Serikaya: Family of Kaya-based Confections

Khir
What if we take the same combination, this serikaya, and we pour it into a hot bath of agar-agar? What happens? Because the way I look at agar-agar, agar-agar is a beautiful. It’s a great, white, neutral canvas. It is up to you how you’re going to colour and flavour it to be anything. You can shape it however you like. So I drop this whole batter, just like how I would make my spreadable serikaya. I drop it into that hot bath. Now, as soon as it is in contact with heat, it curdles.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
Because it has a lesser density. Then, the agar-agar, it floats. And then it separates, and you get your agar-agar serikaya.

[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 familiar, others forgotten, all fascinating. 

Kaya is a dish that many people in Singapore are familiar with. Creamy and rich, kaya is made from coconut milk, eggs, and sugar. It is delicious on toasted bread, which is why it is a very popular breakfast at coffee shops in Singapore. It also works very well on top of glutinous rice, which is why kueh salat, also known as kueh putri salat, is a much-loved dessert. Few people know that one of the earliest mentions of kaya dates back to the 17th century. Not surprisingly, one of those people is Khir Johari, the author of the award-winning book, The Food of Singapore Malays. In a recent episode of From Book to Cook, the NLB’s amazing cooking show, Khir makes kaya from scratch and turns it into three different dishes. Here to tell us more about kaya, the history of kaya, and why its actual name is serikaya, is the great man himself. Welcome to the BiblioAsia+ podcast, Khir. Selamat pagi dan apa khabar?

Khir
Selamat pagi, khabar baik. Thank you very much, Jimmy. Thank you, NLB, for having me again.

Jimmy
Always a pleasure to have you.

Khir
Very honoured indeed.

Jimmy
Khir, thank you for coming on the show. What we know of kaya in Singapore, it actually belongs to a wider repertoire of egg-based coconut confections known in Malay as serikaya. So what does the term serikaya actually mean?

Khir
Yes, let’s begin by asking, what’s in a name? Well, it literally means radiant greatness, but I think it’s good to deconstruct what it truly means. There is a bit of two words here. We have seri, which means radiance or resplendence, and closer to its original Sanskrit roots, seri has an honorific meaning for an illustrious person or place. For instance, we have Seri Pangong, which is the prima donna. And closer to home, we have Sri Temasek, which is the Prime Minister’s official residence at The Istana. So that’s the role of the word seri. And now we take a look at kaya. Today, in modern Malay, it means rich or affluent, but in earlier indigenous contexts, it denotes power and might. So, members of nobility, for instance, in Aceh and Johor, are known as orang kaya.

Jimmy
Oh.

Khir
Back to serikaya again, an apt equivalent would be “the cream of greatness”, in this context. But I think it is so important. When we abbreviate, we don’t get the full picture, do we?

Jimmy
I have a question. Where did serikaya, or kaya, as we mere mortals refer to it, where did it come from? There’s this Portuguese dish I’ve heard of that’s called sericaia or something like that, and is that related?

Khir
Oh, dear, there’s a whole debate about the origin of serikaya. You know, one can argue that the origin of the name of a food often does not give accurate information about the origin of the food itself. So, here is where we need to unpack. Yeah, the need to understand the long history of cultural interactions in Southeast Asia that preceded and continued during European colonialism. Now, linguistically speaking, which comes first? The speaking comes first or the writing comes first? It’s spelled as S-E-R-I-C-A-I-A. Now, the seri is there.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Khir
But it’s the spoken [version] that comes first.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
Spelling depends very much on the region, depends on where we are on the timeline. Spelling systems change with time sometimes. “K” and “Y” are non-existent in Portuguese spelling.

Jimmy
Okay, okay.

Khir
It’s only fairly recently, ’in 1990, that the Portuguese-Language [Orthographic] Agreement brought back “K” and “Y”. It was a casa, “house”, with a “C”.

Jimmy
Yes.

Khir
So, this is now “K”, and A-I is the “Y” sound.

Jimmy
’You’re telling me that sericaia, the Portuguese word, is the same as serikaya, the Malay word?

Khir
Absolutely. It’s just the spelling that’s different.

Jimmy
Okay, but then does that mean that it’s the same dish then?

