The amount of ink spilt on Nelson Mandela, one of the world's favourite statesman, is bewildering. Enter his name in the book section of amazon.com website and you get 12,417 entries.

From a plethora of biographies of the anti-apartheid icon, authorized and otherwise, to collections of his favourite folktales, and the intriguing-sounding 'Nelson Mandela: The pinnacle-pillar of mother earth,' South Africa's first black president is the subject of some fascination.

Now, on the eve of his 90th birthday on Friday, readers can sink their teeth into another take on his life in a book that looks at the role of food in Nelson Mandela's long walk to freedom.

Noting the power of taste and smell to tap into distant memories, Anna Trapido uses food-related recollections served up by Mandela himself and many of the key figures in his life to chart a 'gastro-political' profile entitled Hunger for Freedom: The Story of Food in the Life of Nelson Mandela.

Some of Mandela's happiest memories revolve around food - including roasting mealies (corn) under the open skies of his native Eastern Cape as a young herdboy and later, trying to impress a girl with his clumsy use of a knife and fork on a slippery chicken wing.

Food also fuelled Mandela's first political campaign. His indignation at the poor quality of the canteen fare at Fort Hare University spurred him to stand for the students' union. When he refused to take up his post following a boycott of the poll, he was expelled from the university and took the road to Johannesburg, where he threw himself into politics proper.

It was in the City of Gold in the 1940s, over a cup of tea, that he became aware of the extent of the segregation in urban South Africa. The legal firm, where Mandela was articling, had separate cups for blacks and whites.

But food, as Trapido notes, also opened a window for the curious Mandela onto other cultures. While the ANC at the time eschewed alliances with non-African organizations, Mandela was mopping up curries at the home of Indian activists like Amina Pahad and dunking rusks with Afrikaaner lawyer, Bram Fischer.

'He's interested in authenticity in all areas of his life. He likes classic food - classic Indian food, classic Greek food, classic Xhosa (Mandela's ethnic group's) food - because he's really interested in who these people are in their essence,' says Trapido.

Food later became a symbol of the racial inclusivity of the new ANC, with delegates to the historic people's Congress in Kliptown, Soweto, in 1956 at which the ANC Freedom Charter was signed, being offered soup 'with meat' and 'without meat,' out of consideration for Hindus.

On more than one occasion, food, or his love of it, was nearly the undoing of the young politician. After the ANC was banned in the early 1960s, Mandela went underground for over a year.

While hiding in a house in a white suburb of Johannesburg he left a bottle of milk on the windowsill to ferment into the sour milk - amasi - that is popular among Xhosas.

Two black workers, on seeing the bottle, knew a black person must be living there - and Mandela had to quickly seek a new hideout.

The authorities finally caught up with him, and in 1964 Mandela was sentenced in prison for planning acts of sabotage and guerrilla warfare following the landmark Rivonia Trial.

Throughout his 27-year imprisonment, Mandela and his second wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela, clung to each other through shared memories, including memories of shared meals.

In one of the more poignant tales in the book, Winnie recalls how she held onto the top tier of their wedding cake for three decades, through displacement, arrest and upheaval, in the hope one day they could share their 'just desserts.'

In 1988, two years before Mandela's release, the cake was consumed by a fire at her home in Soweto.

Mandela, who subsisted on Robben Island on a diet of porridge, boiled corn, a yeast drink and a little gristly meat that was the mainstay of black prisoners for years, yearned in his letters to his wife for her macaroni with mince meat.

Now, at 90, Madiba's food tastes have come full circle, says Trapido. 'The things he likes now are the things he ate as a child.'

According to his daughter Zindzi, he now also allows himself the odd fatty indulgence. 'Custard and ice-cream. Double toffee ice-cream.'