Getting steamy and teared up with deeply delicious dombolo

Is there a word for mansplaining as it applies to race and/or culinary culture? I am not aware of a specific term but the action undoubtedly exists and I am anxious not to engage in it. The majority of Mzansi needs no explanation of our nation’s signature stovetop steamed breads but bear with me while I offer an introduction to those who are unfamiliar with the form.

The genre within which doughs such as idombolo/domboro, motjahahlama, leqebekoane, ujeqe, intlaphoyi, Isinkwa sombila and isonka wombila fall is deeply delicious. Steaming is a relatively rare cooking method in the West but is common in Asia (think bao buns) and across Africa where oven ownership is often recent and still rare in poorer communities. Steam rather than the dry heat of an oven creates a unique and wonderful texture – smooth, gossamer thin, slightly stretchy skin (rather than a baked crust) and an airy yet firm interior ideal for soaking up sauce.

There are endless arguments as to South Africa’s steamed bread terminology. Whether the moniker “idombolo” can be translated as the English term “dumpling” is particularly problematic. Dumpling causes confusion because it is used to refer to both the steamed, predominantly yeasted doughs of which we speak but also those baking powder-laden, stodgy orbs which boil and bob about in stews. Purists suggest that the former ought rather to be denoted using the isiZulu word ujeqe but idombolo is so widely used that it is almost certainly an unwinnable argument. Similar scuffles regarding regional preference and raising agent occur over where to draw the line between ujeqe and isinkwa sombila. Some say Sotho-style leqebekoane (made with fermented maize or sorghum paste) should be in a category all of its own but I would argue that all the above are variations on a theme. They all evolved out of a well-documented indigenous millet and sorghum steamed bread culture – the crew of the Portuguese ship, Santo Alberto, which sank off the Eastern Cape coast in 1593, wrote that locals offered “cakes of millet which they call ‘sincoa’”. 

Carrot or maize (below) can be used to flavour dombolo. (Photos: Trevor Thebe)

“Sincoa” sounds a lot like what a 16th century Portuguese ear might hear when faced for the first time with the word that modern South Africans write as