Store

Pepperpot

Pepperpot

Specialised

⚠ AN INDIGENOUS DISH THAT BECAME THE NATIONAL ONE. Meat — beef, pork, cow-heel, oxtail — simmered in CASSAREEP with cinnamon, clove and hot pepper until it is nearly black, and kept in the same pot for days, reheated each morning. ⚠ THE CASSAREEP IS THE PRESERVATIVE AND THE POINT: the boiled-down juice of bitter cassava, which is antimicrobial enough that a pepperpot pot was traditionally kept going for weeks without refrigeration, with more meat added as it went. Eaten with plait bread or cassava bread, and — in a country of Hindus, Muslims and Christians — it is the CHRISTMAS MORNING dish across communities. ⚠ ITS AMERINDIAN ORIGIN IS DOCUMENTED AND ITS CURRENT FORM IS CREOLE; both are recorded.

Atlas — where and when

Communities and languages

  • Lokono community documented
  • Guyanese community documented

Languages: Guyanese Creole English, Lokono, Macushi

What is recorded

  • Pepperpot is documented as Amerindian in origin, derived from the tuma pot and dependent on cassareep, and as Creole in its present form. Cassareep’s preservative properties are documented as permitting the dish to be kept and reheated over extended periods without refrigeration. It is eaten on Christmas morning across religious communities, which is recorded as the documented pattern. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • originates from Indigenous Guyanese Foodways documented

    ⚠ The national dish is Amerindian in origin — the tuma pot and cassareep — and Creole in its present form. Both are recorded.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

  • related to Pepperpot — four dishes, one name documented

    ⚠ Guyanese pepperpot is cassareep-preserved and Amerindian in origin. A separate dish from the Leeward and Bajan stews of the same name.

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.