Bobotie

Bobotie is a South African baked dish of gently spiced minced meat under a savoury egg topping, with household arguments available about fruit, sweetness, texture and whose mother’s version is obviously the correct one. In *Human Still Wins*, bobotie becomes an accidental test for machine prose. The author searches for a quick recipe and finds a polished page describing the dish as “a delightful culinary journey”. No. It is six in the evening, the mince needs attention and somebody has used the last clean wooden spoon. The useful recipe contains more than ingredients. It knows which apricots, how wet the mixture should be, when the quantities become instinct and why the stained family page is still in the drawer. That is taste: not decoration, but lived selection. A machine can describe bobotie fluently. The sentence that has never been near the kitchen gives itself away. Usually around “culinary journey”.