Food & Drinking Culture

What do people eat with rum in Barbados? The Saturday classic is called Pudding and Souse. The pudding is steamed, grated sweet potato, and the souse is pickled pork with cucumber and lime. The acidity cuts through the fat, and the sweetness of the potato balances it all out.

A Cutter is a filled salt-bread roll, classically with fried fish, but just as often with cheese or ham. Fish Cakes are made from salted cod with herbs and deep-fried. Both belong to everyday cooking, and both taste best with a bit of pepper sauce.

This refers to lime juice, syrup, rum and water. Add Angostura bitters and freshly grated nutmeg. Once you've memorized the ratio, you can mix the drink from memory and adjust it to taste.

Corn 'n' Oil is considered a Barbadian cocktail. It consists of dark rum, lime juice, Angostura bitters and falernum, a spiced syrup that also originates from the island. The drink is heavy, dark and lightly sweet, and the spice of the falernum, a touch of ginger and lime, keeps the rum clearly in the foreground. As with any cocktail from the region, a great deal depends on the rum itself, which isn't meant to be hidden in the glass.

In summer the island celebrates Crop Over, a festival that originally marked the end of the sugarcane harvest. It culminates in the Grand Kadooment on the first Monday in August. Independence Day on November 30, celebrated since 1966, includes Conkies, packets of cornmeal, pumpkin and coconut steamed in banana leaves.