Belacan: Caviar or Vile?

[Music playing]

Jimmy
You’re listening to BiblioAsia+, a podcast produced by the National Library of Singapore. At BiblioAsia, we tell stories about Singapore’s past: some unfamiliar, others forgotten, all fascinating.

Vile, disgusting, nauseating. In particular, a food from Southeast Asia has been called all these things, and worse. They aren’t referring to the durian, though. Instead, these terms have been levelled at something else altogether: a beloved condiment widely used in Southeast Asian cooking.

My name is Jimmy Yap, and I’m the editor-in-chief of BiblioAsia, a publication of the National Library of Singapore. Today, we’re talking about the umami bomb known around these parts as belacan. Made from fermented shrimp, belacan is a must-have ingredient in many Malay, Peranakan and Eurasian dishes. It’s also used in Thai, Vietnamese, Lao and Khmer cooking. Despite the fact that belacan is a common ingredient in this region, and has been for centuries, making it, trading it or even just storing it has not been straightforward. This is mainly because the smell produced during the process of making belacan is perhaps best described as “memorable”.

Today, our guest, Toffa Abdul Wahed, will tell us more about the history of belacan: how it’s made, why it’s popular and how Singapore in particular has dealt with the olfactory byproducts of belacan making since the 19th century. Toffa is a Librarian of the National Library, and she works in the Singapore and Southeast Asia Collection. She has a deep interest in food history, and in university she wrote her dissertation on belacan. Hi, Toffa. Welcome to BiblioAsia+. Tell us, what exactly is belacan?

Toffa
The short and simple answer is fermented shrimp paste. But belacan does have other permutations. belacan comes in various compositions, and has different names in different parts of Southeast Asia.

Jimmy
Apart from shrimp, what else could it be made of?

Toffa
It can be made from fish, wholly from fish, small fish. It can be made from a mixture of shrimp and fish. Also you have different types of fish that you could use to make belacan.

Jimmy
It’s not all kinds of shrimp, right? It’s a particular shrimp that you use?

Toffa
Yes. The belacan we find today in supermarkets and wet markets in Singapore are usually made from udang geragau, which is of the genus, Acetes. I hope I’m pronouncing that right.

Jimmy
You speak Latin as well?

Toffa
Udang geragau goes by different names like udang pepai. It’s a really, really small type of shrimp.

Jimmy
Okay, let me ask you about the udang geragau. Is that the same udang that we can see in the cincalok bottle?

Toffa
Yes. In cincalok, the prawn or the shrimp are whole. You can see the tiny…

Jimmy
The tiny delicious shrimp.

Toffa
You can see the eyes, the beady black eyes. But in belacan it has been pounded down and you can’t make out the pieces of shrimp anymore.

Jimmy
What is the process of making belacan?

Toffa
The important processes in making belacan is salting, drying, pounding. And throughout that whole process, the belacan is being fermented. It goes through several rounds of pounding and drying. So, sometimes belacan can take up to two months or more to make a mature product. But if you make it on your own at home, you can take a few days.

Jimmy
Is belacan very common in Southeast Asian cuisine?

Toffa
Belacan is a common flavouring agent. In Thailand, you wouldn’t use the term belacan, you would use the term, kapi. In Indonesia, you would use “terasi”, although some parts do use the word belacan. In Myanmar, ngapi seinsa refers to shrimp paste specifically. Like I said, ngapi is an all-encompassing term that refers to different types of fermented fish products. In Southeast Asian cuisine, it is usually used as a flavouring agent to flavour curries, stews. But in Singapore’s context, you have different kinds of sambal. You have your sambal belacan, which is simply made from toasted and pounded belacan that is mixed with chilies, some kind of acid like lime juice, salt and sugar. So sambal belacan also has counterparts in other parts of Southeast Asia, like the nam prik kapi, which is a Thai version.

Jimmy
Okay. Why is belacan or fermented shrimp paste used as a flavouring agent? What is special about it that makes it so popular?

