The Pizza of Love

This chapter examines how cookbook authors tried to use food and food preparation to define a Singaporean national identity by looking at cookbooks that claim to represent authentic Singaporean cuisine. The range of recipes—specifically, their method and explanation—across time reveals a shifting national cuisine, reflecting demographic and class shifts yet working to establish rules about what constitutes national food. However, in a society where the kitchen has a diminished role, the purchase of a cookbook takes on a new meaning. When a cookbook is not being used to provide recipes, its function as an indicator of social status or of aspirationalism and as a signifier of traditional values becomes more prominent. The chapter then shows how food gives people an illusion of cultural connection that ultimately serves the government by endorsing a notion of racial harmony based on multiracialism, not multiculturalism.