Khir
Good question. So, we’re gonna explore that. Now, in Malay, when we talk about serikaya, it refers to an umbrella term. There are many iterations of this concoction of eggs, coconut milk and…

Jimmy
Sugar.

Khir
Sugar. Whereas sericaia in Portugal refers to just one particular dish coming from one particular region.

Jimmy
Oh.

Khir
What’s really interesting about the region of Alentejo is that these were some of the people that moved to the archipelago of the Azores. Now, where is the Azores? The Azores belong to Portugal, which is somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. But every record tells us that any ship that came from any of these Portuguese colonies would have, on the way back, to stop in the Azores to report about what goods were brought back, what they encountered, what issues [there were] before they made their way to Lisbon. So the Azores, over time, became this really very wonderful salad bowl.

Jimmy
Oh.

Khir
A salad bowl of people from various backgrounds with all sorts of stories. So the people from Goa, the people from Malacca would probably be in Azores’. It’s no surprise that this idea of this concoction was introduced to the people that made up the Portuguese community in the Azores. They’re from the Alentejo area.

Jimmy
So, you’re saying that serikaya, the word, or the dish, comes via the Azores to this region in Portugal?

Khir
In all likelihood, yeah. I think it’d be good to take a look at how it moves and travels from our part of the world to Portugal.

Jimmy
So you are saying that actually maybe it’s not the same dish, but the Malay serikaya influenced or was the origin of the Portuguese sericaia?

Khir
So what makes a dish? I think the availability of ingredients plays a big part in creating a dish.

Jimmy
Okay.

Khir
I want to use this example. So bunga rampai, or potpourri, pretty much ubiquitous in the Malay world. When the Malays were exiled to Cape Town, they believed that bunga rampai is central to ceremonies. What do you do when you don’t have pandan to make your potpourri? They used lemon leaves.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
So likewise with the story of serikaya, you cannot find coconut in Portugal.

Jimmy
Oh, okay.

Khir
But there’s something else that also looks white.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
It’s two entirely different chemical compositions. What do you do? You substitute that, and you have this dish called serikaya.

Jimmy
Oh, okay, that’s interesting. So they replace the coconut milk with milk.

Khir
The coconut milk with milk. But there’s another interesting story that has surfaced. The earliest known existing record of this dish, serikaya, is found in a Portuguese travelogue of 1608.

Jimmy
Wow! Okay, it’s very early 17th century.

Khir
It’s early, very early. It’s called Ethiopia Oriental. It’s interesting. It’s a travelogue of a Dominican monk by the name of João dos Santos. This is an account that has been repeated and adapted in other sources used by the Catholic Church to relay the story of a woman who attempted to kill the Bishop of Malacca.

Jimmy
Oh, that’s very interesting.

Khir
Yes. Apparently, the Bishop of Malacca corrected a lady who was viewed as a temptress, so she was very upset. She thought she wanted to take revenge by presenting the bishop with something alluring. I mean, if you want to poison someone, it has to be the best food. 

So it was the serikaya. From the description by dos Santos, it is an exotic dish, it’s a foreign dish. The way it’s being described, it must have been very popular in Malacca, but unknown to Portugal.

Jimmy
Right, okay.

Khir
So that’s one piece of evidence. So, the census has something else as well. They found a note from the Convent of Santa Clara, about the recipe of a dessert called serikaya that made its way from Malacca to Goa.

Jimmy
Oh.

Khir
And then Goa to Portugal. But certainly, the Convent of Santa Clara is in Portugal. But what’s really interesting is that it has been adapted along the way. Like all things that travel, good, yummy things, they adapt to taste, adapt to availability of ingredients. ’It pinpoints to a larger story of food that made its way from Malacca, or Southeast Asia, to Goa.

Jimmy
Are there other misconceptions about serikaya that you’re familiar with?

Khir
It’s not so much a misconception, but I think it helps to pinpoint the origin of this dish. There is a telling case of the Malay name for the fruit, Annona reticulata.

Jimmy
What fruit is this?

Khir
In English, it’s called custard apple.

Jimmy
Ah, yeah.

Khir
The Malay philologues proclaim that when the people of the Nusantara encountered this new world fruit that came from the Americas, it reminded them of something that was long familiar to them.