Toffa
It gives a umami kind of taste to your dishes. “Umami” is a Japanese term that loosely translates as “a savoriness or a meaty-like taste”. So it imparts a certain deliciousness to your dish. belacan is rich in glutamates and nucleotides. Another type of glutamate is actually MSG. You know how people…

Jimmy
Use MSG to make soups feel richer.

Toffa
It’s an added layer to your soups and your curries.

Jimmy
What other foods are rich in umami? Tomatoes?

Toffa
Cheese, anchovies, fish sauce. Your soy sauce.

Jimmy
No wonder I like dipping my food, anything I eat, in soy sauce. It just makes it taste better.

Toffa
It makes plain rice taste better.

Jimmy
I guess if you’re not very rich and you can’t afford to get a lot of food, and you’re eating largely plain rice. Anything you can do to make your plain rice a little better is a good thing.

Toffa
Yeah. In the past or even till today, belacan is an important food item in the kitchens of people of lower classes. Because sometimes you just want to make your rice palatable. So a lot of them would eat vegetables or simply fried fish with rice and belacan. That makes for a delicious meal.

Jimmy
Okay. Some of the local dishes that use belacan, and we’ve talked about sambal belacan, but I think you also cook it, as you say, in curries. Anything else?

Toffa
In Singapore?

Jimmy
Yes, in Singapore.

Toffa
It’s a integral, essential ingredient in nonya laksa.

Jimmy
Oh, no wonder I like that.

Toffa
Yeah. If you eat your Hokkien mee or char kway teow, the sambal that comes with it has belacan in it. You also have asam pedas, which is a popular Malay dish.

Jimmy
Another one of my favourites. I seem to be liking all these foods that have belacan in it.

Toffa
Yeah, some people don’t know that these foods have belacan in it.

Jimmy
Because it’s not stated, right? I mean, sambal belacan you know, but asam pedas does not announce itself as belacan.

Toffa
Sometimes your satay sauce. Some people like to add a bit of belacan to give that added richness, the umami taste to the satay sauce.

Jimmy
Okay, so this is what I need to do when I cook then. I need to start using belacan more.

Toffa
You can put belacan on anything you want, actually. Because it is a flavouring agent.

Jimmy
I’ve never cooked with belacan, I have to confess. But now that I’ve heard all this, I will be trying and I will warn my neighbours about it. Okay, so it’s very common in regional cuisine, but people who encounter it for the first time typically don’t have a particularly positive reaction. In your BiblioAsia article on belacan, you mention quite well-known names like Hugh Clifford and John Crawfurd, who do not have very positive things to say about belacan. Why is that?

Toffa
Most of these are travelogues written by colonial administrators who travelled across the Malay Peninsula, for instance. They travelled by the waterways, the riverine areas; they visited villages along the coast, along the riverbanks. In Myanmar, they would visit villages along the Irrawaddy River. These are places where one would encounter the production of belacan, or ngapi. The smell was so strong that some of them would write, “I could smell it from afar. Before I see the village. I smell the village first.” I think because belacan is a curiosity for them. And they’re also writing to audiences back home who may not know what belacan is. So it’s also an account of things they encounter.

Jimmy
That’s unusual. Is it true that Munshi Abdullah also described belacan as makanan yang busuk-busuk?

Toffa
Yes, he did. He was on a trip to Terranganu, and he wrote, “Oh, this market has a lot of makanan yang busuk-busuk”, which means “unwholesome, smelly foods”. Like, you know, petai, the stink bean. You have various types of sambal belacan, he wrote, and you also have pickled fish in various forms and pickled shellfish as well. He juxtaposed that against makanan yang mulia, which means “wholesome” or “good foods” like egg, milk, ghee and butter. So it’s really interesting because you wouldn’t really use butter in a lot of cuisines at that time.

Jimmy
Ghee, maybe?

Toffa
Ghee, maybe, yeah. And milk.

Jimmy
Although to be fair, I think even in a Berita Harian article in the 1980s, they talk about… When you make belacan, this is the period when it really starts to smell. Even people who are used to the smell of belacan acknowledged that this is an acquired taste or smell.

