Leipoldt was born on 28 December 1880 in Worcester and died on 12 April 1947. He was an amazingly versatile man, and it is no exaggeration to call him poet, playwright, paediatrician, botanist, journalist, novelist, cook and connoisseur of food and wine.
He spent his formative years in Worcester and Clanwilliam, where his father worked as a minister in the Rhenish church.
Leipoldt’s severe mother forbade her children to mingle with the town folk, thus the young Louis found himself confined to the precincts of the home. He found company in Maria the Malay cook who taught him the art of preparing tasty, slow-cooked food. Added to this was an intense interest in pharmacopoeiasand experimenting with herbs in food became an avid interest.
Probably best remembered as the quintessentially Afrikaans poet (probably remembered best for "Oktobermaand" and "In die konsentrasiekamp") Leipoldt is also famous as the pre-eminent authority on traditional Cape cooking. As a student at Guy’s Hospital in London he washed dishes at the Savoy and was encouraged by Escoffier to take a diploma in international cuisine.
Yet he remained rooted in local tradition. In recording our culinary heritage, he left a legacy of love and lore in eloquent books and nostalgic reflections. His lifelong passion for old Cape Dutch and Malay recipes prompted him to write about them extensively.
Probably the finest and without doubt the most entertaining of Leipoldt's culinery works is the series of articles published in Die Huisgenoot between 1942 and 1947, under the pseudonym KAR Bonade (think carbonade). This tasty collection spans subjects from seafood to sosaties, brandy to biltong, but the suggestions on grilling zebra would no doubt be distressing to today’s conservationists.
Jan van Riebeeck deserves recognition for establishing a garden to provide fruit and vegetables for both passing ships and the fledgling settlement at the foot of the mountain. Easy access to fresh vegetable and quality homegrown meat is at the heart of local cuisine.
The spices basic to this emerging cuisine were initially brought to the Cape by sailing ships of the Dutch East India Company, coming into Table Bay. Enterprising Cape Town housewives would place orders with sailing ship captains for the variety of spices.
Recipes were modified by a lack of traditional ingredients, new flavours from the veld – and a fusion of Dutch and Malay preferences. Hence the habit of serving both potatoes (favoured by the Dutch) and rice (basic to Malay cooking). The Dutch penchant for pies survives in hoenderpastei given piquancy from all-spice and cloves, and plain Dutch melktert is still sprinkled with cinnamon.
 |
| C Louis Leipolt in his kitchen |
 |
The soul of spice |
In Leipoldt’s Cape Cookery, written in the 1940s, SA poet and gourmet C Louis Leipoldt gives a lyrical description of preparing spices for curry:
"Take a copper mortar, dusted with buckwheat meal, and place in it a diced red chilli, a diced green chilli, two tablespoonsful of coriander seed, a snippet of green ginger, a pinch of coarse cinnamon… a young orange leaf, a scraping of lemon peel, a clove of garlic, two large spoonsful of molten butter, a spoonful of turmeric.
"Now use the pestle, and pound and rub and grind what is in the mortar."
Why the pestle and mortar for the mix? As his family cook patiently explained...
"My basie, it is to get the soul out of the spice and into the meat…’
This ‘soul’ of the spices is intrinsic to South African cooking. |
 |