Jimmy
Serikaya.

Khir
The custard! Hence the name buah serikaya.

Jimmy
I see.

Khir
The custard that grows on trees.

Jimmy
Wow.

Khir
So this suggests that the term predates the Columbian Exchange.

Jimmy
Oh, yes, of course.

Khir
So it’s already been around. So, when you introduce this, “So, what’s the name of this fruit?” as opposed to –

Jimmy
– custard apple.

Khir
Yeah, as opposed to the buah nona, that’s how the Portuguese or Spanish would call it, but it was buah serikaya… We reference to something with your prior knowledge, something that you are more familiar with already.

Jimmy
That does make a lot of sense. Are there any other things about the origins of serikaya?

Khir
There’s a whole bunch of references to serikaya. Serikaya is mentioned in old Malay texts. But I want to pick two. The earliest known one is from Cerita Kutai. Kutai is a kingdom in Kalimantan. So this is the Kutai Chronicles. In English, that’s what we would call it. It’s really the account of the king and queen being served with a spread of sweets for a special occasion. So, among the spread mentioned, half of the names there are not traceable.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
They’re probably extinct now, or maybe it takes a different name. But serikaya and dodol were mentioned.

Jimmy
So this is just like a list of things that were –

Khir
A list of things that were served to the king and queen of Kutai.

Jimmy
Wow, okay.

Khir
That’s from 1605. And then let’s take a look at something more familiar, that’s the Hikayat Hang Tuah.

Jimmy
Oh, is serikaya mentioned in the Hikayat Hang Tuah?

Khir
Absolutely, yes. It’s from 1700. So it goes like this: it goes that there’s this particular coconut tree that they had brought down the fruits [from] a bunch of the coconut, the fruit itself. The tree was infested with termites, but the fruit was still edible, so they decided to try it, and the coconut water was so sweet, and the pulp, or the kernel, was so tender and creamy, it tasted like serikaya.

Jimmy
Oh!

Khir
So I thought that was really interesting.

Jimmy
It is.

Khir
So serikaya was really something that you put on a pedestal. So you ate something yummy, so good, and you said, “You know what? Oh, it tastes like serikaya.”

Jimmy
Wow.

Khir
Yeah.

Jimmy
And that’s quite interesting, eh? So that’s almost kaya in coconut.

Khir
There’s kaya in the coconut.

Jimmy
Wow.

Khir
Yeah. Where there’s sweetness, there is a bit of the lemak-ness.

Jimmy
A lot of this research is mentioned in your amazing book, The Food of Singapore Malays. How important is all this historical research, because we’re talking about food, right? And historical research is also great in covering food, is it?

Khir
You see, I’m into the genealogy of food, Jimmy, so I think empirical evidence is key. One needs to do one thing. If you want to understand our food better, travel the region.

And that’s the very start. Note its presence, note its appearance. You look at different labelling in a different region. Look at what moniker has been placed on this particular food. And look at serikaya in all its various iterations. See how it is served, see how it’s been presented. What are the common threads? How does this concoction relate to other other local concoctions? And then we join the dots. The more dots, the better. Then, the other voices speak of serikaya as something being brought by the Portuguese with little to no evidence to substantiate this repeated claim. The problem with claims like that, when you repeat them a thousand times, they become gospel truth. We look at our region, it’s such a fantastic region, in the sense that we see the confluence of so many civilisations coming together.

We celebrate them, and they play a part in providing these beautiful layers and colours to our cuisine. But we mustn’t forget also the flowering of Southeast Asia. Southeast Asia has its own flowering, too. While we get wonderful ideas and creations from India, from China, from the Middle East, there’s a tendency to forget: what do we create here? What do Austronesians produce?

Jimmy
There’s this underlying indigenous culinary knowledge and wisdom that interplays with all these influences from abroad that creates this unique Southeast Asian product.

