“During the rainy months fires are kindled in sheds purposely constructed for the occasion, it being impossible for them to burn in the open air by reason of the unabating violence of the weather. Mornings and evenings are the periods generally allotted for the preparation of food, and a fire is rarely seen in the intermediate hours of the day. The yam- flour is usually made into a solid pudding by being mixed with water, and boiled in much the same manner as common paste in England; and a person is employed in stirring it over the fire with a stick till the whole is sufficiently dressed, which done, the pudding is turned out into a calabash or bowl, and a quantity of either honey, oil, or butter from the maccadania tree being mixed with it, the paste is eaten with the fingers. Animal food is roasted on a wooden stake thrust into the earth before the fire, and after one side is properly dressed, the meat is simply turned on the other, the use of the jack, or indeed any article at all answering to it being unknown to the people of Western and Central Africa.”
A cook of roughly the same moment, setting down the same dish.
Take six ounces of fine flour, a little salt, and three eggs; beat up well with a little milk, added by degrees till the batter is quite smooth; make it the thickness of cream; put into a buttered pie-dish, and bake three quarters of an hour; or into a buttered and floured basin, tied over tight with a cloth: boil one and a half hour, or two hours.
Sources: The passage is from Richard Lander, Records of Captain Clapperton's last expedition to Africa, Vol. 2, free to read in full at Project Gutenberg. The recipe is from Kitchiner, The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual of 1817, also free in full. Both are in the public domain in the United States. The binding above is ours — burgundy cloth, beehive stamp.