If you like making Thai food at home, or other Southeast Asian foods, you have probably used Kaffir lime fruit or leaves in your dishes. The zest and leaves are especially used in Thai cooking. As time goes by, you may stop hearing the fruit and leaves being called kaffir. Learn more about why you should perhaps avoid this name for the ingredient as well.
The other common name for the fruit is the makrut (makrud, magroot) lime plant, a shrub that is common in Southeast Asia. The most common name for the fruit and leaves in the West, Kaffir, is a derogatory term in South Africa, and it was once used by Afrikaaners as a racial slur against black Africans.
Kaffir it didn’t begin as a racist term. The word kafir means “non-believer” in the Muslim culture. When Dutch settlers arrived in Africa during the 1600s, they used the word to refer to the Bantu people or any native people. It wasn’t necessarily intended to be a racial slur. In fact, the Arabic word Kafir (كَافِر) was used to refer to any non-muslim persons.
However, in the 1900s, “kaffir” or “Kaffer” began to be used almost exclusively as a racist insult. Today, it is the worst thing you can call a non-white person in South Africa, similar to the n-word in America. It is also a common term of abuse in Western India.
People in South Africa tend to refer to kaffir lime leaves as “K-leaves.” Recipes in Thai cookbooks sometimes use the term “makrut.”
Often, they are simply called lime leaves or wild lime leaves. However, the term kaffir is still very common even in Thai cookbooks and, as of this time, there is no consensus on a replacement name.
The scientific name is Citrus hystrix and the plant is part of the Rutaccae family.They are known by various other names throughout Southeast Asia. Besides makrut in Thai, they have been known as leech lime. Other names are:
- Indonesia – jeruk purut
- Bali – juuk purut
- Malaysia – limau purut
The “kaffir” (or kieffer) name is thought to have originated hundreds of years ago. In Arabic, the word comes from the word kafara and means “infidel.”
Why it came to be applied to citrus hystrix, we cannot be certain, but it was probably meant to refer to the fruit being inferior to other limes. Although this was soon found to be an unwarranted description, the name stuck.
