Pineapple culture, rusky business, old-school kitchen devices and an offbeat Book of Wisdoms

As you’re watching the sun set over Steytlerville from the wide porch of the Karroo Theatrical Hotel, cast an eye over the golden-toned light fittings outside. Notice the little pineapple? It is, in fact, an ancient and warm message from the establishment, to say that you are very, very welcome here.

Jaunty by nature, delicious on the palate, the pineapple is the international icon of hospitality – like a welcome mat you can eat.

Because there was no refrigeration and sugar sources were at a premium in the days of sail, a pineapple had high value.

If a hostess could display a pineapple at an event, she was regarded as someone special. If you were invited to a dinner party where the table featured a pineapple (usually placed on a pedestal for prominence), you were an honoured guest.

In fact, the spiky fruit was in such short supply in the so-called civilised world that the pineapple rental business was extremely lucrative at one stage.

Sea captains freshly home from the tropics would sometimes skewer a pineapple and place it on their fence posts to show they were back home and eager to receive visitors.

As a result, pineapples became a symbol for hospitality and friendship. Even today, a pineapple balanced on the wall or outside the front door of a New Orleans house or a hotel in the Karoo means the hosts are waiting for you.

The Ouma Rusk

On the Boer side of the Great Baking Divide sits the Classic Rusk, an essential component of a Karoo road-tripper’s padkos stash. In fact, popular comedian Barry Hilton says that only a true South African knows exactly when to remove their rusk from their coffee.

During the South African War, while the Brits were growling at their dog biscuits, the Boers were relishing each morsel of their rusks. By law, if you joined a kommando, you had to supply your own biltong, weapons, horses – and boerebeskuit (rusks).

The national biscuit of many South Africans at home and abroad is undoubtedly the beloved Ouma Rusk, baked outside the little Eastern Cape town of Molteno.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, a dominee in Molteno offered his female congregants business start-up money of a half-crown (two shillings and sixpence).

Elizabeth Ann Greyvensteyn bought ingredients and used a family recipe to make rusks, which she put on sale at a church bazaar. They sold out in minutes, and the orders started to pour in. Her son Leon took his mom’s rusks on a national road trip to test the market. The smousing venture was a great success, and he came back with many orders. That’s when the family turned the barn into the country’s first rusk factory, with homemade dryers and extra clay ovens.

A rusky business became South African history, which still flourishes.

Karoo dining

The typical old-style Karoo kitchen, the kind you’ll only find in museums or outpost farms, still has a shiny peach-pip-and-cowdung floor. The centrepiece – making the kitchen the warmest, most social spot in wintertime – is the Aga or Dover stove. Sometimes there’s still an old brick or clay oven with an iron door.

For the rest, it’s a profusion of Victorian-era labour-saving devices that would boggle the mind. Peach peelers, candle moulds, flapjack makers, coffee roasters, raisin pip removers and nutmeg graters – there was no shortage of domestic science innovation in the 19th century.

“Townies” often think of food from the Karoo as simple stodge, with the odd lamb chop thrown in. They joke that, in the Karoo, the locals put chicken in the vegetable category.

They’ve obviously never sat down to Sunday lunch with a Karoo family, or dined in one of the dry land’s stately hotels. Or heard about C Louis Leipoldt and his eating preferences. He and his family ate albatross, swallows, breast of flamingo, dikkop (now called a thick-knee), hippo when available, frogs, snails, squirrels and hedgehogs – even lizards. But when they travelled into the Deep Karoo, they chose tomato bredie (with thick rib of mutton), boerewors on a renosterbos fire and vegetable stews softened with sorrel.

Book of Wisdoms

In terms of classic home how-to publications, Britain has Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and her South African counterpart is Hildagonda Duckitt, who wrote Diary of a Cape Housekeeper. But there’s another gem under wraps at the ever-growing Williston Mall Museumpie.

Titled Kook en Koek Resepte by a Miss EJ Dykman of Paarl, one of its sponsors is the Buitelandse Fancy Winkel, Corsetten ‘n Specialiteit.

It’s an essential piece of Trekkiana, advising the anxious hinterland reader on everything from the preparation of Biif Steaks met Uie (beef steak with onions) to solving the eternal problem of women’s aching nipples in Karoo winters.

One of the stand-out solutions in this dog-eared, tatty treasure is Miss Dykman’s cure for snakebite.

“Drink as much brandy as it takes to make you sick. Then catch a chicken, make a non-deadly cut to its neck and press it to the snakebite wound until the chicken dies. Then catch another chicken and do the same thing.”

The book notes that, generally speaking, eight to 10 chickens should do the trick.

The other chunk of useful advice refers, aptly, to drunkards. They should be given five grains of sulphur, 10 grains of magnesium, 11 drams of peppermint water and one dram of “spiritus van noten muskaat” in a big spoon twice daily.

After 11 months the urge to be a drunkard will have disappeared. Also, presumably, any ill effects of possible snakebite. DM

For more stories on life in the South African Heartland, get the Karoo Quartet set of books (Karoo Roads I-IV with black and white photographs) for only R960, including taxes and courier costs in South Africa. For more details, contact Julie at julie@karoospace.co.za