PERANAKAN CUISINE AS A PROJECTION OF THE PERANAKAN IDENTITY

Abstract

This thesis aims to discuss the Peranakan cuisine as a cognitive aspect of the Peranakan identity. The Peranakans are seen as survivors and opportunists who change with the tide in order to ensure their political, social and economic survival. They have pushed forward politically has a Singaporean especially during the road to Independence. The various identity markers like the Peranakan language, dress, lifestyle that were used to distinguish the Peranakans as a separate community before, have now faded into the background with their attempt to assimilate into the mainstream. However, the Peranakan cuisine is the only marker that has thrived thus far. The Peranakan cuisine is very much an identity marker because it is a cuisine with traditions of its own. It had the social role of domesticating the nonyas into excellent cooks, wives and mothers in the past, as well as keeping the family closely knitted together. It was an exclusive cuisine that only the Peranakans knew and were proud of. However it has changed from a private identity marker into a public one at present with the presence of cookbooks and the cuisine branching out from a household diet into one that has been commercialized. It now has the role of showing the world that the Peranakan community exists by presenting a delectable, unique and distinct cuisine that can be found nowhere else in the world. This cuisine is an often slighted identity marker not by the Peranakan community themselves, but by the meager academic research done on it. This thesis seeks to provide some useful insights of the Peranakan culture and heritage by means of studying the cuisine per se.