By Larry Rohter New York Times Service
SALVADOR DA BAHIA, Brazil Take a heaping of skinless black-eyed peas, pound into a paste, add onions, deep-fry in palm oil, cool and slice open. Stuff with coconut-flavored shrimp, nuts, chili peppers and cilantro - and you have acaraje, the savory, African-inspired fritter that is as integral a part of life here as soccer or samba.

But these days you also have a recipe for unending controversy.

Acaraje (pronounced uh-kar-uh-ZHAY) is inextricably linked to candomble, a mixture of Roman Catholicism and African polytheism that is the dominant faith in this lush, tropical port of 2.2 million people, Brazil's third largest city. By tradition, acaraje vendors are considered "daughters of Iansa," the candomble goddess of the wind. They dress in the same white hooped skirts and lace blouses as candomble priestesses and set up their stalls at sites said to be chosen with divine consultation.

But the dish has grown so popular in Brazil - and abroad - that traditional vendors are being pitted against newcomers in disputes involving religion, gender and race and over who has the right to make acaraje, its preparation and its sale.

In recent years, some vendors have converted to evangelical Protestant denominations and now refuse to wear the full traditional attire associated with the priestesses, particularly turbans and the jewelry that bears symbols of orixas, or deities.

"An acaraje vendor with her hair loose is not only unsanitary, it's also disrespectful to the orixas and makes my blood boil," said Regina dos Santos, 49, one of the city's best-known vendors. "I learned how to make acaraje from my grandmother, who was a priestess, at the same time that she was teaching me about candomble, and that's the way it should be." The official position of the 3,200-member acaraje vendors' guild is that people of any religion, sex or race can sell the snack, so long as their product meets sanitary standards. But that does not satisfy some candomble devotees, who take umbrage at stalls advertising "Jesus's acaraje" and want the city to enforce a 1998 law requiring vendors to wear "garments that are in accordance with the traditions of Afro-Brazilian culture."

Djalma Campos Teixeira, who described himself as a stevedore and candomble priest, is one such traditionalist. "Let the evangelicals sell hot dogs or corn on the cob if they want to, but not acaraje," he said. "If they consider acaraje 'the devil's food,' as they say, then why are they so eager to sell it?"

But the link of candomble is not the only front on which traditional vendors feel they are under siege. As opportunities to profit from acaraje have grown with increased tourism, men have moved into what has been women's domain ever since slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888.

Even today, the most popular purveyors are women, some of whom have become local celebrities known, like soccer players, by their first names: Dinha, Alcira, Regina, Dada and Lourinha, among others.

But perhaps the biggest challenge has come from Savory, a prominent food company in El Salvador that, after two years of testing, began selling powdered acaraje last month.

"We are only interested in expanding the market and making things easier for people, not in taking anything away from the vendors," said Rosane Medina, general manager of the factory that manufactures the product. "We want the housewife to know that you don't need to dress up in costume to make acaraje, that all you need to do is follow the instructions on the box." MRS. MEDINA said that acaraje vendors helped with the product and some even inquired discreetly about buying it in order to eliminate the back-breaking work of making batter. But winning the confidence of consumers who consider themselves connoisseurs is another matter.

"There is no such thing as mass-produced acaraje, and no real Bahian is ever going to patronize a stand that sells such an abominable thing," scoffed Redinilson Soares da Silva, 56, a musician.

Adding to their anxieties, established vendors say that some shopping centers are chasing them away so customers will go to indoor shops, where employees in ordinary dress serve the fritters at tables and counters, rather than from a tray at knee level, as tradition demands.

To protect themselves and their traditions, the vendors have persuaded a council member, Wanete Carvalho, to sponsor an ordinance that would prohibit the manufacture or sale of acaraje by any mercantile establishment but business groups are promising a long and bitter fight.

And there already are signs that enabling consumers to make acaraje is leading to the kind of tinkering with the recipe that even Mrs. Medina, whose factory produces the batter powder, considers heresy. She said clients have asked whether they could use soybean oil for frying, thought to contain less cholesterol than the traditional palm oil, or use mayonnaise rather than shrimp paste.

Her standard answer: "Not if you want to call it acaraje."