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The Rise of the Chef in Java

ABSTRACT This study traces the professionalization of cooking in Southeast Asia, specifically in precolonial Java. We call attention to three different types of cooks documented in the island’s textual record: household cooks (including commercial cooks), cooks in religious establishments, and professional cooks. Women were in charge of the first category, whereas the second and third were controlled by men yet also featured women. Household cooks and religious cooks mainly prepared simple fare, whereas chefs employed by courts were responsible for the repast of the elites. To learn more about these cooks and their skills, we examine specific passages of Old Javanese texts, which should not be neglected by food historians of Southeast Asia. These excerpts are analyzed in comparison with contemporaneous texts from India and Cambodia. We also assess them against more recent culinary practices in insular Southeast Asia, enabling us to reconstruct some of the actual dishes mentioned in the classical literature. Through careful reading between the lines, we thus bring together different strands of evidence to revise Java’s culinary history.