Cameroon.

Start with the fats, because they set the colour of the food. Red palm oil, unrefined and deep orange, is the everyday cooking fat across the south and the coast; it tastes faintly of carrot and violet and stains everything it touches. Groundnut oil is the neutral alternative, used where the cook wants the seeds and greens to speak. Palm oil also does something no other fat does here: whisked with alkaline potash water it emulsifies into the bright yellow sauce served with pounded cocoyam in the North West, a piece of kitchen chemistry that has no real parallel elsewhere in West and Central Africa.

The thickeners are the technical heart of the cuisine. Peanuts are boiled and blended into the smooth base of ndolé. Egusi seeds are ground and allowed to set into soft curds in a hot broth. Njangsa (akpi) seeds bring a bitter, almost cocoa-like depth to Bassa cooking and thicken as they toast. Pumpkin seed, sesame and even crushed cocoyam do the same job in other regions. The doneness signal is always the same: keep cooking until the oil breaks out and floats, because that is when the raw, chalky taste of the ground seed disappears.

Dried and smoked proteins season as much as they feed. Ground crayfish, dried shrimp, smoked mackerel and stockfish are pantry staples, added at the start of a stew to build savoury depth rather than at the end for texture. Cow skin, called kanda, is simmered until gelatinous and slippery, and tripe and offal appear without apology. Fresh meat and fish are frequently combined with a dried version of the same thing in one pot, which is why Cameroonian stews taste layered even when the ingredient list is short.

Starches are regional and non-negotiable at the table. The coast and forest eat plantain in every state of ripeness, cassava as fufu, water fufu and granular garri, cocoyam pounded into achu, and miondo — fermented cassava sticks steamed in leaves. The north eats millet and sorghum couscous with okra-thickened sauces, closer to Chad and northern Nigeria than to Douala. Rice is everywhere, but it is the guest, not the host.

Regional lines are drawn sharply. Douala and the Littoral belong to the Sawa peoples and their seafood, palm oil and the black mbongo stews of the Bassa. The North West and South West, anglophone Cameroon, gave the country eru, achu, koki and corn fufu. Yaoundé and the Centre cook Beti food heavy on cassava leaf, groundnut and forest game. The Grassfields have their own maize and bean cooking, and the far north grills, smokes and spices with a Sahelian hand. Ask two Cameroonians for the national dish and one will say ndolé; the other will name whatever their mother cooks.