Khir
Absolutely. So what I see about this Portuguese story, it has been given this discredit, that this combination of eggs, sugar and coconut milk was something that was brought by the Portuguese. Here we are, trying to look at various [pieces of] evidence not only from here, but also [from] Portuguese texts themselves and seeing if this is really like what has been claimed. And in the age of the Internet, it’s very easy to piggyback on one claim, and say, “Oh, you know, this is really a European introduction”, because the idea of eggs and a sort of mixture is alien. But even looking at, savoury dishes in Southeast Asia, the idea of having coconut milk with egg is already there. Look at homok, look at otak-otak.

That’s what it is. You produce this moussey thing. But when you sweeten the mousse, ta-da, you get a serikaya.

Jimmy
It was something that was eaten by the king and queen of Kutai. So, was serikaya then like a luxury item?

Khir
Great question. When we look at Southeast Asian culture of old, ’it’s pretty hierarchical. It still is in some ways. In food practices, the courts have their own repertoire created by the palace, influenced through foreign contact. So we have royal tastemakers, and then sometimes some things trickle down from the palace to what we call commoners, for lack of a better term.

Jimmy
To the rakyat.

Khir
To the rakyat. But there are also dishes that I would call egalitarian dishes. Everybody knows, everybody, regardless of where you are on that strata, everybody consumes them.

Jimmy
But then maybe a particular version is used by royalty.

Khir
In all likelihood. For instance, if I, as a member of ’royalty or nobility, trade with people from, say, India. I have contact with people from the Malabar Coast, and lo and behold, I get to know this wonderful thing called cardamom. I might want to perfume my serikaya with cardamom. That’s very possible. The idea of having, again, eggs and santan and sugar is pretty much commonplace.

Jimmy
Pretty basic.

Khir
Pretty basic, yes. Now, given its status and deliciousness, it must have been popular but reserved for special occasions. It’s not an everyday thing. I mean, even look at today, right? You don’t eat your putri salat or kueh salat every day.

Jimmy
No.

Khir
I’ll save it for Jimmy’s birthday or a special occasion.

Jimmy
That makes a lot of sense.

Khir
Yeah, yeah.

Jimmy
So it was a little bit of a luxury item because you wouldn’t eat it every day, back then, at least.

Khir
Yeah, it’s reserved for special occasions. In terms of accessibility, the ingredients are very accessible.

Jimmy
Okay, serikaya has travelled, both within the Malay world and outside the Malay world. What are the different variations that you’re aware of?

Khir
In Thailand, it’s called sangkaya. Does that sound familiar?

Jimmy
It sounds very familiar.

Khir
Yeah.

Jimmy
Indeed.

Khir
It’s the Thai transliteration of the word serikaya. And as we know, it’s just next door.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Khir
There’s also the penumbral region where the Malay north meets the Thai south.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Khir
Places like Pattani, Yala, and Narathiwat.

Jimmy
So, it just sort of floats up northward. 

Khir
Floats northward, yes. We see that also with satay. Satay is pretty much from island Southeast Asia. But today, if you go to a Thai restaurant, you can find satay served with peanut sauce with roti on the side and not ketupat. So it’s part of this larger story of how food travels.

Jimmy
That’s very interesting.

Khir
Even within a home, within Singapore, the Santara, there are regional variations. So you might want to do duck eggs instead of chicken eggs.

Or what if I want to do a green version, a pandan version? Some people prefer the brown version with gula melaka. Some people will even say, "You know what? I won’t use gula melaka. What if I caramelise my white sugar?"

So now you get another variation. You have fruits in it. And what about its pairing? So do you eat it on its own, or what if I want to pair it with a baguette, with your white bread, a loaf, or do I want to pair it with glutinous rice?

Jimmy
In your book, I think you mentioned something about serikaya Bombay?

Khir
Yeah, serikaya Bombay.

Jimmy
So, what is that?

Khir
Bombay has always been associated with trade spices. If you go to Crawford Market in Mumbai today, it’s just such a jaw-dropper. So serikaya Bombay is serikaya, again, the same three cardinal ingredients, but it’s been aromatised with the various spices.

Jimmy
Specifically?

Khir
Cardamom, cinnamon, you could have maize in it.

Jimmy
Okay. And where is that popular?

Khir
That is pretty popular among the Jawi Peranakan community. Or the Arab community. Basically, if you look at the Arab community or the Indian Muslim community, there’s bound to be some form of Peranakan in there. So it is a Malay concoction, but then again, you incorporate something you’re more familiar with, like perfuming.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
You could even have rose water in your serikaya.

