When Sudhith Xavier and Ananya Rajoo baked breudher in their studio recently, they were recreating a recipe from the times of the Dutch in Cochin, during the late 1600s. The co-founders of Route Cochin (an online magazine and research platform that fleshes out past histories of the city) explain why they are so fascinated with breudher: it’s an intriguing bite of Mattancherry’s culinary smorgasbord.
Despite being a vestige of the past, it is still possible to snag a slice if you know where to look. You can wallow in its fermented sweetness, spiced with a hint of nutmeg and caraway, at the little-known Quality Bakery in Fort Kochi, where it is baked every Saturday. The late Chandran, a former baker, learnt the recipe from Anglo-Indian homes and taught it to the staff who continue with this tradition. Travellers interested in food history find their way to this ordinary store in Pattalam, an area that housed military barracks, looking for this edible souvenir.
Breudher continues to be prepared occasionally by a few Anglo-Indian families, a fading vestige of a recipe that was once obviously popular. As with most heritage recipes, every family has its own version.
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Merilla Isaacs baked the bread for Xavier and Rajoo, with palm toddy, using her mother, Teresa D’Couto’s recipe. The hastily-written recipe listed only the ingredients for a Dutch Cake, interchangeably called breudher.
Blanch Rose D’Cruz, who is no more, mentions the use of ‘ghee’, pointing to the cake’s localisation. Trevor Morris, a baker, now into the catering business, says he used to make breudher, but no longer does so. He replaced palm toddy with the more easily available yeast in his version of the recipe.
“Baking was common, popular and important in the 60s. There were several bakeries in Fort Kochi, the well-known being George Barrid & Son on Peter Celli Street and Barrid & Barrid on Princess Street, the former being particularly known for its breudher,” says Rajoo.
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Looking back, this bread with cake aspirations must have jostled for space among the confections being made in the bakeries of the time, losing some ingredients and adding others to the original recipe in the process. It also, over the passage of time, came to be bread served during the period of mourning. “In the past, for the seventh-day ceremony, a mass was conducted in the morning and it was followed by a breakfast function. Breudher was the main item in the breakfast spread. Later, for convenience, the breakfast function was replaced by lunch or dinner functions. Breudher is predominantly a breakfast bread. It is served buttered, as triangular pieces, with green plantains and black coffee. It came to be the food for the dead,” says Rajoo.
Discussing its Dutch origin, Xavier says, “There is no cake or bread called breudher currently in Dutch cuisine, but there are many similar recipes, especially a Christmas cake. Most likely, this comes from that.”
Interestingly, all Dutch colonies in South Asia — Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia — have breudher as part of their cuisine. The big difference being that it is served there as Christmas cake, a food of celebration. Made as a bundt cake, in the bundt pan, it is served along with Edam Cheese in Sri Lanka.
Somewhere in its shifting history, the breudher acquired local ingredients — spices, dry fruits, palm toddy — and became a bread for the dead. When exactly this change came about and where is not certain. But what is evident is that this morsel from the past is in danger of being lost due to the dwindling Anglo Indian community. And a competitive market jostling with luxurious, creamy confections that doesn’t know exactly where to fit this odd, though delicious, bread-cake.
Recipe
Breudher – Dutch Cake
Ingredients:
Flour – 11/4 lb
Sugar – 1/2 lb
Eggs – 4
Toddy – 1/2 bottle (375 ml)
Butter – 1/2 lb
Salt – 1 tsp
Raisins – 1/2 cup
Method:
Mix toddy with flour and knead adding butter and beaten eggs. Add sugar, salt and raisins and let the mixture rest for 10 minutes. Pour it in the baking tin and leave in the sun to rise. Bake till light brown.
Recipe of the late Teresa D’Couto