SOUTH AFRICAN cooking is in its infancy,” said Lannice Snyman, a cookbook author and restaurant critic in Cape Town. “It’s only 300 years old.” That makes it about the same age as American cooking, and if weren’t for apartheid, the cuisine of South Africa would probably have undergone the kinds earth-shaking changes that have taken place in this country since the 1970’s.

More South African kitchens are reflecting the influence of the Europeans and the East Asians who immigrated to southern Africa, voluntarily and otherwise. The Dutch, French, Germans, English and Malays have all left their marks while the influence of the indigenous Africans is not so obvious.

The country is blessed with marvelous seafood, superb lamb, plentiful wild game and so many fruits and vegetables that they are among the major exports

The blending of ingredients from the West and East is called Cape Malay cooking — spiced, curried and often sweetened variations of European fish, meat and game dishes and desserts. The South African national dish, bobotie, captures its essence. It was said to have been brought to Europe by the Crusaders and to Africa by both the Dutch and the Malays. In South Africa, it has become a meat pie of coarsely ground lamb with plenty of curry, bay or lemon leaves and fruits, covered with a custard of milk and eggs, as homey and much loved as meatloaf is in the United States. The core of Cape cooking is the bredie or pot roast, with spiced meats and vegetables cooked in a cast-iron pot for several hours. The kind of bredie is determined by the main vegetable — tomato, potato, spinach, quince — while the meat is generally a thick rib of lamb from the Karoo area, known for its lamb. The seasonings include coriander, crushed chili, rosemary and white wine. Cape Malay food uses many Indian spices, but in a much gentler fashion.

South Africa, however, is still a paradise for carnivores. “Many people are taken aback by the level of meat consumption,” says the Cadogan guide to South Africa (Globe Pequot Press, 1995). South Africans also love their butter and cream — as in the heavy food of the Germans and Dutch — and their very sweet rich desserts, a legacy of both the Germans and the English.

South Africans are justifiably proud of their game, which is plentiful. Many kinds of venison are often served with sharp and sweet red cabbage or cabbage and apples, a combination dear to the German heart. Game birds are found on almost every Cape Town menu. Ostrich, just making its way to America, is prepared a thousand ways: as carpaccio, with fried cabbage pancakes, as a terrine and as prosciutto.

While seafood is cheap and abundant, until recently the best of it was exported. It is not always easy to find fresh, but as South African chefs become more assertive and creative, more will stay in the country.

To accompany all this wonderfully expansive food there is wonderful wine. The French Huguenots, who arrived in 1689, influenced not only the food, but also the wine, settling in two of what are now the most important wine-growing regions, Stellenbosch and the Drakenstein valley.