Jam Tarts, Spotted Dicks, and Curry

This chapter discusses how Singaporean and Malayan cookbooks produced from 1880 to 2008 were intended to inculcate a racial and social hierarchy. A 1960s cookbook based on the Malayan school curriculum, for example, states that the text is intended to “foster and develop those natural attributes of good craftsmanship and artistry posed by all Malayans.” In the cooking of jam tarts, boiled potatoes, royal icing, coddled eggs, and scones, it seems that Malayan artistry had a clearly British framing. Through educational materials, the colonial authorities, followed by the Singaporean government, used the domestic sphere to establish specific gender and racial constructions; to make rules. Moreover, they sought to imagine, and thereby define, the nation in alignment with the agendas of the elites.