In 1996, Enid Donaldson published “the mother of all Jamaican cookbooks”. The real taste of Jamaica. For 25 years, it has reigned as the most authentic collection of Jamaican recipes. Not just because it’s from a Jamaican who lived her life on the island, but the dishes are undeniably rooted in local culture and not conjectured to appease people who weren’t from the diaspora.
There are recipes for popular Jamaican desserts in the book’s 156 pages, including one of the best sweet potato pudding recipes I’ve ever tried. However, a recipe is missing look – a dessert consisting of grated green bananas or plantains, dasheen, sometimes sweet potatoes, cornmeal, nutmeg and sugar, wrapped and steamed in a banana leaf.
By no means was this a glaring omission by Donaldson, for many Jamaican cookbooks do not have a recipe for dukunoo. Why? Not only does it require a bit of magic to master, but it’s also indicative of the surviving legacy of Jamaican oral history.
“These recipes are not written down,” Michelle Rousseau said in a 2019 interview. She and her sister Suzanne are Jamaican cookbook authors and restaurateurs. “Caribbean cuisine is an oral, rustic, home-cooked tradition. . . . If these stories and recipes are not preserved, then the story disappears from history.”
People can’t even decide on the “correct” spelling of the dish. there are duck, duck AND duckanoo.
“Language is part of the difficulty with some Caribbean food,” says Dr Jessica B Harris in the foreword to her cookbook. Sky Juice and Flying Fish: Traditional Caribbean Cooking.
Harris is the Neil deGrasse Tyson of the culinary world. She is a respected culinary historian, author and sought-after speaker. Nowadays, because of Netflix documentary inspired by her book High in pigsshe is also a pop culture icon.
“”What root is what?” and ‘what do you call this here?’ are two ongoing questions,” Harris says. “But the language is part of the fun—and Caribbean food is fun.”
Dukunoo originates from the Akan (a Ghanaian language) phrase “doko na”, which means “sweet thing” or “sweet mouth”. It is not surprising since the 1.2 million enslaved people taken to Jamaica to feed the wealth of European empires were brought from West Africa.
It is also known as “leaf-a-leaf” (because the mixture is placed on a banana leaf and tied), and the sharper the blue drawers – the bluer from the color of the ram (tarot) also gives drawers, referring to the time when underwear was worn by tying strings around the waist.
Dukunoo is one of the few Jamaican side dishes that we can trace back to the Maroons. Fun fact: the dish is popular in Cockpit Country – parishes linked by a mountain range to which the Maroons fled. The Maroons used dukunoo and jerky as food during the escape of British slaves, as it was dense and shelf-stable.
However, discussions of corn-based Caribbean dishes must include the indigenous people of the region. Before Columbus, First Peoples grew corn, squash, beans, peppers, sweet potatoes, yams, and peanuts. The West Africans themselves were also familiar with maize and eddo.
As a trained chef and aspiring culinary historian, I’m always keen to find connections between seemingly incomparable culture-specific dishes – for example, Cornish pasties and pies, and paella AND I care.
Mexican sweet tamales (sweet tamales), for example, are made with a variety of nut and fruit fillings. The connection between these and dukunoo is the use of cornmeal, carefully wrapped in leaves and steamed. There are over 100 steps involved in making tamales – about the same number as making dukunoo.
On a visit to Chichen Itzá in Mexico, I received a call from a friend in Jamaica. After saying goodbye, I felt a tap on my shoulder. A young woman asked him, “Are you Jamaican?” I hesitated before answering, unsure of where she was going with this.
She asked me if I knew the recipe for “Jamaican tamales,” something her nanny used to make for her when she was a little kid. I thought this was a joke as I didn’t know any dish called “Jamaican Tamale”. But as soon as she described the unmistakable color of meringue and banana leaf, I squealed exuberantly, “Oh, you mean dukunoo!” Neither of us could contain the excitement of that sudden cultural connection.
St Lucian-born visual artist and filmmaker Fiona Compton is the founder of Know Your Caribbean, a popular website and Instagram. page. When asked about traditional Afro-Caribbean dishes and their importance to her people, Compton said, “I believe that Afro-Caribbean dishes have a special significance in how we reconnect with our heritage… Our dishes, when we look back up close, they are the direct gateway to who we are. They are one of the most tangible and experiential entities that allow us to literally enjoy what our ancestors did.”
Taking an anthropological approach, I researched which other Caribbean islands have a version of the dukunoo.
Barbados calls them the conch; they are made with cornmeal, sugar, coconut and raisins and are often eaten throughout November to commemorate Guy Fawkes and Independence Days. Trinidad & Tobago calls them updated equipment. In Antigua & Barbuda, St Kitts & Nevis and St Vincent & Grenadines, it is called DuCann and is served as an accompaniment to fish dishes. And interestingly, the island nations of the Eastern Caribbean use mashed pumpkin in their recipes and not mashed green bananas or dasheen.
Whatever it is called, or however it is spelled, dukunoo reflects the ingenuity of a people who had to survive. They found salvation in being adept at developing deep flavor from a collection of bland ingredients that shouldn’t work together.
“While our stories are written from European perspectives or not written at all, our story exists in our food,” Compton said.
In the culinary world, some things are advertised and others are hidden. French dessert clafoutis it’s nothing epic – just another example of putting everything together in hand. But in the pantheon of culinary masterpieces, dukunoo — and tamales, for that matter — would probably never be highlighted when they should be exalted.
