“There’s a message to it: It’s our responsibility to keep Filipino food popular!”

At the launch for her book What Recipes Don’t Tell: Philippine Food History in Fifty Words, author and historian Felice Prudente Sta. Maria talked to a rapt audience at the Philippine Book Festival about a long career of writing about food. What new things can food tell us about our own history? How did we adapt techniques and ingredients from abroad… while still preserving our own? And how should we nurture this knowledge for future generations?

Joining her in this panel were publisher and editor Karina Bolasco, graphic designer and fellow food scholar Ige Ramos, and printmaker Marz Aglipay. Through their shared history with Felice, they deepened the conversation with their own perspectives on creativity, design, and the space for food in the publishing landscape.

Special thanks to the Ateneo de Manila University Press for inviting me to moderate this panel, and for letting me record this conversation.

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The Colonial Dept. Interview is a series where I talk to researchers and authors shining a light on our past.

Sourness, according to Doreen Fernandez, “is a favored Philippine flavor.” Just how sour is sour? “Sour enough to savor, to make the lips pucker and the eyes squint slightly, and yet not too sour—just at the point of perfection.”

In the spectrum of sensation, sourness can be both sharp and sudden, an acetic shudder down the spine. Asim, the Tagalogs call it. From the earliest written records about the Philippines, it is this taste that has come to define our cooking. “Spanish colonials from the 1500s through the 1800s described indio food as primarily salty and sour,” writes food historian Felice Prudente Sta. Maria. “Both tastes can induce sweat in hot climates and remind the body to keep hydrated and its electrolytes balanced.” Let us trace the pathways of this taste as it evolved in three key dishes: sinigang, kinilaw, and adobo.

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References:

Sta. Maria, Felice Prudente (2025). What Recipes Don't Tell: Philippine Food History in Fifty Words. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Fernandez, Doreen G. (1988). “Culture Ingested: Notes on the Indigenization of Philippine Food.” Philippine Studies, 36(2), pp. 219-232.

Fernandez, Doreen G. (1994). Tikim: Essays on Philippine Food and Culture. Anvil Publishing.

Frank, Hannah E. R.; Amato, Katie; Trautwein, Michelle; Maia, Paula; Liman, Emily R.; Nichols; Lauren M.; Schwenk, Kurt; Breslin, Paul A. S.; Dunn, Robert R. (2022) “The evolution of sour taste.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 289(1968). https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/289/1968/20211918/79292/The-evolution-of-sour-tasteEvolution-of-Sour-Taste

Shaw, Sterling V. Herrera (30 August 2024). “Adobo is ‘paksiw,’ and other terms in Filipino food history.” Philippine Daily Inquirer.

Ladrido, R.C. (1 July 2022). “Tapayan, Gusi, or Martaban: Tales of Stoneware Jars in the Philippines.” VERA Files.

Newman, Yasmin (11 May 2023). “Kinilaw, the age-old dish of the Philippines (and why it's not ceviche).” SBS Food. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/kinilaw-the-age-old-dish-of-the-philippines-and-why-its-not-ceviche/4alb6pswa

Trinidad, Bea. (16 August 2025). “Say ‘kilawin’ instead of ‘Filipino ceviche’, okay?” The Philippine Star. https://www.philstar.com/lifestyle/2025/08/16/2465728/say-kilawin-instead-filipino-ceviche-okay

Banez, George (31 August 2025). “Sinigang Through Time: The Filipino Sour Soup with Many Faces, One Soul.” Pressenza Philippines

Pigafetta, Antonio (ca. 1525). “Primo viaggio intorno al mondo.” In Blair, Emma Helen, and Robertson, James Alexander (eds.), The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 (Vol. 33), Arthur H. Clark Company.

Wertz, S.K. (2013). “The Elements of Taste: How Many Are There?” The Journal of Aesthetic Education,47(1), pp. 46-57 https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jaesteduc.47.1.0046

Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst (2011). “The Senses of Taste.” American Historical Review, 116(2), pp. 371-384. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23307701

Before we start Season 8, I have an important announcement about this little podcast. For more info, check out this Instagram post.

“What does it take for a culture that has caused a lot of pain and suffering to have any chance at redemption… or any sense of justice?”

