It is true, indeed, that the bread-fruit is not always in season; but
cocoa-nuts, bananas, plantains, and a great variety of other fruits,
supply the deficiency.

It may well be supposed, that cookery is but little studied by these
people as an art; and, indeed, they have but two ways of applying fire
to dress their food, broiling and baking; the operation of broiling is
so simple that it requires no description, and their baking has been
described already, in the account of an entertainment prepared for us by
Tupia. Hogs and large fish are extremely well dressed in the same
manner; and, in our opinion, were more juicy, and more equally done,
than by any art of cookery now practised in Europe. Bread-fruit is also
cooked in an oven of the same kind, which renders it soft, and something
like a boiled potatoe; not quite so farinaceous as a good one, but more
so than those of the middling sort.

Of the-bread-fruit they also make three dishes, by putting either water
or the milk of the cocoa-nut to it, then beating it to a paste with a
stone pestle, and afterwards mixing it with ripe plantains, bananas, or
the sour paste which they call _mahie_.

The mahie, which has been mentioned as a succedaneum for ripe
bread-fruit, before the season for gathering a fresh crop comes on, is
thus made:

The fruit is gathered just before it is perfectly ripe, and being laid
in heaps, is closely covered with leaves; in this state it undergoes a
fermentation, and becomes disagreeably sweet: The core is then taken out
entire, which is done by gently pulling the stalk, and the rest of the