fufu
(ˈfuːfuː)
Also foo(-)foo, fou-fou.
[Of West Afr. origin: recorded in Twi, Ewe, Wolof, etc. Cf. Cuban Sp. fuf{uacu}.]
A kind of dough usu. made out of plantains: a traditional food of Black people on both sides of the Atlantic.
| 1740 C. Leslie New Hist. Jamaica ii. 33 And boil it with beaten Maiz or Indian Corn, (which they call Fu Fu). 1826 A. Barclay Pract. View Slavery W.I. 437 A negro..would greatly prefer his own good substantial dish of foofoo, composed of eddoes, ochras, and mashed plantains. 1851 Illustr. Catal. Gt. Exhib. iv. i. 977/2 This mass [of plantain boiled whole], beaten in a mortar, constitutes the foo-foo of the negroes [of British Guiana]. 1858 Simmonds Dict. Trade, Foo-foo, a negro name for dough made from plantains; the fruit being boiled and then pounded in a mortar. 1863 Wand. W. Africa II. 144 ‘Fufu’ is composed of yam, plaintain, or casava; it is peeled, boiled, pounded and made into balls. 1888 Daily News 17 July 5/3 Plantains..form the staple of food with the natives, who beat them up into fufu. 1899 J. Rodway In Guiana Wilds 54 There were fou-fou soup, pepper-pot, barbecued meat, and piles of oranges. 1924 Glasgow Herald 8 Nov. 5 The women pounded their ‘fou-fou’ in the courtyard of the [Ashanti] village. 1930 Discovery Mar. 99/1 The various vegetables used for making the soups or sauces which flavour their fu-fu, a kind of porridge. 1959 Guardian 24 Oct. 4/5 Quantities of jollof rice and fufu were placed round about. 1964 E. Huxley Back Street New Worlds xiv. 141 The Shepherd's Bush market has a shop devoted wholly to West African foods..like..garden eggs and fou-fou, edwene and dried snails. |