Carob pod and seeds.
LIKE ITS LEGUME RELATIVE ACACIA, carob (Ceratonia siliqua) is best known as the source of a food additive, locust bean gum, and as a substitute for chocolate. For these reasons, it is cultivated on a large scale in Mediterranean climates and is the basis of a multimillion-dollar industry. Quite a contrast to the way carob is presented in the Bible: food for pigs.
The carob tree is mentioned only once in the Bible, where fruits (“pods”) are fodder for swine and become food for the Prodigal Son: “He longed to fill his stomach with the pods that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything” (Luke 15:16, NIV). The Greek word for carob is keration, from which the Latin name of the genus, Ceratonia, is derived. While “pods” could also apply to species of Acacia, the habitat of Acacia is too dry for swine culture.
A single reference to carob suggests that the tree might not have been well known on the biblical landscape. But carob is one of the most common and widespread trees in the Mediterranean region. A medium-sized, many-branched, evergreen tree, carob is a member of the legume family, which includes such familiar plants as peas, beans, and sweet pea. But unlike those legumes, the flowers of carob are very small, inconspicuous, and unisexual. The fruit is a pod-like structure about 15 centimeters (6 inches) long and contains about 10 hard seeds. The word “carat” is apparently derived from the Latin name of this tree, because the uniform size of the carob seeds was once used as a standard measure of weight, a carat, for material of great value. Today, the pods themselves have great value.
Mature fruits of carob near Ramallah, Palestinian Territories. At this stage, the carob fruits are harvested.
Unlike many trees in the Middle East, carob exhibits cauliflory, the production of flowers directly from the trunk of the tree. Botanical Garden, Stellenbosch University, South Africa.
The walls of the pod and the partitions in the fruit contain high concentrations of sugar and proteins that are the commercial source of carob, often used as a substitute for cocoa. Locust bean gum, a common food additive, is derived from the endosperm of the seed. Local people in the Middle East boil the indehiscent (nonopening), hard fruits into a kind of dark syrup that is much like maple syrup. I find the taste delicious, sweet, and molasses-like.
In fact, instead of a chocolate substitute, this tree, which is common in the Middle East, was a food source for hogs in biblical times—hardly a commendation for a plant that is one of the better-known modern health foods.