Traditional Soetkoekies with red bole (rooi bolus)

A lot of earlier recipes contain ingredients that are no longer readily available. The same goes for “outydse soetkoekie met rooi bolus” or traditional spicy cookies with red bole. A direct translation of the name of the cookies to sweet cookies from the Afrikaans soetkoekies is also not correct. The cookies in question are more spicy than sweet. 

When we started exploring the recipes for “outydse soetkoekies”, we found several variations of the recipe. Some had red bole (an iron oxide), some claret or brandy.

The recipes using the “rooi bolus” interested me because of the ingredient. I remember the two-tone cookies with the almond in the middle, but I cannot recall if the reddish part had a different flavour from the rest of the cookie.

The plain dough on the left and the dough with the "rooi bolus" on the right

It is clear from the earlier recipes that people knew from experience how to incorporate the “rooi bolus”. The recipes merely list it as an ingredient. There are no clear instructions to keep it separate for use in some of the dough that will later be incorporated in the remaining dough to create the familiar red colour patterns.

How the dough with the “rooi bolus” colouring was incorporated into the cookies, is another matter. Some people make random patterns with it. Others make dots on the dough, and some make the two-tone cookies with the almond in the middle.

The dough with the "rooi bolus" 

After reading several discussions online I discovered that I am not the only one struggling to find “rooi bolus”. After trying several chemists and spice stores without luck, I decided to do more research. 

What is “rooi bolus”, and why was it used in the recipe?

On Wikipedia I found the following information:

“Bolus is an earth pigment that occurs in nature in different colours; it can be white, yellow, red or gray. Such earth pigments are composed of clay, alumina and hydrous aluminum silicates.

The red bolus (bolus rubra) was mostly imported from Armenia and was therefore given the designation bolus armenicus, bolus armena, lutum armenum, terra armenum, etc. The coloring component is iron oxide (red ochre, Fe ₂ O ₃), which can be up to 20%. In addition, it mainly contains clay minerals.”

I decided to look at the definition for red bole which seems to be the accepted translation for “rooi bolus”. I found the following definition for bole on Wikipedia:

“Bole is a shade of reddish brown. The color term derives from Latin bōlus (or dirt) and refers to a kind of soft fine clay whose reddish-brown varieties are used as pigments, and as a coating in panel paintings and frames underneath the paint or gold leaf. Under gold leaf, it "warms" the colour, which can otherwise have a greenish shade. However, bole in art is a good deal more red and less brown than the modern shade; it is often called Armenian bole.

Another name for the color bole is terra rosa. The color name terra rosa has been used as a synonym for bole since 1753. The color terra rosa is classified a warm red color. In art, it's classified as being similar to Venetian red, but more pink or salmon. In French, it corresponds to the color châtaigne.

Bole is one of the oldest color names in English. The first recorded use of bole as a color name in English was in the year 1386.”

From the above information, it is clear that red bole or “rooi bolus” is a very old colouring ingredient and basically it was a red clay used for colouring paint pigments and sometimes food. Today it is still used to colour red toffee apples, Essies (another cookie of Cape Malay origin) and “Soetkoekies”.

I thought of using a readily available red food colouring when making the “soetkoekies”. After I ordered the colouring online I happened to come across a few cubes of Reckitt’s blue that I bought some time ago from the General Dealer up the road from us in Woodstock. Coronation Bazaar is one of those rare stores that seems to be caught in a time capsule. A general dealer in the true sense of the word. They stock everything from hardware, books, groceries, etc. Sometimes one will find a product that has not been seen for years.

I decided to take a chance and walk up to the shop. The owner did not even blink when I asked him for red bole or “rooi bolus”. His immediate response was, how much do you need and are you making toffee apples? He handed me the container of red bole that says “Used for Soetkoekies & “Essies”. I had searched everywhere for this elusive ingredient and all the time it was right on our doorstep. 

With my container of red bole in hand, I was ready to bake traditional “Outydse soetkoekies”. After looking at several recipes, I decided to make the recipe in The South African Culinary Tradition by Renata Coetzee, published in 1977.

Soetkoekies

500 g Cake flour
2 ml (half teaspoon) salt
2 ml (half teaspoon) ground cloves
10 ml (2 teaspoons) ground cinnamon
5 ml (1 teaspoon) ground ginger
5 ml (1 teaspoon) bicarbonate of soda
300 g (1,5 cups) sugar
200 g (0,8 cup) butter
5 ml (1 teaspoon) red bolus (ferri-oxide mixture)
1 egg
25 ml (2 tablespoons) wine

Sift dry ingredients together and rub in butter.
Beat egg and wine together. Combine ingredients and mix into a stiff dough. Leave to stand overnight. Take a piece of dough and work red bolus into it. Roll out the remaining dough to a thickness of 5mm. Arrange strips of red bolus dough on rolled out dough and roll out again, to a thickness of 5mm. Cut out rounds of dough with a glass about 50mm in diameter. Bake in hot oven (200°C) for 10 minutes.

I decided to decorate them with a blanched almond each. To blanch almonds: bring a pot of water to the boil. Put in the almonds and boil for 1 minute only. Drain and rinse them in cold water to stop them from cooking. The peels will rub off very easily.

After 10 minutes, I could marvel at the trays of childhood memories coming out of the oven. Tasting the cookies I realised that the red bolus was strictly for decorative purposes and had no impact on the flavour.