Toffa
Yeah, you have that belacan that’s fermenting, right? Of course it will give off certain smells.

Jimmy
Fermentation is decay, right?

Toffa
Yeah, fermentation is the same as decomposition or rotting. But fermentation is a process where you allow something to decay to add a positive or a favourable taste to something. I think a lot of the accounts, like the Western accounts, some of them would describe not only the smell of belacan, but they also impart a certain judgement on the peoples that produced or ate belacan.

Jimmy
Because it smelt bad, therefore these people are…

Toffa
Yeah, morally inferior. Some of them would imply that as well.

Jimmy
Currently, which Southeast Asian countries are the top producers of belacan? In Singapore, where do we get most of our belacan from, for example?

Toffa
I think most of our belacan… If you go to the wet markets, or even the supermarkets, a lot of it come from Penang and Melaka. Those are considered the good ones.

Jimmy
Why?

Toffa
I think over the years people have tasted [them] and by word of mouth. Even newspaper articles in the 20th century would say, “Oh, Melaka belacan is really good.” Or Penang’s. There were also reports in the late 1800s in newspapers where the reporter would announce, “Oh, Melaka has just received a wonderful catch of udang geragau, so you can expect some good belacan to come.”

Jimmy
Now that you mention it, I remember going to Melaka with my brother and he was hunting down belacan of a particular colour.

Toffa
Yes, belacan comes in many colours. So you have a range from a pale, purplish colour. There’s pink, there’s a dark colour like almost dark brown or a deep purple. The colours depend on the composition of the belacan: the ratio of the salt to the raw fish ingredients, or even just the ingredients themselves, whether it’s wholly made from udang geragau.

Jimmy
Which is presumably pink, right? Because the cincalok is pink.

Toffa
Yes, it’s like a pinkish grey. Those are made from udang geragau.

Jimmy
What about the history of belacan making in Singapore? That’s something you’ve researched and you talk about in your BiblioAsia article as well. Singapore obviously doesn’t anymore but there were people in Singapore who used to make belacan.

Toffa
There would always be people in the past who made belacan because they lived by the coast. They lived by rivers, estuaries, where there’s an abundance of udang geragau. And because of the lack of refrigeration in the past, people had to ferment or preserve their foods. It is something that, I would say, came naturally to people as long as they had access to salt and the raw material. The industry in Singapore wasn’t as popular as the Melaka or Penang belacan production industry. Of course, in other parts of British Malaya, from Terranganu to Pahang, to Johor even, they also produced their own versions of belacan. But Singapore was better known as a distribution centre or an entrepot for belacan in this region.

Jimmy
But even though Singapore wasn’t known for its own belacan, for example, there were laws regarding belacan manufacturing or storage in Singapore.

Toffa
Yeah, for drying, salting and storing belacan.

Jimmy
Right, there were specific laws that were aimed at belacan. What were these laws, when did they date to?

Toffa
Under the Conservancy Act in Singapore, and back then in the Straits Settlements.

Jimmy
This was the mid-19th century, right?

Toffa
Yes. belacan was considered an offensive and dangerous trade. Other trades that were considered offensive or dangerous, basically a nuisance to the public, were things that emitted a lot of smells or noise. You had sago manufacture, you had boiling offal, you had kilns. Those were considered offensive and dangerous trades. And belacan was considered one of them. I would assume from the smell that would have emanated from the belacan stores and factories. Within the municipality, you would need a licence to operate. You would register for an annual licence. Without a licence, you would be fined. There were people who tried to not apply for licences.

Jimmy
Save some money.

Toffa
Yeah. There were newspaper reports saying that there were many bags of belacan being stored in a shophouse in Cecil Street and the trader was fined $50.

Jimmy
I think in your article you also mentioned that there were factories along the Kallang River or something?

Toffa
Yes, those were the licenced factories.

Jimmy
Was this in the 19th or 20th century?

