Soupe de feuilles

the Guinean leaf sauce: cassava and potato leaves cooked slowly with palm oil and smoked fish until almost black

Origin: Conakry & the Guinean Forest Region

From the journey of Cassava.

Leaf sauces are the backbone of cooking along the Upper Guinea coast, and soupe de feuilles is the general name for a family rather than one fixed recipe. Cassava leaf, sweet potato leaf, and the local saa saa all go into it, singly or together, and the sauce is judged on depth rather than on freshness. It cooks for a long time, darkens almost to black, and is spooned over rice in quantities that would look generous anywhere else. Rice is the point of the sauce. Guinea sits in the West African rice zone, where Oryza glaberrima was domesticated in the inland delta of the Niger thousands of years before Asian rice arrived, and the meal is understood as rice with something on it rather than the other way about. The sauce exists to be absorbed. Sierra Leone cooks the same thing and calls it plasas, and the Upper Guinea coast from Conakry to Freetown is a single culinary region divided by a colonial boundary. The smoked fish is not optional in any of these versions: it supplies the savoury depth that the long cooking then distributes through the whole pot.

Ingredients

600 g pounded cassava leaves and sweet potato leaves, frozen or fresh
6 tbsp red palm oil
400 g beef or goat, in small pieces
150 g smoked fish, boned and flaked
3 tbsp ground dried crayfish
2 onions, chopped
5 garlic cloves, crushed
2 scotch bonnet chillies, chopped
1 litre water
2 stock cubes
1.5 tsp salt, or to taste

Method

Simmer the beef with one chopped onion, a stock cube, and 500ml of the water until tender, about forty minutes. Keep the liquid.
Put the leaves in a large heavy pot with the remaining water and bring to the boil. Simmer for thirty minutes, stirring now and then.
Add the palm oil, the second onion, the garlic, the chillies, the smoked fish, and the ground crayfish.
Add the cooked meat with its liquid and the second stock cube. Season with the salt.
Simmer uncovered for a further thirty to forty minutes, stirring every ten minutes. The sauce will reduce, darken substantially, and thicken until a spoon leaves a channel through it. The palm oil should separate and glisten on the surface.
Taste for salt and heat, and serve over plain boiled rice.

Notes

The colour is the guide: a soupe de feuilles that is still bright green has not cooked long enough. Cassava leaves in particular must not be undercooked. Palm oil is structural here rather than a fat to be reduced, and cutting it back gives a thin, sharp sauce. Sweet potato leaves alone make a milder version; cassava leaves alone a more robust one.

The Gastrographer

Name: Soupe de feuilles
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 1 h 15 min
Total time: 1 h 35 min
Yield: 6
Cuisine: Conakry & the Guinean Forest Region
Ingredients: 600 g pounded cassava leaves and sweet potato leaves, frozen or fresh; 6 tbsp red palm oil; 400 g beef or goat, in small pieces; 150 g smoked fish, boned and flaked; 3 tbsp ground dried crayfish; 2 onions, chopped; 5 garlic cloves, crushed; 2 scotch bonnet chillies, chopped; 1 litre water; 2 stock cubes; 1.5 tsp salt, or to taste

Mapping Culinary History

To explore — select an ingredient below.

To explore — select an ingredient below · click any location dot on the map for recipes and stories · browse the information panel on the right · trace the full journey on the timeline.

Journey Point Map Key

Ingredient originTrade or transit route

Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control