Dishes
Citation Formats
General Reference
APA Style
BibTeX
Bobotie is a Cape Malay dish of spiced minced meat, traditionally lamb or beef, baked under a savory egg based custard topping and often studded with dried fruit. Its exact age is not settled by the sources: food writers describe two competing theories for the dish's name, one tracing it to the Indonesian dish bobotok, the other to the Malay word boemboe, a container of curry spices, and no source traced in this research fixes a confident founding date, though the dish is understood to have developed among the Cape Malay community descended from people enslaved and exiled to the Cape by the Dutch East India Company from the 1650s onward.
Facts
Origin Period, From (Year)Sourced to the subject's own accountMarks the first known bobotie recipe, printed in a Dutch cookbook; the dish was later carried to the Cape of Good Hope, where it was adopted by the Cape Malay community. Origin RegionThe Cape Colony, South Africa, among the Cape Malay community. 2 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Food writers offer two distinct, unresolved theories for the name bobotie. One holds it derives from the Indonesian dish bobotok, a coconut based dish adapted with substitute ingredients under conditions of enslavement at the Cape. The other holds it derives from the Malay word boemboe, meaning a container of curry spices, a naming account about the dish savory spice mixture rather than about a parent dish. Coverage of the dish history is candid that no source firmly fixes how old the dish actually is, with one food magazine writer stating outright that a concrete source for its age has not been found.
A dissenting reading, from an independent laneSouth Africa's Most Important Dish, Bobotie, Is Also Its Most Historical (Fodor's Travel), Fodor's Travel
Reader Challenges (0 open reader challenges)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.
View At A Past Year
The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.