In central India today, peddlers push carts up and down the streets and call out the word "Soppu" to the housewives. They are selling a deep green vegetable that looks like a kind of spinach.
When I first heard the word soppu I was told it is a shortened, regional version of the word asafoetida. Asafoetida [spelled many different ways, such as asafoetaeda] is a kind of green, leafy vegetable in its original form. Most of the time it is used in its dried form as a flavoring.
The word has interesting origins. The asa part is Persian and means 'resin.' The foetida part is Latin and has the same root as the English word fetid--meaning 'smelling like decaying material.' The ingredient that is cooked is the resin of a plant that grows mostly to the northwest of India. It is so smelly until it is cooked that extra effort must be made to keep it in closed containers. Once it is thoroughly cooked it blends in well and imparts a taste to the dish very similar to sauteed garlic or onion. It also has the ability to make bean dishes more digestible. Some Indians call it hing.
There do not seem to be any ancient historic references, no ayurvedic or Chinese medical texts in English which refer to asafoetida as an aphrodisiac. It is assumed that Alexander the Great brought asafoetida from India to the West. In addition to use as a cure for flatulence, its strong, unpleasant odor makes it useful to scare away pests, such as snakes, and to shock the user into a cure for alcoholism. In Jamaica, asafoetida is traditionally applied to a baby's anterior fontanelle (Jamaican patois "mole") in order to prevent spirits (Jamaican patois "duppies") from entering the baby through the fontanelle.
It wasn't until much later that I learned that soppu is not asafoetida at all, not by a long stretch. Asafoetida oozes out of its mother plant when cut by the farmer, much like opium oozes out of the poppy plant (both of which grow in Afghanistan). The resin is dried, usually ground into a powder, then combined with some non-active filler material. Soppu is a simpler vegetable which grows and is treated like spinach.
Most forms of spinach in the West are quite soft and have soft, flexible stalks. Indian soppu has a hard stalk.
After much labor, I struck a useful vein of information. There are at least two forms of soppu. The form sold by peddlers on the streets to average Moms is dantin soppu. There is a separate form of soppu, Garagada soppu, that is alleged to have aphrodisiac qualities.
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