Peranakan food is fusion of both Chinese and Malay. It is Chinese in that it retains the use of ingredients such as pork which the mainly indigenous people, mainly Muslims, do not take and it is Malay in that it uses Malay styles of cooking as well as Malay spices in all its various dishes.
True Peranakan recipes are very elaborate requiring hours of preparation – cutting, chopping, skinning, pounding and grinding of raw, local Malay ingredients like lengkuas, assam, bawang, cabai, serai, cukur, daun pandan and santan. Common cooking methods adopted from the Malays included panggang (smoke), goreng (fried), tumis (lightly fried) or rebus (boiled).
Peranakan recipes are usually spicy, employing pungent roots like lengkuas (galangal), turmeric and ginger; aromatic leaves like daun pandan (screwpine leaf), daun limau purut (fragrant lime leaf) and daun kesum (polygonum or laksa leaf); together with other ingredients like candlenuts, shallots, shrimp paste and chilli. Lemon, tamarind, belimbing (carambola) or green mangoes are used to add a tangy taste to many dishes.
The Peranakans are also renowned for their scrumptious and colourful cakes and sweet, sticky delicacies to end the meal. Nonya Kuih or cakes are rich and varied, made from ingredients like sweet potato, glutinous rice, palm sugar and coconut milk.
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