Читать книгу The Art of Making Good Wholesome Bread of Wheat, Oats, Rye, Barley and Other Farinaceous Grains - Friedrich Christian Accum - Страница 8

Table of Contents

The Sago-Tree (Cycas Circinalis), which grows spontaneously in the East Indies, and particularly on the Coast of Malabar, furnishes to numerous Indian tribes their bread. In the Islands of Banda and Amboyna, they saw the body of the tree into small pieces, and, after bruising and beating them in a mortar, pour water upon the fragments; this is left for some hours undisturbed, to suffer the pithy farinaceous matter to subside. The water is then poured off, and the meal, being properly dried, is formed into cakes, or fermented and made into bread, which, it is said, eats nearly as well as wheaten bread.

The Hottentots make a kind of bread of another species of sago-tree (Cycas Resoluta). The pith, or medulla, which abounds in the trunk of this little palm, is collected and tied up in dressed calf’s or sheep’s skin, and then buried in the ground for several weeks, which renders it mellow and tender. It is then kneaded with water into dough, and made into small loaves or cakes, which are baked under embers. Other Hottentots, not quite so nice, merely dry and roast the farinaceous pith, and afterwards make it into a kind of frumety or porridge.