Ingredients such as rose water, saffron (not to be confused with turmeric, which is often called “saffron” or “Indian saffron” in Sri Lanka), cashews and mint, as well as dishes like biryani rice, korma curries and faluda (a dessert of cornflour and water) all reflect Arab or Indian Muslim influence on Sri Lanka’s cuisine. Arabs are also credited with planting the first coffee trees— native to the Arabian peninsula—in Sri Lanka.
In general, Muslim food is slightly sweeter than Sinhalese and Tamil food, but it certainly isn’t lacking in spice. In fact, Arab traders are said to have been responsible for bringing spices such as cloves and nutmeg from the Moluccan islands to Sri Lanka long before the Dutch colonised what they called the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). Muslim dishes in Sri Lanka never contain pork, which is forbidden by Islam, and pork is only occasionally eaten by the Christian Tamils and Sinhalese.
In more recent times, Malays, who were brought by the Dutch, have intermarried with the Muslim community and brought with them several dishes which have since become part of the Sri Lankan kitchen. Sathe is the Sri Lankan equivalent of satay or cubes of meat threaded on skewers and served with a peanut and chilli sauce. Other Malay dishes include gula melaka (sago pudding with jaggery), nasi kuning (turmeric rice), barbuth (honeycomb tripe curry), seenakku and parsong (two types of rice flour cakes).
The multi-ethnic mix of people living on this small island has resulted in a varied and fascinating cuisine that is delicious regardless of the geographic, ethnic or religious origin.
Spice and Other Things Nice
Spices, so important to the Sri Lankan kitchen, actually helped shape the history of the island. The Portuguese arrived at the beginning of the sixteenth century and it was Sri Lanka’s famous cinnamon—the delicately fragrant bark of the Cinnamomum zeylanicum tree native to the island —which became the prime source of revenue for the Europeans.
Cinnamon sticks are in fact dried curls of bark which are removed in thin slivers from the Cinnamomum zeylanicum tree. Cassia, which is often sold as cinnamon, comes from a related species and is darker brown in colour with a stronger flavour.
Sri Lanka’s cinnamon trees, which grew wild on the southern and western coasts of the island, were said to produce the finest cinnamon in the world—and sold for three times the price of cinnamon from other regions. It was said that “it healeth, it openeth and strengtheneth the mawe and digesteth the meat;
it is also used against all kinde of pyson that may hurt the hart.”
Cinnamon was still the most important source of revenue by the time the Dutch seized control of the island. They introduced penalties to protect it, making it a capital offence to damage a plant, and to sell or to export the quills or their oil. The Dutch did eventually succeed in cultivating cinnamon, but still relied largely on the wild supply. By the nineteenth century, however, the supremacy of cinnamon was challenged by the cheaper cassia bark grown elsewhere in Asia. The flavour is far less refined, and cassia bark lacks the faint sweetness of true cinnamon, but as the price was so competitive, Sri Lankan cinnamon eventually lost its dominance.
Cloves and nutmeg, indigenous to the Moluccas in eastern Indonesia, were planted in Sri Lanka by the Dutch who controlled most of the Dutch East Indies. Cardamom, indigenous to both Sri Lanka and southern India, was another valuable spice which flourished in the wetter regions of the country.
All of Sri Lanka’s spices are used to flavour savoury dishes such as curries; some also add their fragrance and flavour to desserts and cakes. Spices such as cinnamon therefore command a very important position in Sri Lankan culture, not only as culinary flavourings but also by virtue of their having played such a major role in the country’s history.
— Wendy Hutton
Colonial Tastes
Portuguese, Dutch and British influences and the creation of a Burgher culture
British colonials celebrate the end of World War II with a victory dinner in Colombo.
The wave of Western expansionism which began at the end of the fifteenth century, when the Portuguese first rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the west coast of India, was to have a significant impact on Sri Lanka. Over the next four centuries, colonialism affected not only the agriculture, social structure and religions of the country, but also the cuisine.
In fact, it was cuisine that attracted the Portuguese in the first place, or to be more precise, spices. With refrigeration and modern methods of food preservation, it is difficult today to imagine how vital and valuable spices were several centuries ago. They were used to help preserve food and also to mask the flavours of food that might not necessarily be in prime condition. Many spices have medicinal properties and some were believed to ward off the plagues that frequently swept through Europe.
The trade in spices—particularly pepper, nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon and cardamom—was then controlled by Arab merchants, who obtained the spices in various parts of Asia and then sold them to Venetian merchants at exorbitant prices. The search for the source of these valuable spices prompted the Portuguese to set out on their voyages of exploration. Not only did they intend to cut out the Arab middlemen, they were also filled with missionary zeal, intent on obtaining Christian converts.
By the early 1600s, the Portuguese had gained control of the southwest coast of Sri Lanka (which they called Zeilan) and had converted some of the Sinhalese royalty to Catholicism. The island was an important source of revenue, thanks to its spices (particularly cinnamon), and was also an ideal place
for Portuguese vessels to take on supplies in their voyages between their colonies of Goa and Malacca.
The Portuguese introduced a number of plants they had discovered in the Americas, the most important being chilli, as well as corn, tomatoes and guavas. It is hard to imagine Sri Lankan cuisine without chilli, but prior to the introduction of this taste-tingling plant, all Asians had to rely on pepper for heat. The Portuguese impact on the cuisine of Sri Lanka has lasted until today, but almost exclusively in the area of rich cakes: bolo de coco (a coconut cake), foguete (deep-fried pastry tubes with a sweet filling) and bolo folhadao (a layered cake) are all a legacy of the Portuguese.
By the end of the seventeenth century, the people of Sri Lanka were desperate to oust the Portuguese; they promised the Dutch the monopoly of the rich spice trade if they could get rid of these foreigners who “never took pains to find out what the local laws and customs were.”
However, it proved to be a matter of exchanging one colonial master for another, as the Dutch pushed the Portuguese out and then extended their control over most of the island, except for Kandy, which remained an independent Sinhalese kingdom.
The Dutch—who controlled most of the islands in the Dutch East Indies and who had followed the Portuguese as rulers of -Malacca—brought in a number of Malays to Sri Lanka (there was even a Malay regiment). They also introduced several fruits indigenous to the Malay peninsula, including rambutan, mangosteen and durian, as well as Malay names for certain dishes, including spicy condiments (sambol) and pickles (achchar).
Like the Portuguese, the Dutch left a number of cakes to become part of the culinary legacy of Sri Lanka and particularly of the Burgher community, including breudher, a rich cake made with yeast.
Labourers at a spice plantation peel cinnamon bark on the verandah of the factory in 1900.
Dutch meatballs or frikadel, appear as part of a cross-cultural dish served on special occasions in many Sri Lankan homes. Lampries (a corruption of the Dutch lomprijst) combines these meatballs with a typically Sinhalese curry made with four types of meat and a tangy sambol, all wrapped up in a piece of banana