Jimmy
And I think in your book as well, you mentioned serikaya durian.

Khir
Serikaya durian. Oh.

Jimmy
So what is that? How do you make that, and what does it taste like?

Khir
So it’s the same technique of stirring a good 70 minutes or so, depending on the amount that you wanna work on. Towards the end of it, you add durian pulp.

Jimmy
Right. In the episode of From Book to Cook that you recently appeared on, you made, I think, three, or was it four, different kinds of serikaya. Can you tell us about these different serikayas that you made?

Khir
I first want to respond by saying this, Jimmy. When you look at that combination of, again, eggs, coconut milk, and sweetener, let’s call it sweetener, because it can be any form of –

Jimmy
– brown sugar.

Khir
Palm sugar, brown sugar, white sugar. Yeah. It is very much like the central pillar of Malay confectionery. You take the base, you modify, you add something else, and then the next thing you know, you have a brand new sweetmeat.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
’But at the same time, serikaya is this umbrella term. Again’, it doesn’t refer to one specific combination. Now, so I thought for NLB, From Book to Cook, we need to expand our horizons. We need to expand our understanding. So I started by doing the classic serikaya, that is steamed. Or you could even steam it in a carved pumpkin.

Jimmy
Right, a carved-out pumpkin. A hollowed-out pumpkin.

Khir
A hollowed pumpkin. So, imagine you steam it, and when it’s ready, you scoop the custard, and you scoop a bit of the pumpkin, too. Right?

Jimmy
Khir, I know the backstory of this. You got this idea from a particular meal that you ate with some royalty, was it not?

Khir
Yeah, I’ve eaten that in one of the east towns in Terengganu, they had that. But the best story is the one out of Johor. And whenever I think of modern Johor today, I think of Teluk Blangah. Indeed, once I told a Johor princess, she’s now the Queen of Pahang, and I said the soul of modern-day Johor lies in Teluk Blangah and she nodded. So there’s all this connection with Singapore and Johor. But Johor, they knew very well about how best to present it. So, for one of the royal weddings in Johor, every guest had their own palm-sized individual pumpkin. Imagine the amount of work if you have a wedding list of 1,000 guests: 1,000 of those hand-sized, handheld, pumpkins that’s been hollowed out and then filled with serikaya.

Jimmy
Wow! Okay, I mean, how is your life, Khir. In Singapore now, I think most people refer to it as kueh salat. You refer to it as kueh putri salat. Is there a difference? And which is the original name? Kueh putri salat is obviously far more poetic.

Khir
It is more poetic, yeah. When you drop a syllable, you drop a phrase, it’s a lot easier. It’s about effort. It’s about familiarity. Just like serikaya, it’s a lot of work.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
In English, it’s called an elision. You drop one syllable to do the rolling R. Yeah, so putri salat. And indeed, I’ve asked friends who said, “Oh, my mom makes the best kueh salad.” I say, “John, could you please tell me what salat means? It’s not your green salad.”

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
Yeah, yeah. I’ll tell this to my Malay friends, it’s salat.

Jimmy
So kueh putri salat.

Jimmy
Let’s try and get everybody to pronounce it correctly in future. It’s not kueh salad, it’s kueh salat.

Khir
I have to really give credit to Ivan Ting of the restaurant Hathaway. Ivan, he’s really into the etymology of food names. So he said no. He’s decided on his menu, it’s called “Princess of the Straits”.

Jimmy
It’s definitely more enticing.

Khir
’Yeah. But it’s a story about pairing. When you consume it with glutinous rice that has been slightly salted, it’s sort of a nice counterbalance.

Jimmy
Right. So it’s the salty and the sweet.

Khir
Salty and the sweet, yeah. So the other thing that I wanted people to know is what if we take the same combination, this serikaya, and we pour it into a hot bath of agar-agar? What happens? Because the way I look at agar-agar, agar-agar is beautiful. It’s a great neutral white canvas. It’s up to you, how are you going to colour it? How are you going to flavour it? It can be anything. You can shape it however you like. So, I drop this whole batter, just like spreadable serikaya, I drop it into that hot bath. Now, as soon as it’s in contact with heat, it curdles.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
Because it has a lesser density than the agar-agar, it floats. Then it separates, and you get your agar-agar serikaya.

