A primitive artefact of ancient origins, the wooden pestle was already being used in agriculture to crush certain foodstuffs in the time of Colonial Brazil, such as corn and coffee. To make them, trunks of hardwoods – such as manilkara, peroba, black cinnamon, guatambu and lime tree – were excavated with fire, and the pestle handle was made with a piece of wood. The height of a pestle varied from 30 to 70cm, and its handle averaged 60cm to 1.2m.
With regard to Brazilian rural culture, it can be said that all the houses in the rural areas used some type of pestle. Researchers say that this tool must have been copied from the Arabs. In 1638, in the grounds near the kitchen doors, there was a record of the use of pestles in the preparation of manioc flour and sesame seed oil, which replaced olive oil.
Câmara Cascudo (1954) points out that the pestle is a kind of club or pounder made of hardwood, like sucupira [Pterodon emarginatus], with one or two mouths and various sizes, from small ones, to crush seasonings, to large ones, for dehusking and crushing corn, coffee, rice, etc.
According to the folklorist (2004),
In Africa, the spices of raw plants are made in the pestle. In Brazil, corn was its classic customer. The pulp for couscous, canjicão, corn cake, beating to ‘remove the garlic’ were services of pestle... The rice of the earth, reddish, was dehulled in the pestle. There were several ways to remove the shell without breaking the grain. Coffee, after being roasted in a skillet – a shallow clay pan, was to be pounded. Like corn. They ground for hours and hours. These operations were entrusted to women. Almost always two, in the same mortar, alternating strokes, and singing.
Certain foods, such as corn and sorghum, were broken and ground in large mortars. With the smaller ones, cashews nut and peanuts (for caril or paçoca [peanut brittle]), as well as seasonings (garlic, pepper and cumin), were consumed in small quantities, to maintain a better flavour.
Corn was broken with the mortar and pestle to make xerém, a traditional dish from Northeast Brazil. Cooked in water and salt, xerém is eaten with dried meat (sundried meat of jerky) and/or with sausages. Many Northeasterners prefer to prepare it as dessert, cooked with water and salt, coconut milk, sugar, and sprinkled with cinnamon (once cooled).
In the candomblé terreiros in Bahia, corn was ground in a large mortar to prepare the quitutes served to the Mothers and Fathers-of-Saint (the acaçá and the aberém). Beans were also broken in them to prepare abará, acarajé and omolucum. With a small pestle, seasonings were ground to cook the haussá rice and efó. Over the centuries, therefore, this domestic utensil has always been widely used in Bahia cuisine.
It should also be remembered that in the north of Brazil, one of the traditional dishes is piracuí (also called ‘fish sand’), which is prepared with roasted fish in the oven and then grounded.
In the kitchen, utensils like the pestle had an importance for the black and indigenous peoples of which the Portuguese knew not, through other means of crushing in the mortar. It gave an unforgettable flavour to foods prepared this way. Pounded coffee could never be compared to machine-ground coffee, with popular opinion longing for the irreplaceable pestle. Paçoca [peanut brittle] demanded the pestle, on pain of not being true paçoca. In Africa, crushing raw plants was done with the pestle. In Brazil, corn was its classic customer. The pulp for couscous, canjica, and corn cake, the grains were beaten to “remove their eyes” with the pestle (LIMA, 1999, p.50).
The trip hammer (monjolo), a rudimentary utensil consisting of two parts – the pestle and the stem – and where the rod is moved through a system similar to that of a scale, can be operated by hydraulic means.
The English mineralogist John Mawe, during his stay in Brazil (1807-1810), described the trip hammer as follows:
On the riverbank is a large wooden pestle, whose hand is seated at the end of a lever, twenty-five to thirty feet long, resting on a crossbar at five-eighths of its length, around which it oscillates. The end of the shorter arm of this lever is excavated so as to hold enough water to lift the other end to which the hand of the pestle is attached. The weight of the water causes the spoon to come down and empty until it reaches a certain point. With the alternate filling and discharging, this cavity causes the lifting and dropping of the hand of the pestle, which amounts to four times per minute. (SCHMIDT, 1967).
Various corn-derived food products – such as cornmeal and cornflour – were produced by the crushing of trip hammers. They had the ability to punch up to thirty litres of corn in an hour and a half, and the popular expression was often heard: only the trip hammer works for free!
Through the inventories of the 19th century, it was possible to arrive at the description of trip hammers and at the level of technical development achieved with the use of these devices. The scholars reiterate that it was Brás Cubas – a Portuguese nobleman and explorer who had been in Asia with Martim Afonso de Souza – who brought the first trip hammer from China and installed it in the lands of São Vicente. The Indians called this machine enguaguaçu, which means large pestle. The word monjolo must have Sanskrit origin, coming from musala – pestle to peel rice, and its improvement occurred around the 18th century.
