Africa: South Africa Unassessed

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The Cape Dutch cookery style owes at least as much to the cookery of the slaves brought by the Dutch East India Company to the Cape from Bengal, Java and Malaysia as it does to the European styles of cookery imported by settlers, and this is reflected in the use of eastern spices and the names given to many of these dishes.

It is actually a common (and mistaken) assumption that the slaves brought the spices to the Cape. While it may seem obvious to think that the Indonesian slaves introduced this food it's actually not true. Firstly, when the Dutch first started their trading station in Cape Town in 1652, spices from the Far East were already part of their food culture, as can be seen in 'Een Notabel Boeck van Cokeryen' (c 1510). After all, the whole reason they wanted this trading station was as a halfway point en route to the East to get more of these coveted spices. So, it was the Dutch, not the Malay/Indonesian slaves who introduced spices to South Africa.

Moreover, it seems odd that the slaves would decide what their master would eat, wouldn't it? The truth was that the Dutch lady of the house would explain to the cook what to make. In fact, in an old diary entry by a traveller to Cape Town in Colonial times the kitchen maid explained that she was 'taught to cook in the 'Old Dutch Way'.

(source: Die Geskiedenis van Boerekos, H.W. Claassens, Doctoral Thesis, University of Pretoria, 2003)

In page references? The section about restaurants is pretty ill thought and badly written. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 146.231.129.54 (talk) 15:03, 1 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]