Jimmy
Oh, okay. So is that your own concoction?

Khir
No, it’s been around. The community has been making this.

Jimmy
Right, right.

Khir
Because agar-agar is an important genre of Malay sweets.

Jimmy
I love agar-agar.

Khir
And we are maritime people. We got all our shores. Of course, we lost our shores to urban redevelopment, but when agar-agar is in season, you go down to Kampong Amber, you go to Katong Park, and you pick up your own agar-agar. You go home, and you do all your cleaning. For days and days and days, you soak it in rainwater, because rainwater is slightly acidic. It’s carbonic acid. You do all the cleaning, and after that, you cook. What you get is a whole slab, when it’s hardened, a beautiful canvas. Now, up to you, how are you going to colour it, shape it, flavour it? So now when you drop that serikaya, you get agar-agar serikaya. Serikaya is not one, but many.

Jimmy
A family. So, has there been any kind of evolution in serikaya?

Khir
Absolutely. I mean, look, people love this. There’s something about this flavour. That’s a marriage in heaven, if you want to say [it like that], or the extension of marriage in heaven. Let’s take a look at what we did with the agar-agar. We did the gula melaka version.

So there is an expression in the Malay world, an old saying bagai santan dan gulanya, which means “like coconut milk and its sugar”. The sugar here refers to palm sugar. So it’s no longer about compatibility, it’s about inevitability, because it is santan. That means a marriage already made in heaven. It’s meant to go together. It is the Malay version of, in English, what we would say, like, hands to glove.

Jimmy
A lot of people in Singapore encounter kaya mainly in the coffee shop, right? And we all talk about the Hainanese coffee shop. So did the Hainanese contribute to our kaya as we know it today?

Khir
Absolutely. Do we need to have a conversation about the Hainanese contribution through their cultural contact with the other cultural groups in Singapore? We know the story of the Hainanese. They were the last ones to arrive, and they went to F&B, and they’re very good at it.

They could be in a restaurant, a bakery, they could be working in black-and-white houses. There’s always that interesting synergy. I call it synergy because the driver of the black-and-white house, in all likelihood, is going to be a Baoyanese.

I’m playing with stereotypes here, but there’s always that pattern. The gardener will be a Javanese, and the cook is going to be Hainanese, and they live in the same living area. Imagine the kind of kitchen literacy that took place, the kind of exchange. So the Hainanese make anything from kambing soup to… You name it, to Indian curry, to –

Jimmy
Oxtail stew.

Khir
Oxtail stew, right? Not to mention the Western repertoire. And for them to look left and right, to see this thing called serikaya, and to say, “You know what? Maybe you can just do it over the stove.” They must have experimented, too. We want to commercialise this at a large scale. And with time, also, they have their favourite style of doing it, just caramelised sugar, not white sugar, but sugar, basically converted into caramel, and added to the egg and santan mixture.

Jimmy
Oh, so that is the Hainanese contribution.

Khir
Caramelisation. I don’t want to place things in a pigeonhole. I don’t like to do that. Of course, today, people are doing it, but we don’t have any concrete evidence, but the Hainanese are always associated with kopitiam. It is always brown. But of course, there are also other versions, so it’s really hard to say strictly. You know, and the last thing we want to do is –

Jimmy
Start a war about this.

Khir
Not just start a war, but place people in boxes.

Jimmy
Right. Okay.

Khir
“This is Chinese Peranakan. This is Hainanese.” No, I think it’s more colourful than that. I found a kaya tin label that says “Kaya” and it comes with another title. It says, “A Malayan delicacy”.

Jimmy
Okay. When is this dated to?

Khir
Looking at the typography, I suspect it’s 1960s, late ’60s. Yeah. So kaya label, it says, “A Malayan delicacy”. Also written in Jawi, simply, “kaya”.

Jimmy
Oh, okay.

Khir
How interesting. So this label, in Jawi, it’s also simply called kaya, and the brand is a Flying Fish brand.

Jimmy
Okay.

