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Updated: June 22, 2025
"I never thought at all in those days; else, had I thought twice, I should not have gone to your enemies," he answered, as he lazily watched the Bedouins without squat on their heels round the huge brass bowls of couscoussou, which they kneaded into round lumps and pitched between their open, bearded lips in their customary form of supper.
As for our Food, 'twas mainly Beans, and in the morning a Mess of boiled Maize they call Couscoussou, with some villanous Rank Butter, melted, poured over it. And sometimes the Carcass of a Sheep that had died of Disease was given to us. But whatever we had was eaten on our benches, and the Cook of the Galleasse passed up and down the planking to serve out the Rations.
He was personally expert in the art of preparing "couscoussou" and other Algerian dishes, and his wife was a thoroughly good cook a la francaise. Directly meat was rationed, Saby said to me: "The allowance is very small; you and Monsieur votre pere will be able to eat a good deal more than that.
The douar, like a city, has suburbs of greater squalor than its interior, and among them, under the palm trees, we see women washing clothes or engaged in the manufacture of couscoussou, a dish common to the Arab, the Kabyle and the traveler hereabouts, and so important that a description of its preparation may be acceptable.
The one reproach, that made his fellow soldiers impatient and suspicious of him, was that he refused any share in those rough arguments of blows and lunges with which they were accustomed to persuade every victim they came nigh to yield them up all such treasures of food, or drink, or riches, from sheep's liver and couscoussou, to Morocco carpets and skins of brandy and coins hid in the sand, that the Arabs might be so unhappy as to own in their reach.
There was Barbe-Grise, a grisly veteran of Zephyrs, who held the highest repute of any in his battalion for rushing on to a foe with a foot speed that could equal the canter of an Arab's horse; for having stood alone once the brunt of thirty Bedouins' attack, and ended by beating them back, though a dozen spearheads were launched into his body and his pantalons garances were filled with his own blood; and for framing a matchless system of night plunder that swept the country bare as a table-rock in an hour, and made the colons surrender every hidden treasure, from a pot of gold to a hen's eggs, from a caldron of couscoussou to a tom-cat.
Butter does not usually appear in the bill of fare, but its absence is amply atoned for by couscoussou, or African vermicelli, mutton, boiled fowls, honey and sour milk. This repast is served upon flat shallow dishes of wood or earthenware a foot and a half in diameter, the universal platter of Kabylia, and must be a highly acceptable surprise in the desert.
All travelers agree that, when you do not witness the preparation, couscoussou is a toothsome and attractive dish, fit to be set beside the maccaroni of Rossini. On the plateau outside the douar we find the cemetery, with its tombs; for the Arab, content to sleep under tissue while he lives, must needs sleep under mason-work after he is dead.
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