The atlas · A cuisine · The Western Cape — Cape Town and the country around it, at the south-western tip of Africa

Cape Malay

Also Cape Muslim cooking, Cape Malay cuisine

Sweet, sour and gently hot: curries and bredies, fruit in the pot, pickled fish at Easter and koesisters on a Sunday morning — the cooking of the Cape's Muslim community.

Where it comes from

The Dutch East India Company set up a station at the Cape in 1652, and over the next century and a half brought enslaved people there from the Indonesian archipelago, India, Sri Lanka, Madagascar and East Africa, along with political and religious exiles from the East Indies. Among them were Muslim scholars and nobles — Sheikh Yusuf of Makassar, whose shrine stands east of Cape Town, is the best known. Their descendants, together with others at the Cape, formed a community that held to Islam, and to much of the cooking.

Many of the Cape's cooks were enslaved, working in the kitchens of settler households, so their spices, sambals and ways with fish and fruit went into the Cape's cooking as a whole — which is why bobotie and bredie are now thought of simply as South African. The name Cape Malay is a colonial one, and a loose fit: the ancestors came from far beyond Malaya, and many in the community prefer to speak of Cape Muslim cooking.

Under apartheid, forced removals broke up mixed neighbourhoods such as District Six. The Bo-Kaap, on the slopes of Signal Hill, remained, and its cooks are still the kitchen's best-known keepers.

Where in it

  1. Cape Town and the Bo-KaapThe old Muslim quarter on Signal Hill, home to the Auwal Mosque, often called South Africa's oldest — and the heart of the kitchen, from bobotie and bredie to Sunday koesisters.BobotieTomato bredieDenningvleisKoesistersCape Malay chicken curryCape Malay pickled fish
  2. The BolandThe wine and fruit country around Paarl, Stellenbosch and Wellington, farmed for generations by enslaved labour, and home to old Muslim communities of its own.Sosaties
  3. The West CoastSnoek country, around Saldanha Bay and St Helena Bay: the fish is landed here in the colder months, and much of it salted or smoked for smoorsnoek.Smoorsnoek
  4. The KarooThe dry sheep country inland, whose lamb and mutton, prized for the wild herbs the flocks graze on, have long filled the Cape's bredies and sosaties.

How it cooks

The bredie
Meat braised slowly with one vegetable — tomato, green beans, waterblommetjies — until the sauce thickens itself.
Sweet with sour
Dried fruit, sugar, jam or chutney against tamarind or vinegar, often in the same pot.
Pickling in curry
Fried fish layered with onions cooked in spiced vinegar and left for days, to keep and to deepen.
The family masala
A spice mix blended at home or bought by the scoop from a spice shop, and fried in oil with onion at the start of a curry.

Always in the kitchen

masalaturmericcumincoriander seedcardamomcinnamon sticksclovesallspicebay leavesgarlicgingergreen chilliestamarindapricot jamdried apricots and raisinsbrown vinegar

Cook from it

Tonight, with what's good in October

Its classics

Cape MalayBobotieSpiced minced meat with dried fruit and soaked bread, baked under a thin savoury egg custard, with bay leaves on top.No one here has made it yetCape MalayTomato bredieLamb or mutton braised slowly with tomatoes, onions and potato, warm with cinnamon, cardamom and a little chilli.No one here has made it yetCape MalaySosatiesSkewers of lamb marinated overnight in a sweet-sour curry sauce with onions and dried apricots, grilled over coals.No one here has made it yetCape MalayKoesistersSoft, spiced, doughnut-like dumplings, fried, dipped in syrup and rolled in coconut — for Sunday morning.No one here has made it yetCape MalayDenningvleisLamb braised slowly with onions, bay leaves and allspice, soured with tamarind and sweetened a little.No one here has made it yetCape MalayCape Malay pickled fishFried fish layered with onions cooked in curry-spiced vinegar, left for days to pickle, and eaten cold at Easter.No one here has made it yetCape MalayCape Malay chicken curryA mild, fragrant curry of chicken and potatoes with tomato and whole spices — sweeter and gentler than Durban's.No one here has made it yetCape MalaySmoorsnoekFlaked salted or smoked snoek braised with onion, potato, tomato and chilli, eaten with rice and apricot jam.No one here has made it yet

How it got here

From the 1650s · from Batavia, now Jakarta to The Bo-Kaap, Cape TownSpices and cooksThe Dutch East India Company brought enslaved people and political exiles to the Cape from the Indonesian archipelago, India and beyond. Their spices and cooking became the Cape Malay kitchen — bobotie, whose name may come from the Indonesian bobotok, among it.Bobotie →

Cooked here

No one here has cooked Cape Malay yet.