Eating Her Curries and Kway

A Cultural History of Food in Singapore

Nicole Tarulevicz

• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780252095368
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Artes culinarias

Discovering Singaporean identity through cooking and cuisine

While eating is a universal experience, for Singaporeans it carries strong national connotations. The popular Singaporean-English phrase "Die die must try" is not so much hyperbole as it is a reflection of the lengths that Singaporeans will go to find great dishes.

In Eating Her Curries and Kway: A Cultural History of Food in Singapore, Nicole Tarulevicz argues that in a society that has undergone substantial change in a relatively short amount of time, food serves Singaporeans as a poignant connection to the past. Eating has provided a unifying practice for a diverse society, a metaphor for multiracialism and recognizable national symbols for a fledgling state. Covering the period from British settlement in 1819 to the present and focusing on the post–1965 postcolonial era, Tarulevicz tells the story of Singapore through the production and consumption of food.

Analyzing a variety of sources that range from cookbooks to architectural and city plans, Tarulevicz offer a thematic history of this unusual country, which was colonized by the British and operated as a port within Malaya. Connecting food culture to the larger history of Singapore, she discusses various topics including domesticity and home economics, housing and architecture, advertising, and the regulation of food-related manners and public behavior such as hawking, littering, and chewing gum. Moving away from the predominantly political and economic focus of other histories of Singapore, Eating Her Curries and Kway provides an important alternative reading of Singaporean society.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction. Audacious Fusion: Thinking About Singaporean Cuisine
• Chapter 1. A Brief History of Singapore
• Chapter 2. Making the Past the Present: Food in a Multiracial Port City
• Chapter 3. Public Spaces, Public Bodies
• Chapter 4. The Kitchen: Invariably Offstage
• Chapter 5. Jam Tarts, Spotted Dicks, and Curry
• Chapter 6. The Pizza of Love
• Chapter 7. Picked in Their Fresh Young Prime
• Chapter 8. Food Sluts and the Marketing of Singaporean Cuisine
• Conclusion. More Than Just Food
• Notes
• Index