Hainanese migrants worked as cooks and stewards in colonial homes and on European ships. There they learned to make coffee and strain it through cloth bags.
After the Second World War many opened their own coffee shops, or kopitiams. By the 1950s, Hainanese and Foochow operators reportedly owned over 80 percent of Singapore's coffee shops.
They roasted cheap robusta in margarine and sugar, with salt added halfway through. Fresh milk was costly and often adulterated, so tinned milk became the norm.
Kopi is still ordered in a shorthand of Malay and Hokkien words that sets sugar, milk and strength.
Kopi
How it's made. Robusta roasted with margarine and sugar (salt added midway) is ground, put in a cloth bag, and brewed with boiling water. The brew is poured between tall kettles to aerate and cool it.1,2
How it's served. Ordered by code: kopi (sugar and condensed milk), kopi O (black with sugar), kopi O kosong (black, no sugar), kopi C (evaporated milk and sugar), siew dai (less sugar), gao (thick), peng (iced). Often taken with kaya toast and soft-boiled eggs.
What time is taking away
Kopi with butter
A cup of kopi topped with a slab of butter. Heap Seng Leong is described as one of the few traditional coffee shops still serving it.1
The cloth sock filter
A reusable cotton or muslin bag that became standard because metal and paper filters were too costly for daily use in colonial Southeast Asia.2
What the record says
- Hainanese cooks and stewards in colonial homes and on European ships learned to prepare coffee, filtering it through muslin or cloth bags.2
- By the 1950s, over 80 percent of Singapore's coffee shops were reportedly owned by Hainanese and Foochow operators.2
- Hainanese roasters fried beans with margarine and sugar, adding salt midway and more sugar at the end to round out bitterness.2
- A typical recipe uses about 80 percent beans and 20 percent sugar plus margarine, roasted for roughly 25 minutes at 180 °C.1
- Fresh milk in the late-19th-century Straits Settlements was expensive and often adulterated, so canned milk, imported from Britain from the 1860s, became the safer choice.2
- Kopi traditionally uses robusta, much of it still imported from Indonesia and Vietnam.1
- Kopitiams were part of working-class life, while tea houses were the haunt of Chinese elites.2
The origin of the sock filter is disputed; one account credits a Hainanese immigrant in 1938, but that source was not opened. Roots.gov.sg and NLB Infopedia did not appear in searches. The Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre page is the strongest source used.
- Kopi (drink) · Wikipedia in the bibliography
- The history and origins of kopi in Singapore · Singapore Chinese Cultural Centre (Culturepaedia) in the bibliography