Toffa
This was in the early 20th century to the mid-20th century. You can find records in the National Archives of Singapore, maps of the Kallang Basin area. In that whole area, you had timber yards, a lot of other offensive and dangerous trades: sago factories, soap making, tanneries. Those were all the different trades that would congregate in this area because it was allocated, in a way, for industry. From the maps, I could find three belacan factories around the Kallang Basin area. Two of them were actually shown. What I could see, parts of it were over water. So the maps are like an aerial kind of drawing, but you could see that parts of it were in the river itself. So I assume that they were on stilts. The fishermen would have come to these factories with their load of udang geragau. In these factories they would then process and manufacture belacan. There was also a wooden platform that was attached to these factories, which I assume would have been used for drying and laying out belacan.

Jimmy
We don’t make a lot of belacan now, or if any, presumably. But there have been some records or newspaper records of belacan making up till the 1980s or something, right?

Toffa
Yes. In the 1950s, there was a belacan industry in Tampines.

Jimmy
An industry?

Toffa
Yeah, it was a very small cottage industry. The reports wrote that there were like five households. It wasn’t a factory industrial scale. It was a cottage industry of families making belacan to earn money.

Jimmy
This was the 1950s. As late as the 1980s as well, right?

Toffa
Yeah, in the 1980s as well, around the area of Tampines. But of course you have people making belacan along the coasts of Siglap, Seletar, perhaps.

Jimmy
Anywhere where people were living and you could get the udang geragau.

Toffa
There is a report in the Berita Harian from the 1980s about this lady who would go out to the sea near Tampines. She would bring her push-net and she would go in the water. The water has to be quite high, until almost your waist area, or even until your chest. And you would use the push-net and drag it along the seabed. So the push-net is a contraption that comprises two wooden posts, pretty long posts, with a net in-between.

Jimmy
Did this lady sit on a boat to pull the net behind her or was she in the water?

Toffa
She’s in the water. She’s standing and walking in the water.

Jimmy
You’ve obviously studied belacan. Have you ever been tempted to make belacan yourself?

Toffa
I did, I have thought about making belacan.

Jimmy
Okay, where would you find the udang geragau in the first place?

Toffa
Oh, the udang geragau? It’s a seasonal product, so you need to find it at the right time. And it’s quite hard to find. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough. But at least at the wet market near my house… it’s either I missed it, because it’s so… not rare, but it’s something that is not available in large amounts, I guess, so it gets sold out pretty fast.

Jimmy
But you’ve never been tempted? You’ve thought about it, but you’ve never said, “Tomorrow I will make belacan?”

Toffa
No, I think I’m mainly concerned about the smell. And I’m not sure how to sun it outside my house without my neighbours complaining. I also don’t want the flies to come. You need to keep a close watch in case flies come.

Jimmy
Do you think this would be something hipsters will do? You know how hipsters make their own coffee. They roast it properly. So do you think that someday there’ll be hipster belacan?

Toffa
Like an artisanal belacan? Now you have like people reviving making tempeh, which is also a fermented product. Because there’s an art and science to it, right? But I don’t know. Tempeh is also very cheap in the supermarket. But maybe soybeans are easier to find, easier to handle. Not so much smell, so it’s not so intimidating.

Jimmy
But I think if anyone can lead the charge towards artisanal belacan, Toffa, it will be you.

Toffa
Yeah, maybe I’ll make a small-batch belacan.

Jimmy
Yeah, it has to be, right? Single-origin belacan.

Toffa
Udang geragau from the straits of Melaka.

Jimmy
Exactly. Definitely not the straits of Johor because that doesn’t look clean. The Greeks and Romans had something like belacan as well, right?

Toffa
Yeah they had this thing called garum, which is a fermented fish paste.

Jimmy
It was a paste?

Toffa
It’s very complicated. If you want to find out more, you should read Sally Grainger’s book, The Story of Garum. But researchers have different perspectives of what garum is, its composition. It also had different names in different eras of history. And different names could also mean a different composition. So it’s hard to really pinpoint what garum was, whether it’s a fish sauce, a fish paste, or is it both. Essentially, it’s a fermented fish product.

Jimmy
So this idea of a fermented fish or thing. Note my incredible vocabulary. It’s not just a Southeast Asian thing? You could also find it in the Mediterranean, for example.

