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Fermentation Atlas

Sauces and condiments from Brazil

Tucupitucupi

The yellow juice pressed from grated bitter cassava is left to settle out its starch, then the liquid sours for about half a day to a day while lactic bacteria take over and part of the cyanide escapes. Boiling with garlic, herbs and salt drives off most of the rest and gives a sour, savoury yellow broth. Made in 6 steps over 51 days – 52 days. The longest step, cool, bottle and keep cold, takes up to 50 days (Campos A.P.R 2019) and runs at 10 °C (Campos A.P.R 2019). Lactobacillus fermentum and Weissella do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main stepup to 50 daysMeasured[campos2019]Cool, bottle and keep cold
Temperature10 °CMeasured[campos2019]Cool, bottle and keep cold
AciditypH 3.7Measured[campos2019]Cool, bottle and keep cold
Fully documentedSauces and condiments51 days – 52 daysMore sauces and condimentsMore from Brazil

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceThe seasoning amounts are the shares used in the Embrapa pilot process (Campos et al. 2019), given as percent of the fermented juice. Family workshops season by eye; one in Vigia de Nazaré makes about 1440 L of tucupi a month.
Manipueira · The juice pressed from grated yellow-fleshed bitter cassava; about 300 L comes from 1000 kg of roots[embrapa2013]
0.5 %Garlic[campos2019]
0.5 %Salt[campos2019]
0.8 %Chicória (Eryngium foetidum)[campos2019]
0.8 %Alfavaca (basil)[campos2019]
Starterspontaneous

Total time across the recorded steps: 51 days – 52 days

Start
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Close-up: water moving into a piece

What changes: Peeled bitter cassava roots soak in water before grating

Step 1 of 6
Peel, wash and soak the roots
Time
12 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Weissella
Lactobacillus fermentum
L. plantarum
Weissella dominant
Lactobacillus dominant

Output: soaked, peeled bitter cassava.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

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

What makes this one different

Tucupi is made from the juice, not the pulp, of bitter cassava. It ferments for only about a day and then must be boiled, while gari and fufu ferment the grated or soaked root itself for days.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Tucupi powderSpray-dried with maltodextrin; the optimised trial used 214 °C inlet air and 27 % maltodextrin.
  • Starter-culture tucupiJuice inoculated with Pediococcus acidilactici kept Lactobacillus dominant and cut Bacillus and Enterococcus in a 24 h trial.

Safety

Bitter cassava juice is cyanogenic. Embrapa trials found that 24 h of fermentation and 10 min of boiling took total cyanide below 10 mg HCN/L, but 22 market samples in Belém held 8.87–114.66 mg/L total HCN and up to 66.8 mg/L histamine, so short boiling is a real risk. Pará's standard (ADEPARÁ Normative Instruction 1/2008) sets pH 3.5–4.3 and 0.1–0.8 g lactic acid per 100 mL, and requires the absence of Salmonella, coagulase-positive staphylococci and Bacillus cereus.

Hazards the sources name: Bacillus cereus, Salmonella and coagulase-positive Staphylococcus (the Pará standard requires their absence; none were found in the Embrapa product).

History and sources

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

Tucupi is a staple of Pará cooking and a by-product of farinha making; families and small agroindustries in Pará bottle it for markets such as Ver-o-Peso, and demand roughly doubles prices during the Círio de Nazaré in October.

  1. [campos2016] Campos A.P.R., Carvalho A.V., Mattietto R.A. 2016, Efeito da fermentação e cocção nas características físico-químicas e teor de cianeto durante o processamento de tucupi, Embrapa Amazônia Oriental, Boletim de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento 107gov
  2. [campos2019] Campos A.P.R., Mattietto R.A., Carvalho A.V. 2019, Optimization of parameters technological to process tucupi and study of product stability, Food Science and Technology 39(2), doi:10.1590/fst.30817paper
  3. [conformity2022] Embrapa Amazônia Oriental, Avaliação da conformidade do tucupi comercializado em Belém, PA, paper for CBCTA 2022 (cites ADEPARÁ Instrução Normativa nº 1, 24 June 2008)paper
  4. [embrapa2013] Embrapa Amazônia Oriental, Fabricação artesanal de derivados de mandioca, tucupi e goma (case study of a family workshop in Vigia de Nazaré, Pará), Portal Dia de Campo, 2013gov
  5. [brito2022] Brito B.N.C., Chisté R.C., Lopes A.S., Gloria M.B.A., Chagas Junior G.C.A., Pena R.S. 2022, Lactic acid bacteria and bioactive amines identified during manipueira fermentation for tucupi production, Microorganisms 10:840paper
  6. [brito2023] Brito B.N.C., Martins M.G., Chisté R.C., Lopes A.S., Gloria M.B.A., Pena R.S. 2023, Total and free hydrogen cyanide content and profile of bioactive amines in commercial tucupi, Foods 12:4333paper
  7. [brito2019] do Carmo Brito B.N., Chisté R.C., Lopes A.S., Gloria M.B.A., Pena R.S. 2019, Influence of spontaneous fermentation of manipueira on bioactive amine and carotenoid profiles during tucupi production, Food Research International 120:209–216, doi:10.1016/j.foodres.2019.02.040 (abstract)paper
  8. [bricio2026] Brício D.G., Gloria M.B.A., Bitencourt J.A.P. et al. 2026, Metagenomic and biogenic amine changes in cassava fermentation for tucupi production using Pediococcus acidilactici starter culture, Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, doi:10.1002/jsfa.70350 (abstract)paper
  9. [pires2017] Pires F.C.S., da Silva Pena R. 2017, Optimization of spray drying process parameters for tucupi powder using the response surface methodology, J Food Sci Technol 54:3459–3472paper