Khir
But what’s really interesting is also the graphic. ’There’s a depiction of a kampung house by the shore with swaying coconut palms, and a Malay lady on the forefront wearing the sarong as a breast cloth, a berkemban. I thought that’s fascinating. And the ingredients: wholesome fresh hen eggs, selected coconuts, and white sugar. Isn’t that fascinating?

Jimmy
Yeah. Is that one of the earliest commercially available kaya? I mean, when did we start tinning kaya?

Khir
I think about the same time we started tinning pineapple.

Jimmy
You preserve it, right?

Khir

So Lum Soon does it, the Lee family did it, the Lee pineapple.

Jimmy
The Lees not only canned pineapple, they also canned kaya?

Khir
Yes, they also had kaya.

Jimmy
Oh, they did that!

Khir
Yeah, just some form of diversification I guess?

Jimmy
The canning factory, just can whatever.

Khir
I find it really interesting, the scale of how it’s being made. Looking at government documents on company registration, it’s interesting, when it was registered, what product they were making, the company would say, “Serikaya”. So we could have lost it with time.

Jimmy
Oh, so even up to the ’60s, it was both kaya and serikaya.

Khir
Serikaya, it is kaya and serikaya. So but there are also some of these artisanal – I call it artisanal because they operated on a small scale out of a number of Lorongs. Lorong 15A, Geylang Road.

Jimmy
Also, those small factories making kaya.

Khir
Yeah. I know that street very well because my school was at Lorong 21.

Jimmy
Oh, okay. In From Book to Cook, you made kaya, and it famously takes about 70 minutes of stirring. That sounds like a lot of stirring, to be honest. For one person especially. So typically, how is kaya made? Is it one person who does it?

Khir
I think, like a lot of wonderful things, there’s nothing like a joint effort. Nothing like gotong royong, right?

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
But it can be done, you know, if you have got lots of muscle power.

Jimmy
Yeah, yeah.

Khir
Yeah.

Jimmy
You got big biceps. You can do it.

Khir
Yeah. But I think two important ingredients, Jimmy, that we tend to forget, are called patience and passion.

Jimmy
Okay.

Khir
Yeah. When you work on a kaya, you cannot pick up your phone. Especially when you have a landline. Of course, now you can have one hand stirring and the other hand on a cell phone. But back then, while you were doing your kaya, you just couldn’t leave the kaya and go to your landline to answer your call. You had to be there, otherwise the curds were going to be coarse. You don’t want that. You want it to be textural, but you don’t want it to be coarse. You want it to have a bit of finesse in your bain-marie.

Jimmy
So usually then if it’s being made at home, it’s a mother dragging her kids to say, “Okay, you take over now for the next 10 minutes” or something?

Khir
I think that’s a great early induction. How do you cultivate very early on this love for something’ traditional?

Jimmy
Did your mom ever make kaya?

Khir
Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Jimmy
And you helped her?

Khir
Well, back then, I was too short to, but I’ve seen people in the family making it differently depending on who’s coming, depending on the mood of the ladies at home, or whether it’s going be the green or the gula melaka version.

Jimmy
Yeah.

Khir
Or the version with durian, or the version with jackfruit.

Jimmy
Wow! Clearly, making it at home sometimes is better than getting the commercial version. What makes a good kaya?

Khir
I think first and foremost, what makes a good kaya is the aroma. The first test is to test the aroma. If I open a jar of kaya, and it lacks that wondrous, wonderful aroma, something is amiss.

Jimmy
Okay.

Khir
And of course, optics matter also. A great kaya is one that has this luscious, look, luscious flavour to it. That’s, to me, the trademark of a good kaya. I’m a big fan of all things handcrafted in small batches. And the thing is, when you make kaya on your own, as opposed to commercial kaya, you are your own pilot. You decide how you want your kaya to be. Do you want it to be coarse? [If so] you want to add more egg white. So, if your family says, “Dad, can you make kaya for me, but I want it to be smooth”, then you want to make sure that the ratio of yolk to white has more yolk.

Jimmy
Oh.

Khir
You play around with that, which you cannot do with commercial kaya.

Jimmy
Yes, of course.

