The bottle gourd, also called calabash, Jonah, pilgrim, club or trumpet gourd, is one of the oldest cultivated plants in the world. It is easy to cultivate and, because of its varied and unusual shapes, it is not only used for consumption, but also serves as a raw material for making vessels, musical instruments or other handicrafts.
This is what you should know about the bottle gourd.
The flesh of the plant contains numerous healthy ingredients, valuable vitamins and minerals. Like most pumpkin varieties, the bottle gourd is an annual climbing plant. It probably originated in Africa and is particularly native to tropical and subtropical areas. The oldest finds in Central America document that the plant was already used there in the 8th millennium BC. Its fruits grow in a wide variety of sizes and shapes, usually resembling bottles or pears, and were often used as waterproof containers. Young fruits, whose skin is still soft and slightly hairy, are suitable for consumption and can be harvested continuously. Especially in Asia they are used for summer vegetables or even curries. The flesh is white, watery, and has a delicate, mild flavor. Also edible are the climbing shoot tips of the plant, as well as its shelled seeds. Plants can be pre-pulled from mid to late April on a windowsill or in a greenhouse and planted out around mid-May. Care should be taken to ensure a sunny location and sufficient space, including upwards, as the tendrils can grow up to two meters high. When the fruits become bare and hard, they are no longer edible, but can be dried and made into a variety of utensils or decorative items. Dried bottle gourds are very strong, waterproof and even heat and frost resistant. Therefore, this material was used thousands of years ago for water and storage vessels. Thus, the bottle gourd was also cultivated in Austrian wine-growing regions and used as a wine lifter. In South America, it was decorated and carved by the Incas, a technique still found today in Peru. Equally traditional is its use as a vessel for South American mate tea. Very common is also the processing of dried bottle gourds to various wind- plucking and percussion instruments, especially in South America, Africa and India.
Importance for health
The pumpkin has developed, not without reason, from the former poor man’s food to a popular and, above all, very health-promoting food source. The flesh of the plant contains numerous healthy ingredients, valuable vitamins and minerals and is very low in calories due to its high water content and low carbohydrates. In particular, the water content is even higher in the bottle gourd than in other varieties, averaging 96% in the edible young fruit. Steamed pumpkin flesh is generally considered to be very digestible, easy to digest and high in fiber, which makes it a well-suited low- and reduced-calorie diet. Due to its low sodium content, it is also dehydrating and diuretic, so pumpkin is popular for treating bladder and kidney ailments, as well as high blood pressure. As a strong alkalizing food it is also a very popular food in the field of deacidification and purification or the so-called alkaline diet. The bottle gourd in particular is of great medical importance, especially in Asia, where the ripe fruit is used against fever and nausea, as well as for dehydration. In the tropics, the leaves, flowers and seeds of the plant are also used for a wide variety of medicinal purposes, including jaundice and burns or as a laxative.
Ingredients and nutritional values
| Nutritional information |
Amount per 100 gram |
| Calories 14 | Fat content 0 g |
| Cholesterol 0 mg |
Sodium 2 mg |
| Potassium 150 mg | Carbohydrates 3.4 g |
| Dietary fiber 0.5 g |
Protein 0.6 g |
Like most types of squash, bottle gourd is very low in carbohydrates and calories due to its high water content, but at the same time it is rich in potassium, calcium and other valuable nutrients and vitamins, especially vitamin C.
100g of bottle gourd contain about 4.8 μg vitamin A, 10.1 mg vitamin C, 26 mg calcium, 0.2 mg iron and 11 mg magnesium to name. Bottle gourd seeds contain about 1% steroids, 35-50% oil, 25-40% protein and 10% carbohydrates.
Intolerances and allergies
Pumpkin vegetables are generally known to be low in histamine, which makes allergies and intolerances rather rare. However, as with other cucurbits, the risk of allergy comes in the form of cross-allergy. This means that people who are allergic to pollen are often allergic to certain foods in parallel. This occurs with pumpkin especially in combination with allergies to grasses, plantain, mugwort and olive tree. Pumpkin seeds can also trigger allergies, this affects people who are also allergic to other seeds, nuts or sumac plants (mango, pistachio, pink pepper), or people who are in daily contact with pumpkin seeds at work.
Shopping and kitchen tips
Fresh bottle gourds are hard to find in ordinary stores in Central and Northern Europe, but with a little luck they can be found in Asian delicatessens and specialty stores. However, the far more readily available seeds of the plant can be grown quite easily in your own garden. Here, the young fruits, as well as the shoot tips (with 2 to 3 leaves) are harvested continuously and cooked as a vegetable. When the pumpkin is mature, its skin becomes woody and very hard, in this state the fruit is no longer edible, but can be dried and processed into a variety of items. In addition to the usual processing as a vegetable, the pulp can also be dried; in Japan, for example, small edible wrappers for finger foods are made in this way. The seeds of the plant can also be dried or processed, for example ground into a kind of curd. Oil can of course also be extracted from them by pressing. A somewhat different, but no less important, role in the kitchen is played by the dried bottle gourd. The mate tea, which is especially widespread in South America, is traditionally drunk from the stem end of a dried calabash. Once dried, these vessels have a very long shelf life, usually decades.
Preparation tips
For consumption, as already mentioned, only the young fruits of the bottle gourd are suitable. Here, just as with all other types of pumpkin, there are no limits to creativity. The soft flesh can either be simply fried in a pan, for example in curries, or baked in oil, as in old Italian recipes for “cucurbita fricta”. The fresh calabash can also be used for preparation in the oven, alone or stuffed, as well as for numerous traditional or exotic mashed dishes. If you want to get fancy, you can turn the cooked pumpkin into a puree and use it as a filling for a pumpkin pie, along with eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla and ginger.
