitality & Memory: Highlights the lasting weight of transgressions within the sacred space of hospitality. Social Accountability: Food and the vessels that contain it are central to hosting. To abuse them is to abuse the relationship itself, creating a long-lasting memory of disrespect that outweighs a single broken object.

A person who sells eggs does not start a fight in the market.

Domains of Wisdom

Prudence & Risk Management: This is pure, calculated wisdom for sustenance. Your livelihood (fragile eggs) dictates your behavior (avoiding conflict). Strategic Peace: It is not about cowardice, but about intelligent preservation of what is valuable and vulnerable. A foundational principle for navigating communal spaces.

Interpreting This Cultural Index: A Note on Context

These proverbs are not universal truths but context-dependent tools. Their power lies in their apt application to specific social situations. The same proverb might be used to encourage perseverance, warn against pride, or mediate a dispute, depending on the context.

Key Recurring Themes in This Collection:

• Community over Individual: The strength of the tree, the shared onion, the unbroken dish.
• Wisdom of Restraint: The egg-seller's peace, the bowl's silence.
• Transformation through Relationship: How sharing or care changes the nature of food (and experience).
• Ecological Metaphor: Human life understood through palm wine, trees, and bones.

This page archives them as a collective cultural toolkit, preserving the linguistic structures through which food-related wisdom has been transmitted for generations.

Connections to the Wider AGFA Archive

This linguistic collection intersects with tangible practices documented elsewhere in the archive:

• Explore the techniques and sensory knowledge behind specific dishes to see the practices that proverbs often comment upon.
• The archive's methodological framework details how we document both tangible and intangible food heritage.

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AGFA Preservation Note for LX001: This page, originally a popular collection of sayings, has been formally accessioned into the AGFA archive as a Cultural Index. Its 100,000+ views attest to public interest in this wisdom; this archival framing ensures the content is preserved and presented as the serious cultural knowledge system it represents.

Part of the ongoing project to preserve African culinary heritage. Proverbs preserve knowledge the way food preserves memory.