The Congo Cookbook’s sauce recipes are for sauces in the European-American sense: a preparation that is served with food as a condiment or used as a marinade. Dishes that are really more of a soup or stew than a sauce are still called a “Sauce” to conform with the traditional African nomenclature; these “Sauce” recipes (e.g., Palaver Sauce appear in the Soup and Stew category.
Sauce Recipes
Most of the dishes are boiled
Richard Francis Burton
Richard Francis Burton (19th century traveler, writer, and translator) wrote of soups and stews in the African meal in Wanderings in West Africa (New York: Dover Publications, Inc, 1991; originally published by Tinsley Brothers, London, 1863). In the first sentence, Burton gives the “Anglicé” (i.e., English) names for Western African foods: obeoka = fowl; nda = fish; fufu = mashed yam; fula = soup; and tomeneru = tombo, or palm-wine.
. . . breakfast is served. It is a little dinner, ordinarily consisting of obeoka, nda, fufu, fula and tomeneru,–Anglicé, fowl, fish, mashed yam, soup i.e. (the liquid in which stews have been boiled), and tombo, or palm-wine the latter however, hard, tasting like soapsuds, and very intoxicating. The cooking is excellent, when English dishes are not attempted. … Most of the dishes are boiled, and copiously peppered with cayenne and green chili pods to induce thirst. There are many savoury messes of heterogeneous compounds, fish, fresh and dried, oysters, clams, and cockles, poultry, goat and deer, salt beef or ship’s pork, yams, plantains and palm oil. Smoked shrimps are pounded in a wooden pestle and mortar, with mashed yam for consistency, and are put into the soup like forcemeat balls.
A dinner similar to breakfast is eaten at 4 to 5 P.M. Soup and stews are the favorite ménu, and mashed yam acts as a substitute for bread. It is also made into a spoon by a deep impression of the thumb, and thus it carries a thimblefull of soup with every mouthful of yam. The evening is passed with the aid of music, chatting with the women, and playing with the children.
(Volume II, Chapter X, Bonny River to Fernando Po)