SingaporeFoodHistory.com                        

Welcome to Singapore Food History.com!

Have you ever wondered what makes Singapore food ticks?  Why do Singaporeans eat the way we do?  Why is hawker food (street-food) so popular?  What did people of Singapore eat in the early 20th century?  How did laksa come about?  What is traditional Singapore food? 

These are some of the many questions I have about Singapore food history, and for which I have embarked on a journey to learn more about Singapore food.  It is often said that "we are what we eat", and this website is dedicated to Singapore culinary history and how food has defined our social and cultural experience.

Singaporefoodhistory.com is a resource for anyone interested in Singapore food history.  It includes reference to useful books (including the first bibliography of Singapore's cookbooks), events, traditional recipes and links.  Articles exploring various issues of Singapore food history will be featured regularly.  For the rest of 2005, look out for articles on the use of chilli in Singapore, the food of Singapore in the 19th century as documented by travellers and many more.

At the moment, I am the editor, writer and webmaster all rolled into one.  But I hope this will evolve eventually into a forum for other like-minded food enthusiasts and culinary historians, so that we can share our passion and knowledge through this website.  With that, I encourage contributions and comments on any topics of Singapore food history, and you can email me at (ailing.devadas AT gmail.com). 

This site will be updated frequently, and to keep you updated of new books, articles or events, you  can subscribe to the Singapore food history.com regular e-newsletter.  To subscribe, please email me (ailing.devadas AT gmail.com).

Enjoy your food, the site, and hopefully I'll hear from you soon!

Ai Ling Sim-Devadas

Book Review - Curry : A Biography by Lizzie Collingham

Curry - A Biography is a wonderful read for anyone interested in the culinary history of curry and Indian food as we know it from the multitudes of Indian restaurants.  Lizzie Collingham, a Cambridge-trained historian has written an authoritative history about curry.  It is well-researched, well-written, and accessible to all.

What's in a Curry?

Following Lizzie Collingham's biography of curry in India, it is time to look at curry in Singapore.  What is this mouth-watering stew like in Singapore and Island Southeast Asia?

The Food Detective : Where did the humble curry puff come from?

Since this is the season for all things curry, here's another poser for all curry buffs - where did the humble curry puff come from?  Fellow culinary enthusiast Ivan Lian first posed the question to me having tried a Cornish Pasty in UK. 

As he put it, "I was intrigued by the similarities between a Cornish pasty and our curry puff. Ok so there's no curry in theirs and they're twice as big as anything we get here but when I read that similar pastries were to be found in parts of the USA and even Mexico, I was sold.  From the 1800s, a form of pastry known as the Cornish Pasty (or Pastie) became popular with tin miners in Cornwall. It is an oven-cooked pastry case traditionally filled with diced meat, potatoes and onion. It has a semicircular shape, caused by folding a circular pastry sheet over the filling. The pasty is then sealed with a crimp on the curved edge. The crimp itself isn't purely decorative. The miners would hold the pasty by the crimped edge, throwing it away after they had eaten the body of the pasty to avoid arsenic poisoning."

If you have a clue or the answer to this mystery, send me your comments, and it will be posted on this website.  Send it to ailing.devadas AT gmail.com

I have often wondered about coffee drinking in Singapore before the onslaught of Starbucks and the like.  I enjoy my Cafe Latte and Cappucino, but I love the strong dark brew of Singapore-style coffee in coffee shops and hawker centres too!  I wonder how the local brew we enjoy had come about, after all coffee drinking is a fairly "foreign" beverage to immigrants from India, China and the Malay Archipelago in the 19th century and early 20th century.  Is this brew similar to the version drank by the British and the Dutch in the region in that era? 

I asked readers to shed light on this mystery, and here are some comments they sent...

If you have a clue or the answer to this mystery, send me your comments, and it will be posted on this website.  Send it to ailing.devadas AT gmail.com

Some Common Curry Spices