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 recipe folder. 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”.

Bobotie — from my grandmother’s cookbook

A typewritten bobotie recipe on a page browned with age and marked with cooking stains, from a family cookbook. — Typed, stained, and still in the recipe folder.

What goes in

1½ lb lean beef mince
1 large onion
Some butter
½ cup milk
3 eggs
2 slices white bread, cubed
¼ cup finely chopped dried apricots
2 apples, peeled and grated
¼ cup seedless raisins (optional)
¼ cup blanched almonds
1 tablespoon sugar or apricot jam
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon pepper
¼ teaspoon turmeric

What to do

Saute the onion in hot butter until golden. Add meat and stir with a large fork until the meat loses its redness. Remove from heat.
In a large bowl, mix together ¼ cup milk, one egg and the bread cubes, mashing the bread with a fork. Add the apricots, apples, raisins, almonds, sugar or jam, curry powder, lemon juice, salt and pepper and mix until well blended.
Add to the meat mixture and mix lightly with a fork. Turn into a greased oven-proof dish and spread evenly.
Bake covered for 20 minutes at 180°C. Take out of the oven and add the topping.
For the topping, beat the remaining 2 eggs with the remaining ¼ cup milk and the turmeric until just blended. Put the bobotie back in the oven and bake for a further 15 minutes, or until the topping has set and is no longer runny.
When you add the topping, make sure the mixture just covers the bobotie, otherwise it takes ages for the egg mixture to cook. Watch it carefully so the topping does not burn.
Serve with rice and chutney.

Transcribed exactly as typed, including the parts that assume you already know what you are doing.

References