Definitions

‘It would appear’, wrote the botanist Henry Blunt in 1926, ‘that a standard scientific classification of gums is required. This would assist the trade in many ways and the buyer would be able to know what he was getting’. A hundred years later, the buyer still does not know. It is true that gum Arabic is officially ‘a dried exudation obtained from the stems and branches of natural strains of A. senegal (L.) Willdenow or closely related species of Acacia (family Leguminosae)’, a definition that the European Food Safety Authority adopted from the Codex Alimentarius Committee in 2006. At the time of writing, the Authority still has not made clear what those ‘closely related species’ might be.

Just how to classify gum Arabic has been an issue for quite some time. Colour, size, origin, the way in which picking and selection are done, the port of shipment – all of these factors were and still are criteria in determining the quality of gum. The price list of a pharmacy in Amsterdam from 1734 includes twenty-five varieties of gum, harvested both locally and abroad. Gum Arabic is one of them. ‘Gum from Africa’, ‘gum of Senega’ and ‘gum vermiculatum’ are listed, at various prices. Pierre Pomet's widely used pharmacopeia listed Turick gum (which had dropped from the tree during the rainy season and was therefore less pure, but served very well for ‘silk dyers’), vermicular gum (notably good for treacle), chibou gum (from the Arabian gum tree) and English gum (mostly used by hairdressers and hatmakers). All of these counted as gum Arabic, although the ‘real’ variety had grown scarce since gum from Senegal had become more easily available. The real gum, that was supposed to come from the Orient, was more expensive than gum from the Senegal river, but it was impossible to know which type one was buying. And Pomet thought it hardly mattered.

Indeed, Father Labat remarked, ‘One thing that I can say for certain, and that is in line with what capable and impartial people think, is that gum from Arabia and that from Senegal are so similar that only the greediest traders can tell the difference’.