Khir
Right? What if you want something more grassy? You say, “You know what, Dad? I want something more matcha-like. Can I add an older pandan leaf, more pandan extract, so it becomes more grassy?” Right? Because when you work with pandan, it’s not just the colour, not just the aroma, but also the flavour. But the thing about doing it on your own, you’re guaranteed there won’t be any fillers, Jimmy. So, I’m concerned about fillers in jars of serikaya and preservatives, right?

Jimmy
What are common fillers?

Khir
The common fillers in kaya would be starch.

Jimmy
What kind of starch?

Khir
Could be cornstarch. Cornstarch would be very good. Because cornstarch is very delicate, so it works well. It cannot be wheat flour in the base. The thing with cornstarch is that it acts as a binder, especially when you’re making it in bulk. So, it helps as a binder, but also it adds volume.

Jimmy
Right.

Khir
Yes.

Jimmy
Right. So when you make kaya at home, would you use cornstarch? You would not?

Khir
Not a drop.

Jimmy
Okay.

Khir
I’m sorry, I’m a purist. I mean, I believe in innovation. You know, I always believe that food is always dynamic, it’s not static. But there are times that I just want –

Jimmy
You draw a line.

Khir
I draw a line. Yes, yes, yeah.

Jimmy
Okay, I am learning so much from talking to you.

Khir
And then [there’s] the choice of duck egg or chicken egg. My choice is duck egg always when it comes to serikaya. In the past, it was easy. There’s something about the richness of duck egg. You can do a horizontal blind tasting, same recipe, two types of egg. I just can’t describe it, Jimmy. But today, duck eggs are not available in Singapore. It’s not allowed.

Jimmy
 I think you said once they used to sell two types of kaya, and the one with the duck egg was obviously more expensive.

Khir
It’s definitely more expensive. It’s a different price point. Just even the raw ingredient itself.

Jimmy
But it’s obviously worth it because people then were willing to pay extra for the duck egg.

Khir
Absolutely. We’re living in an age where we no longer grow what we eat, and we no longer eat what we grow. Right? We’ve lost this connection to a certain past, a certain understanding [of the] Earth that’s sprung forth [from] these wonderful things that you have on your table. To me, having that connection is important. So when I make my own kaya, I always feel that I’m in connection with something very old. I’m in connection with the region. It reminds me. There’s a certain identity element at work. It maybe even triggers a beautiful memory of me as a kid, watching or helping grandma make it over the terracotta stove.

Jimmy
After I watch your episode, I will be inspired to make my own kaya.

Khir
Please do, Jimmy.

Jimmy
It is definitely doable, right?

Khir
Absolutely doable.

Jimmy
Someone who’s a klutz like me.

Khir
Don’t let the 70 minutes deter you. Fear nothing. It’s just stirring. The outcome is worth it.

Jimmy
I will attempt.

Khir
Every ounce of your energy.

Jimmy
Okay. So, tell me, when you’re not writing award-winning books, what are you doing?

Khir
Well, I have this platform called Dialogues by Khir. It’s a cultural platform that shares field notes, archival discoveries, and reflections on food culture and the history of Nusantara. It centres its presence on social media, where research meets public conversations. Its flagship programme is called Serumpun. It’s an annual symposium with the tagline “Tasting Traditions, Telling Tales”. It gathers academics and chefs and cultural practitioners to explore how culinary traditions are shaped by memory, the movement [of] people, and shared regional roots.

Jimmy
Beautiful. Khir, thank you very much for joining us on BiblioAsia+. Don’t miss watching Khir make serikaya on From Book to Cook. It’s on YouTube. And all links and information about how to make serikaya and all that can be found in the show notes, or on the BiblioAsia website at biblioasia.nlb.gov.sg. 

Khir, once again, thank you so much for joining us. It was a tremendous pleasure having you. I had so much fun. Now I’m really hungry because of all this talk about serikaya. Thank you.

Khir
Thank you very much, Jimmy. Thank you so much. I’m truly honoured, and it’s an absolute pleasure to be here for NLB.

[Music playing] 

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

Khir Johari, The Food of Singapore Malays: Gastronomic Travels Through the Archipelago (Singapore: Marshall Cavendish Editions, 2021).

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

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