Meaning
A sweet steamed pudding of grated sweet potato or cornmeal mixed with coconut, sugar, and spices, wrapped in a banana leaf and tied, then boiled in the parcel — the same dish also called 'blue drawers' or 'tie-a-leaf'. The banana-leaf wrapping gives duckunoo its faint colour and fragrance, and the name comes straight from West Africa, marking it as one of the oldest surviving African dishes in Jamaica.
Examples
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Granny tie up di duckunoo inna banana leaf.
Granny tied up the duckunoo in banana leaf.
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Some people call it blue drawers, some seh duckunoo.
Some people call it blue drawers, some say duckunoo.
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Boil di duckunoo till it firm.
Boil the duckunoo until it's firm.
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Granny mek dukunu fi Sunday.
Grandma made dukunu for Sunday.
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Di dukunu sweet an soft.
The pudding is sweet and soft.
Origin
From a West African source (dokono); a leaf-wrapped steamed pudding, aka 'blue drawers'. See Cornmeal pudding.
How it’s used
A leaf-wrapped steamed sweet pudding; aka blue drawers / tie-a-leaf. See Cornmeal pudding.
Gloss adapted from A Learner's Glossary of Jamaican, Open Grammar Project, licensed under CC BY 4.0. View the source work · CC BY 4.0