Mrs Lee’s Cookbook: Nonya Recipes
Collectible Cookbooks Peranakan/Straits-Chinese Cuisine Singapore Heritage Food Nonya Cookery Asian Culinary History Ethnic Regional Cooking Southeast Asian Gastronomy First-Edition Culinary Literature
First-edition hardcover of “Mrs Lee’s Cookbook: Nonya Recipes,” 1980 – the volume that single-handedly rescued Singapore’s Peranakan heritage food from disappearing into family memory. Lee Chin Koon, matriarch of Singapore’s first Prime Minister, tested and scaled down her clan’s closely-guarded dishes so home cooks could reproduce laksa lemak, ayam buah keluak, kueh salat and other iconic “Nonya” classics without guessing at “a pinch of this” or “a handful of that.” Because the recipes were never reprinted in this exact form, a clean first printing is now hunted by chefs, collectors and anyone tracing authentic Straits-Chinese flavour.
What makes this copy collectable is the original 1980 dust jacket, rice-paper overlay and sturdy hardback binding—elements later paperback reprints lost. Condition is honest vintage: jacket shows the mellowed colour and gentle edge-wear you expect from a working kitchen companion, while the interior remains unmarked, odour-free and free of underlining, making it usable as well as display-worthy. No ex-library stamps, no inscriptions, just the honest patina of a book that was actually cooked from.
For buyers, owning this edition is like having a grandmother’s hand reach across decades: precise measurements, step-by-step photographs of banana-leaf folding, chilli pounding and rempah timing, plus the only published glossary that matches old Hokkien and Malay ingredient names to modern supermarket labels. Whether you are a young adult learning heritage cookery, a chef refining a restaurant menu, or a collector seeking the cornerstone title of Singapore culinary literature, this first-edition “Mrs Lee” delivers both kitchen practicality and heirloom value on one shelf.
Refer to our eBay listing for a full condition report and many more high-quality pictures of this item.
Buy Now