Singapore Food History

I have always been fascinated by curry. Not just because I love the delicious spicy flavours it serves up, but rather how well it travels around the world dishing up in a variety of accents.

Now that Lizzie Collingwood has written an authoritative history of curry and delved on the origins of this spicy stew, I am delightfully basking in her work. Not only has she affirmed my belief on how curry as we understand it is really a recent innovation in the last few centuries, but she has also pried open a window on how we might understand some of our own curry in Singapore.

So what is curry? It appears that the Portuguese and British who were in India hundreds of years ago had taken to describe all Indian spicy dishes as curry. The Portuguese had adopted the terms �caril� or �caree� from various words in south Indian languages. In Kannadan and Malayalam, the word �karil� meant spices for seasoning. In Tamil, the word kari had a similar meaning. This eventually became �curry�.[1] And as the British enjoyed their curries and began to cook them as a variation on one theme in their kitchens, the variety of spices that were grinded to make that favoured dish was reduced conveniently to curry powder, which can be easily purchased. Lizzie Collingwood found that by 1850s, British cookery books simply called for a spoonful of curry powder in their Indian recipes.[2]

In N B Dennys' 1894 "A Descriptive Dictionary of British Malaya�, he wrote of the Curry from the Straits Settlement as characterised by its use of coconut milk, tumeric and the pods of the moringa tree (drumsticks). He went on to say there were two main types of curry, primarily �black� and �white�, and the generic name of curry in Malay was gulai.

Tucking into curry as part of a huge meal with a variety of other meats and fish usually cooked in European ways was not uncommon among the Europeans in Island Southeast Asia. It is often found on the tables in Dutch East Indies as much as the Straits Settlements and Malay States. This practice persisted through to the 20^th century, when having a curry on Sundays had become a custom for the Europeans in Malaya. In P Allix�s 1953 �Menu for Malaya�, she proposed menus �more in European style, but also in the tradition of Malaya.�[7] One of her Sunday Lunch menu is as follows,

Some curries they had may be of Indian style, but the discerning suitably recognised the indigenous dishes when they saw it, terming it a Malay curry and such. In P C B Newington�s collection of recipes published in 1947[9], his curry section is well compiled with a collection of Indian curries, Malay curries which are based on local herbs using ingredients such as lemon grass and belachan, and even European curries! Quite similar to what Lizzie Collingwood had observed in Britain, a new strand of curry emerged as it was adapted to European cooking, with the addition of Worcester Sauce, tomato sauce or even as an adaptation to Malayan taste, Soya Bean Sauce. Newington�s Mother�s Curry is a good example,

Fry a large chopped onion in 2 tablespoons butter. Add 2 tablespoons Curry Powder. Fry several minutes and if dry add stock. Now add 1 tablespoon each of Worcester sauce, tomato sauce and vinegar. Salt to taste. Now add cubes of cooked cold meat and enough stock to cover. Simmer 2 hours or more, stirring.

As Newington is rather influenced by Malayan cooking, he suggested as an improvement to Mother�s Curry, the substitution of coconut milk for stock and to add ground chillies.

Before World War Two, very few European women cook in Malaya, leaving such duties to their local cooks and servants who are usually Chinese, Malay or Indian.[10] The food they ate would have filtered to the local population thanks to the cooks they employed. Among them are many Hainanese Chinese, who till today are celebrated for their Asian-inspired �Western food� such as Hainanese pork chops and chicken pies.[11] Curry could have been another dish they learnt in cooking for the Europeans, considering that curry is foreign to the Chinese palate.

Among the Chinese, the Hainanese continued to be known for their curry. My grandmother whom I interviewed, recalled fondly of buying curry from the Hainanese hawker in the 1930s and 1940s in the Clarke Quay area. Although she was born in Malaya in the 1920s, her parents were new �migr�s from China, and thus cooked and ate Chinese food at home. Curry was a treat to be had from the Hainanese hawker in the neighbourhood coffee shop.

With the exception for the Straits Chinese or the Peranakans who lived in the Malay archipelago for generations and are accustomed to spicy food and cooking with spices, herbs and coconut milk., I can only imagine how curry will seem alien to the new Chinese emigrants in colonial Singapore. Probably like the British and Portuguese in India centuries earlier, they would be bewildered by the array of spicy dishes and their understanding of curry will be influenced by their own cuisine as well as coloured by the mems and tuans that they worked for.

Lois T Kao who taught cookery in Singapore in the 1940s and was schooled in Chinese cooking, learning her art in Shanghai and Hong Kong gave a Chinese twist to her curries. In her book, �Cookery Book on Local Food�, she coated the beef or chicken with tapioca flour before adding to the pot with fried curry paste.[12] Coating of meat in flour before frying is reminiscent of Chinese cookery. Her rendition is but one of the Chinese adaptations to curry.

The legacy remains. Many Singapore Chinese love spicy food and curries but are more familiar cooking with curry powder or curry paste for a dish then to assemble the spices and cooking the curry from scratch. In contrast, the Malay, Indians and Eurasians are more comfortable using spices. Today, there are a wide array of curries to be enjoyed in Singapore, from Devil�s Curry, Curry Fish Head, Chinese Chicken Curry, mutton curry, Rendang to sayur lodeh. They shared some common history, yet in each is a story to be told, reflecting the diverse culinary heritage of the community and the people that it fed.

[1] Collingham, Lizzie. Curry : A Biography, London : Chatto & Windus, 2005, pg 115.

[2] Ibid, pg 141.

[3] Reid, Anthony. Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450-1680, Vol 1, The Land Below the Winds. New Haven : Yale University Press, 1988. pg 28-30.

[4] Ibid, pg30.

[5] Rush, James R. Java � A Traveller�s Anthology, Kuala Lumpur : Oxford University Press, 1996, pg 22-23.

[6] Cameron, John, �Our Tropical Possessions in Malayan India� in Wise, Michael, Travellers� Tales of Old Singapore, Singapore : Time Book International, 1996, pg 74-78.

[7] Allix P, Menus for Malaya, Singapore : Malaya Publishing House, 1953, pg 2.

[8] Ibid, pg 29.

[9] Newington, P C B, Good Food. Ipoh : Charles Grenier & Co Ltd, 1947.

[10] Shennan, Margaret. Out in the Midday Sun : The British in Malaya 1880-1960, London : John Murray, 2000, pg 197.

[11] Tan Sylvia, Singapore Heritage Food : Yesterday�s Recipes for Today�s Cook. Singapore : Landmark Books, 2004. pg 11.

[12] Kao, Lois T. Cookery Book on Local Food. Singapore : Straits Printers, 1946.