Toffa
There are also people who thought if there was a connection among garum and variations of belacan, terasi or ngapi. Was there a trade? A migration of cultures and food practices? But there’s no evidence that actually shows the connection, so it could have developed totally differently in different parts of the world.

Jimmy
Thank you very much. I mean, that was a very interesting tour into the history of belacan. Actually, I just want to ask you one more thing about belacan. You mentioned something in your BiblioAsia article about a scandal, a belacan scandal.

Toffa
I’m using the word “scandal” because that’s how I look at it. But yeah, there was a controversy about belacan in the 1970s. It came out in the newspapers, the Malay newspapers, the English ones as well, about Rhodamine B, which is a substance used in the production of belacan to give it a reddish hue. And the controversy is that it was found to be carcinogenic, meaning it can cause cancer in the long run. So there were samples taken to study the different varieties of belacan found in Singapore, most of which came from Melaka and Penang. Even the Malaysian authorities had to look into it. The health ministry was involved in Singapore, the Consumers Association was involved.

Jimmy
It sounds like they were trying to leverage the fact that people really wanted the pink or red belacan.

Toffa
Yes, there was a market for pinkish, reddish belacan. Because apparently it’s supposed to look more appealing than a black, dark-coloured belacan. That’s why the manufacturers would dye it. After you form your belacan, you dip it in a dye to give it that beautiful…

Jimmy
Pink glow.

Toffa
Yeah, pink glow, the pink of health. But not really.

Jimmy
Because it’s carcinogenic. But at least it looked pretty. They presumably sorted it out.

Toffa
Yes, they did, they took samples and things like that. It was a banned substance in Malaysia, but people were still using it.

Jimmy
Okay, what are you working on now? You know, research-wise and cooking-wise.

Toffa
Research-wise, I’m still hopeful that I will have opportunities to look into cookbooks, like I did with Siti Radhiah and Mohamed Saleh, and her cookbooks from the 1950s and ’60s. So I’m looking at cookbooks and cookbook writers as well. So that’s still my interest. Hopefully, I’ll write something about it in the future about other cookbooks.

Jimmy
What about cooking-wise? We know that you’ve already promised to start making artisanal belacan. What else are you planning to do?

Toffa
Well, cooking-wise, pretty mundane, I guess.

Jimmy
Are you trying new dishes? Are you trying to stretch yourself?

Toffa
I try and experiment with the recipes I find in the old cookbooks, like the Jawi cookbooks we have in the National Library’s collection, just to see whether there’s been any evolution to the recipes from then till now. I’m not the best cook, but it’s really fun to dig out recipes from the past and just try them out and see what people ate in the past, or tasted.

Jimmy
Thank you for for talking to us about belacan. At this part of the podcast, we ask all our guests the same bunch of questions. So we’re gonna ask you these questions as well. Who is, in your opinion, the coolest person in Singapore history?

Toffa
I would love to meet and talk to Siti Radhiah. I wrote the article, a bit about her biography. It’s based on records and accounts, but it would be really nice to have an interview with her. But she’s of course passed on.

Jimmy
Have you ever met any of her children?

Toffa
No, not yet.

Jimmy
Someday. I’m sure they will be listening to this podcast, and they will.

Toffa
I hope so. Hello. Hello there.

Jimmy
Shout out to the descendants of Siti Radhiah. Toffa would like a word or two with you because she’d like to know more about Siti Radhiah. Which historical figure would you like to have dinner with who isn’t Siti Radhiah?

Toffa
Okay, so my idea is like a dinner party with a bunch of cookbook writers from the past. I’m not sure whether some of them are still around. I think some of them are. But cookbook writers like Zarinah Anwar, who wrote The MPH Cookbook in the late 1970s – a really, really important cookbook, I believe, in Singapore’s cookbook history.

Jimmy
Why is it important?

Toffa
It had really a lot of beautiful photos. It was a whole production that came about from the publisher and the author, and also included photographs from Chua Soo Bin, who is a renowned photographer.

