Then & Now | How heritage-themed cookbooks are a recipe for colonial nostalgia
From Goa to Penang, and Macau to Mombasa, the mixing of food cultures has created unique culinary memories
All over the world, colonial societies produced recipe books. Fascinating insights into creolised food cultures can be garnered from these slim, sometimes hard-to-find volumes.
From Malaya and Singapore to Kenya, India and Macau, from the 19th century onwards, compendiums have been compiled of both popular recipes and variations of dishes transported from “the old country” to become something new in their adopted environments. Hong Kong, however, has little of this culinary legacy.
Heritage-themed recipe books have become popular in recent years as a resurgence of cultural identity occurs among the children of those who migrated to Western countries from the 1950s onwards. When specific aspects of culture and personal identity are challenged, possibly due to a lack of recognition or appreciation in the host society, creative responses tend to be offered.
Two examples that have generated excellent recipe books and cultural histories are the Portuguese-Macanese diaspora (mostly having gone to California, in the United States) and the Anglo-Indian movement (usually to Britain and Australia).
Publications have often been compiled from handwritten recipe books, usually maintained by the women of households and passed down through the decades. As a result, items become known by such names as “Grandma’s fruit cake”, “Auntie Vera’s mango chutney”, “Uncle Arthur’s meatball curry” and so on. The original recipe books usually specified ingredient amounts by cost rather than by weight, and accurate conversion into modern measurement systems is essential.
