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Updated: May 23, 2025
We found a fire of blazing wood in Samba's hut, and sat down on mats to gossip and smoke till dinner should be served. The ladies brought in the kooskoos, and other viands already described, in wooden bowls, and laid them on the floor; they then retired, as they never eat with the men.
After gratifying, if not satisfying, the curiosity of Samba's wives, we thought it right that a return should be made by their explaining to us their mode of dressing food, especially the celebrated kooskoos. This was cheerfully done, the more so as we presented them with small articles of tinselled finery.
It is not only eaten with bread, and used in the preparation of kooskoos, and other articles of food, but the Arabs reckon it a valuable remedy in various maladies. In rheumatic attacks, for instance, they rub it on the part affected till it penetrates thoroughly; then lay the patient in the burning sand, with his head carefully protected. A profuse perspiration comes on, and the cure is complete.
The poorer class wet this prepared grain with hot water until it swells like rice; others steam it in an earthen pot with holes, which is placed above another containing flesh and water, so that the flavour of the meat makes the kooskoos savoury.
To be fat was, in those days, the most desirable attribute of a wife in the eyes of an Algerine husband, therefore kooskoos was eaten in quantity.
All the vessels used were of the most elaborate and costly description, and we need scarcely add that the viands were good. Among other things there was fish, which was served and eaten with honey! but the chief among the dishes was kooskoos. This was the piece de resistance of the Moorish dinner-table, the substance on which the ladies chiefly fed and flourished.
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