Besides being ecologically correct, trip hammers were fundamental for rural work during the 18th, 19th and most of the 20th century. It took a range of technical know-how in engineering, carpentry and smithery to build them.
In the past, the trip hammer was a rustic artefact made only of wood, and did not use any piece of metal in its structure. There were several types of trip hammers: hydraulic, standing, wheel, hammer and tail. In the standing trip hammer, for example, the individual would stand on top of the wood so that the axis would be between his two feet, and when he pressed on the tip of the wood, the pylon would rise and then descend. In Europe, and especially in Portugal, a different foot trip hammer was also used, where the force to suspend the mallet (or hand of the pylon) was the very weight of the person responsible for moving it.
There was also manual pestle in regions where there was not much water. Their use may seem to be an inheritance of the indigenous culture, and for this reason, the association of the trip hammer to that culture is common. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda points out, however, that the trip hammer was unknown to the natives. According to the historian, based on travellers’ reports, the machine arrived in the 16th century from Japan, China and Indochina, where it was used to dehull rice.
Large pestles were moved by several people at the same time. Each one, with their handle, would hit the grains alternately. Even today, trip hammers can be found in the interior of the country with the same format and operating principle that they have had for millennia in their country of origin. There are other models of hydraulic trip hammers and those moved by animal power (called tails).
Very popular in Africa, the mortar and pestle is one of the presents offered to the spouses in the southern region of Mozambique the day after the wedding, in a ceremony called xiguiane.
Today, with the great technological development, other machines – motorised or electric – have come to replace these devices, making life easier for people. On the other hand, they contribute to environmental degradation.
The pestle has been recorded in Northeast folk music. With lyrics by Zé Dantas and music and song by Luiz Gonzaga, there are the songs Cintura fina [Thin Waist] and Pisa no pilão [Stand on the Pestle]. They are transcribed below.
Cintura Fina
Minha morena, venha pra cá,
Pra dançar xote, se deitar em meu cangote,
E poder cochilar,
Tu és mulher pra homem nenhum,
Botar defeito, e por isso satisfeito,
Com você eu vou dançar.
Vem cá, cintura fina, cintura de pilão
Cintura de menina, vem cá meu coração
Quando eu abraço essa cintura de pilão,
Fico frio, arrepiado, quase morro de paixão,
E fecho os olhos quando sinto o teu calor,
Pois teu corpo só foi feito pros cochilos do amor.
Thin waist
My brunette, come here,
To dance xote, rest your head on my shoulder,
And you can nap,
You are the woman that no man,
can find a defect, and for this satisfied,
With you I’ll dance.
Come here, thin waist, pestle waist
Girl’s waist, here comes my heart.
When I hug this pestle waist,
I get chills, shivering, almost die of passion,
And I close my eyes when I feel your heat,
For your body was made only for love naps.
Pisa no Pilão
Oi tum tum tum, joga as ancas pra frente e pra trás,
Oi tum tum tum, finca a mão no pilão bate mais.
Se janeiro é mes de chuva, fevereiro é pra plantar,
Em março o milho cresce, em abril vai pendoar,
Em maio tá bonecando, no São João tá bom de assar,
Mas em julho o milho tá seco e é tempo, morena, da gente pilar...
Step on the Pestle
Hi tum tum tum, throw your hips back and forth,
Hi tum tum tum, put your hand on the pestle beat more.
If January is the rainy month, February is to plant,
In March the corn grows, in April it will blister,
In May it is denting, at São João it is good to roast,
But in July the corn is dry and it’s time, brunette, for us to pestle...
In Northeast handicrafts, it is possible to find mortars and pestles of wood, clay, soapstone, ox horn, in open-air markets, public markets or artistic stores. The pestle worked as a go-between for the food exchanges between the indigenous, Africans and Europeans, the union of various paths and life experiences, ethnicities, cultures, and the miscegenation of tastes, forms and aromas. Although outdated due to technological advances, this tool remains present in the Brazilian popular imagination.
Recife, 17 December 2008.
Translated by Peter Leamy, December 2016.
sources consulted
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how to quote this text
Fonte: VAINSENCHER, Semira Adler. Pilão e Monjolo. Pesquisa Escolar Online, Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife. Disponível em: <https://pesquisaescolar.fundaj.gov.br/en/>. Acesso em: dia mês ano. Ex: 6 ago. 2009