The Bulawayo Cookery Book
SynopsisPlot
First published in 1909, Zimbabwe's earliest cookery book will entrance you with over 230 recipes for African delicacies: aromatic green fig preserve; savoury bobotie (a curried meat-loaf that reflects southern Africa's Malay heritage); zesty lemon pudding, and warm, spicy gingerbread. Zimbabwean originals, every one. More than fifty delightful contemporary advertisements, for long-established Zimbabwean companies like Puzey and Payne and Maskew Miller, lend vintage Edwardian style to this enchanting work. A brilliant book for anyone interested in the development of southern African cookery, or in Zimbabwean colonial history.
Story
About this book
The Bulawayo Cookery Book was first published in 1909, making it one of the earliest known cookery books from what is now Zimbabwe. Compiled by N. H. Chataway, it contains over 230 recipes that reflect the cooking traditions of southern Africa in the early twentieth century. Dishes range from green fig preserve and lemon pudding to bobotie, a curried meat loaf with roots in the Malay-influenced cooking of the southern African region. The collection documents what settlers in Bulawayo were preparing and eating during the Edwardian period, when the city was still relatively young.
Beyond the recipes, the book includes more than fifty period advertisements from companies active in the region at the time, such as Puzey and Payne and Maskew Miller. These advertisements offer a secondary record of commercial life in early colonial Bulawayo, showing which goods and services were available and how they were marketed.
Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second-largest city, was formally founded in 1894. A cookery book printed there just fifteen years later captures a particular moment in the city's development, when local foodways were being written down and organized for the first time.
