Lecture 23: African and Aboriginal Cuisines
and chewed for hours. Kola nuts are supposedly quite bitter, but
they have an enormous amount of caffeine. There aren’t many African native domesticated animals, except for
guinea fowl, which were common everywhere in the Old World
until they were replaced by turkey.Changes in African Cuisine
African food doesn’t really change; it’s really only a matter of
new ingredients being used the same way. The most important
connection for east Africa was with the Middle East and,
eventually, with Persia at the time that Islam was introduced. The
most important food they introduced was rice, which joined yams
as a major staple. However, rice can only be grown in places with
enough water, so it didn’t replace millet and sorghum. Limes and other citrus fruits were also introduced from Asia. They
are still very important and are grown all over the place. Coconuts,
tropical fruits, ginger, and typical Middle Eastern spices and
fl avorings, like cumin and garlic, were also introduced. All of these
products were introduced basically because east Africa was now
linked up with the trade routes traveling across the Indian Ocean,
linking the Middle East to India and East Asia. The next major transformation came via the Portuguese, who
started exporting slaves from Africa to the New World. They also
brought New World foods to Africa. Some of these, including corn,
were immediately adopted. Corn has the advantage of being safe
from birds, unlike millet and sorghum. Even more important is
cassava, which they ground, fermented, and roasted, making gari
fl our—which is still a major staple throughout Africa. Yams were
not entirely displaced, but they were to a large extent. There are also important fl avorings introduced from America.
The most typical is peanuts, which are ground up into a kind of
peanut butter and thrown into stews. The same is true of tomatoes.
It might seem an odd combination, but tomatoes and peanuts in a