date-sauce

Updated: June 7, 2025

The wooden dish or bowl might have been three feet in diameter, and was replenished as fast as emptied with masses of boiled dough, oil, and date-sauce. There was suspended over it, two or three feet above, a wicker roof, to prevent the dirt from falling into it when the people stood up all around and wiped their hands.

James Richardson - Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846

In the centre of the room was placed an enormous wooden dish, full of bazeen, or thick boiled pudding, made of barley-meal, with olive-oil, and sauce of pounded dates poured upon it. Every person ate with his hands, rolling the pudding into balls, and dipping the balls into oil and date-sauce. A great piece of carpetting was laid round the bowl, to be used as a napkin to wipe the hands and mouth.

James Richardson - Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846