Meaning
Small, round, pea-like green berries — turkey berry, also called 'gully beans' — with a distinctive, much-loved bitter taste. Susumba is cooked with ackee and saltfish and in other dishes, prized for the bitterness it lends and reputed to carry real health benefits. The little berries grow in clusters on a prickly bush and are gathered and sold by the cupful in the market, a traditional country food whose sharp bitter note is an acquired but cherished part of certain classic Jamaican dishes.
Examples
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Add some susumba to di ackee an saltfish.
Add some susumba to the ackee and saltfish.
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Susumba bitter but plenty people love it.
Susumba is bitter but plenty of people love it.
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Dem pick di gully beans from di bush.
They picked the susumba berries from the bush.
Origin
Of African derivation; 'susumba' (turkey berry, Solanum torvum) is a small bitter berry used in Jamaican cooking, also called gully beans.
How it’s used
A bitter berry eaten cooked, classically with ackee and saltfish. Also 'gully beans'.