Skip to main content
Support

Browse by category

All categories
Home

Roots and tubers from Côte d'Ivoire

Attiékéattiéké

Fresh cassava is grated with about a tenth of its weight of magnan, a starter made from cooked cassava kept in a used jute bag, and left overnight to sour. The pulp is pressed, rubbed into granules, dried and steamed into soft, separate grains like couscous.

Fully documentedRoots and tubers3.5 days – 3.6 days

Recipe

Attiéké, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Serein, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceTraditional process with no fixed batch size. Producers inoculate the grated pulp with about 10 % magnan; the amounts above describe that ratio, not a weighed recipe.
Fresh cassava rootsPeeled, cut, washed and grated[nimaga2012]
Magnan (traditional inoculum)About 10 % of the pulpCooked cassava roots kept three days in an unwashed jute bag used for earlier magnan[coulin2006][nimaga2012]
Palm oilA littleAdded at grating in the trial recipe[nimaga2012]
Starterback-slop: magnan, a traditional cassava inoculum

Total time across the recorded steps: 3.5 days – 3.6 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countLactic acid bacteriaYeastspH 5StarchSugarAlcoholCO₂

What changes: Cooked cassava sours for three days in an old jute bag and becomes the magnan starter

Step 1 of 7
Make the magnan
Time
3 days
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
pH 5
Measured
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Yeasts
Bacillus cereus
L. mesenteroides
Lactobacillus salivarius

Magnan held aerobic mesophiles at about 8.2 × 10^7 cfu/g, with lactic acid 0.2 % and acetic acid 0.1 %. Output: magnan (starter).

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

the old bag seeds the cooked roots with lactic bacteria and yeasts

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

Fresh cassava is grated with about a tenth of its weight of magnan, a starter made from cooked cassava kept in a used jute bag, and left overnight to sour. The pulp is pressed, rubbed into granules, dried and steamed into soft, separate grains like couscous. Made in 7 steps over 3.5 days – 3.6 days. The longest step, make the magnan, takes 3 days (Nimaga D 2012). Leuconostoc mesenteroides and At the end: Lactobacillus salivarius 20 %, L. delbrueckii 16 %, L. fermentum 12 %, L. confusus 10 % of lactic bacteria do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step3 daysReported[nimaga2012]Make the magnan
AciditypH 4.4–4.6Measured[coulin2006][kouame2020]Steam

What makes this one different

Attiéké is started on purpose with magnan, so it sours in about 12 to 15 hours. Gari is made without an inoculum, sours for days and is roasted dry, while attiéké is steamed and stays soft and moist.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Attiéké garbaA lower-quality attiéké with incomplete fermentation, made by shortening the normal process. It is described as a sticky product with a lot of fibre and a more acidic taste.

Safety

Fermentation, pressing and steaming cut hydrocyanic acid (cyanide) from 116 mg/kg in the roots to 3.4 mg/kg in attiéké in one study, below the 10 mg/kg Codex level the authors cite. In that study steaming removed every microbe found except Bacillus cereus spores, which fell to about 10^2 cfu/g, but all of them reappeared right after packaging, though below the Codinorm standard. In another study microbial quality was already unsatisfactory after three days at room temperature, so eat it soon.

Hazards the sources name: Bacillus cereus spores survive steaming (about 10^2 cfu/g); counts of 10^5 cfu/g or more in attiéké garba sold in Daloa; Staphylococcus aureus in intermediate products, reduced during fermentation and pressing; Enterobacter sakazakii (Cronobacter) and Klebsiella pneumoniae carried in with the magnan, cut to under 10^2 cfu/g by the acid at the end of fermentation.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The word attiéké comes from adjèkè in the Ebrié language; Bambara transporters made it atchèkè and French settlers wrote it attiéké (Ouitona). Ebrié women once told apart the adjèkè sold at market from the ahi eaten at home. In 1979 the Société Ivoirienne de Technologie Tropicale (I2T) was created to modernise attiéké production.

  1. [coulin2006] Coulin P., Farah Z., Assanvo J., Spillmann H., Puhan Z. 2006, Characterisation of the microflora of attiéké, a fermented cassava product, during traditional small-scale preparation, Int J Food Microbiol 106:131–136, doi:10.1016/j.ijfoodmicro.2005.06.012paper
  2. [djeni2011] Djeni N.T., N'Guessan K.F., Toka D.M., Kouame K.A., Dje K.M. 2011, Quality of attieke (a fermented cassava product) from the three main processing zones in Côte d'Ivoire, Food Res Int 44:410–416, doi:10.1016/j.foodres.2010.09.032paper
  3. [nimaga2012] Nimaga D., Tetchi F.A., Kakou C.A., Nindjin C., Amani N.G. 2012, Influence of traditional inoculum and fermentation time on the organoleptic quality of "attiéké", Food Nutr Sci 3(10), doi:10.4236/fns.2012.310176paper
  4. [kouame2020] Kouamé A.K., Bouatenin M.J.K., Djéni T.N., Dje K.M. 2020, Identification of hazards and critical control points during attiéké (a fermented cassava product) process in Côte d'Ivoire, Lett Appl Microbiol 70:87–94, doi:10.1111/lam.13247paper
  5. [kouassi2022] Kouassi K.A., Attien Y.P., Assohoun-Djeni N.M.C. et al. 2022, Evaluation of the contamination by bacteria of the Bacillus cereus group and the determination of some physico-chemical parameters of Attiéké garba sold in Daloa (Central West, Côte d'Ivoire), J Food Sci Technol 59:397–401, doi:10.1007/s13197-021-05026-3paper
  6. [ouitona-afrik] Ouitona M., Les secrets de l'attiéké : histoire et variétés, Afrik.comweb