of Edinburgh, Session 1885 - 86 . 
717 
steamed. If meat or fish, is to be cooked at the same time, young 
banana leaves are taken and tbe greater part of the midrib 
removed. They are then held over the fire to make them supple, 
and the meat is wrapped tightly in them and placed on the top of 
the bananas. This mode of cooking renders the meat very tender. 
All the gravy is retained in the meat and is served up with it. 
Sometimes meat is baked in pots; if so, two or three sticks are 
placed across the bottom to prevent it being burnt. Sometimes 
the meat is cut into small strips, skewered on sticks, and roasted 
over red-hot ashes. Some kinds of bananas and the ears of maize 
are roasted in the ashes. If a sheep or a goat is to be roasted whole, 
a stake is driven through it, and supported on forked sticks over a 
bright fire. The stick is turned now and then, and sometimes the 
meat is basted with oil or rubbed with fat, but no precautions are 
taken to collect the dripping. Ho ovens are used, nor are hot stones 
employed in boiling. The natives prefer the meat well cooked 
and fresh, high meat being very rarely eaten. The cooking utensils 
are carefully cleansed after use. Bread or cakes are unknown, save 
a kind of cake made from banana flour. The dried bananas are 
pounded in a wooden mortar with a wooden pestle, and the flour 
is then either mixed with water and boiled as porridge or else 
baked in an open pot over the fire so forming a cake. Fish and 
meat are prepared for future consumption by smoking or drying in 
the sun, but they are afterwards further cooked either by steaming 
or frying before use. Bananas are also preserved by being split 
and then dried in the sun (see War). Kitchen middens are formed 
in one corner of the compound not far from the kitchen, but they 
are periodically removed to the plantain groves or forest. The 
cooks wash their hands before commencing operations and also 
before serving the food. 
Manufacture of Drinks . — Brewing is extensively carried on in 
Uganda, as the Waganda have an inveterate objection to drinking 
water, and many of them boast that from early childhood water has 
never passed their lips. Almost everyone knows how to manu- 
facture some kind of drink, and men and women, boys and girls, 
alike engage in this occupation. Two kinds of wine and two kinds 
of beer are manufactured : — Mubisi, fresh plantain wine, which is a 
perfectly teetotal drink ; mwengi, an intoxicating plantain wine ; 
