Cape pickled fish

Firm fish such as yellowtail, snoek or hake is fried, then layered with onions in a sauce of vinegar, sugar, turmeric, curry spices, bay leaves and allspice. Ingelegde vis, as it is also called, is left for a day or more to absorb the flavours and eaten cold, often with fresh bread or hot cross buns. Almost every family has its own version and its own preferred fish.

In Cape Town it belongs above all to Good Friday, in Christian and Muslim homes alike. A conversation published by the Critical Food Studies programme, a research partnership led from the University of the Western Cape, notes that the custom may come from the Christian practice of not eating meat that day, from the sweet and sour style of Cape Malay cooking, or from both.