Jimmy
Oh? Was this in English or in Malay?

Toffa
It’s in English. It had recipes from different cultures in Singapore. It’s not a new concept, because in the past people had cookbooks about recipes from Singapore, from Malay cuisine, Chinese, Eurasian and Indian cuisine, but I feel like it’s one of the cookbooks post-independence that I would consider as important. And of course not only Zarinah Anwar; I would love to have Azah Aziz, who was a journalist with Berita Harian at some point. She wrote the women’s column, and she wrote a lot about food. An interesting fact about her is that last year in August, Google Doodles featured her.

Jimmy
Oh, she is so famous that Google Doodles featured her. Why? What was the occasion that they featured her?

Toffa
Because she’s an important figure in the preservation of Malay tradition and culture.

Jimmy
Because of her cookbook?

Toffa
Oh, no. As far as I know, she didn’t have a cookbook. I’m not sure. But she wrote about Malay culture, from traditions related to cuisine, to clothes, to every aspect of Malay culture.

Jimmy
Okay. What are you reading now?

Toffa
I’m reading a book called The Guest Cat.

Jimmy
The Guest Cat.

Toffa
It’s a Japanese book that’s been translated into English.

Jimmy
Who’s the author? You can’t remember.

Toffa
Takashi Hiraide. If I’m pronouncing it correctly.

Jimmy
It’s literature?

Toffa
It’s literature. It’s about a Tokyo couple who’s living a very routine life, and then one day a cat comes into their lives and makes their lives very interesting. Things like that. It’s just a story of the impermanence and the transient nature of encounters and things like that. It’s quite sad because it reminded me of my cat.

Jimmy
Oh, I’m sorry. Do you still have cats?

Toffa
I would love to have more cats in the future.

Jimmy
More cats in the future. Okay. Are you a fan of Murakami?

Toffa
Yes, I am. I haven’t read all his books.

Jimmy
What is your favourite Murakami?

Toffa
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.

Jimmy
That’s mine!

Toffa
That was the first Murakami book I read, and it blew my mind.

Jimmy
Same.

Toffa
I really have a soft spot for it. I read other Murakamis, but that book is such a long book.

Jimmy
Yes, I can’t imagine that I actually wanted to read every page.

Toffa
Yeah, it was so good.

Jimmy
Yeah. I love The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Complete the sentence: history is…

Toffa
Fun. It’s a lot of digging through documents, records. And the more you find, the more interesting but complicated the narrative becomes, but I think that’s what’s fun about history.

Jimmy
BiblioAsia is…

Toffa
Worth reading.

Jimmy
I think so, but, you know, I’m a bit biased.

Toffa
BiblioAsia is great, because you have so many different stories about Singapore and the region that may not be picked up by mainstream media, or topics that are not as common in other forms of media.

Jimmy
Okay. All right, thank you very much, Toffa, for joining us today on BiblioAsia+. We’re very pleased to have you today. To learn more about belacan and the history of belacan in Singapore, please check out Toffa’s article on the BiblioAsia website. Thank you, Toffa.

Toffa
Thanks!

Jimmy
If you’ve enjoyed this episode, subscribe to the podcast and the BiblioAsia newsletter. Thank you for joining me on BiblioAsia+.

Toffa Abdul Wahed, “Belacan: Caviar? Or Vile and Disgusting?” BiblioAsia 19, no. 1 (2023).

Gracie Lee, “Crawfurd on Southeast Asia,” BiblioAsia 11, no. 4 (2016).

Sally Grainger, The Story of Garum: Fermented Fish Sauce and Salted Fish in the Ancient World (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2021). (From National Library, Singapore, call no. RSEA 338.4766494 GRA)

This episode of BiblioAsia Podcast was hosted by Jimmy Yap and produced by Soh Gek Han. Sound engineering was done by Gibson Analytics. The background music "Di Tanjong Katong" was composed by Ahmad Patek and performed by Chords Haven. Special thanks to Toffa for coming on the show.

The BiblioAsia Podcast by the National Library Singapore tells stories about Singapore history.