Tom Sykes’ riotous new book—a collision of a neon-powered 1980s Manila and a disaster-stricken barangay in the 1570s—attempts to answer the question… with many seedy side quests in between. How did he attempt to write his wild, genre-bending vision of the Philippines? And how does Back to the Future figure into it?

The Colonial Dept. Interview is a bonus show where I talk to researchers and authors who are shining a light on our past.

What a folk game can tell us about how a datu waged war. An interview with Micah Perez of the UP Diliman Department of History.

The Colonial Dept. Interview is a bonus show where I talk to researchers and authors shining a light on our past. Know a historian or author I should talk to? Email me at thecolonialdept@gmail.com.

Thumbnail image: Usernameko/Wikimedia Commons

Ever since its founding in the 1860s, the Manila Observatory had stood watch against the typhoons and hurricanes that threatened to strike the Philippines. But decades later, they were unprepared for a different kind of approaching storm: the Second World War!

Cover photo from the Illustrated London News.

Additional audio from British Pathe.

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References:

Warren, James Francis (2024). Typhoons: Climate, Society, and History in the Philippines. Ateneo de Manila University Press.

Hidalgo, Angel (1967). “Miguel Selga, 1879-1956: Priest and Scientist.” Philippine Studies, 15(2), pp. 307-347.

Bocar, Efren Cyril (19 November 2024). “‘Signs of disaster’: How weather lore holds up against typhoons and science.” Rappler.

Biolong, Fr. Raymundus Rede, SVD (1996). “The Ivatan Cultural Adaptation to Typhoons: A Portrait of a Self-Reliant Community from the Indigenous Development Perspective.”

Ribera, Pedro; García-Herrera, Ricardo; Gimeno, Luis (2008). “Historical deadly typhoons in the Philippines.” Weather, 63(7), pp. 194-199.

In the late 1500s, sultans, kings, and outlaws alike all wanted a little slice of Manila. And over two turbulent decades, everyone from faraway Spain to neighboring Brunei asserted their claims over the rajahs and datus that lived there. This is the turbulent origin story of the city that we know today.

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Cover photo from “Ataque de Li-ma-hong a Manila en 1574” by Juan Caro y Mora

References:

Patanne, E.P. (1993-1996). “Old Tondo and the Lakandula Revolt of 1574.”Historic Manila: Commemorative Lectures. Manila Historical Commission.

Majul, Cesar Adib (1999). Muslims in the Philippines (third edition). University of the Philippines Press.

Elsa Clavé, Arlo Griffiths (2022). “The Laguna Copperplate Inscription: Tenth-Century Luzon, Java, and the Malay World.” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 70(2), pp.167-242.

Postma, Antoon (1992). “The Laguna Copper-Plate Inscription: Text and Commentary.”

Philippine Studies, 40(2), pp. 183–203.

“Paghinumdom: Retrospection of the Hindu-Buddhist Cultural Influences Based on Tangible Finds in the Caraga Region.” (2022) https://www.nationalmuseum.gov.ph/2022/09/30/paghinumdom-retrospection-of-the-hindu-buddhist-cultural-influences-based-on-tangible-finds-in-the-caraga-region/

Velez, Genesis (2020). “Chinese Merchants in Late Pre-Hispanic Cebu: Context, Issues, and Possibilities.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 48(3/4), pp. 125-155.

Shutz, J. Travis (2019). “Limahong’s Pirates, Ming Mariners, and Early Sino-Spanish Relations: The Pangasinan Campaign of 1575 and Global History From Below.” Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 67(3/4), pp. 315-342.

The nineteenth century—steamships, family names, world trade, foreign firms, liberal ideas. Great tides of change are roiling Manila. In the middle of the chaos, a new art trend captures the imagination of local elites. How are these letras y figuras holding a mirror to Philippine society?

Cover Photo from the Ayala Corporation Collection.

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References:

Blanco, John D. (2009). Frontier Constitutions: Christianity and Colonial Empire in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines. University of the Philippines Press.

Santiago, Luciano P.R. (December 1991). “Damian Domingo and the First Philippine Art Academy.” Philippine Quarterly of Culture and Society, 19(4), pp. 264-280.

Flores, Patrick D. (17 November 2011). “Everyday, Elsewhere: Allegory in Philippine Art.” Contemporary Aesthetics, (0)3 (Special Issue).

“Lot 46. Jose Honorato Lozano, c. 1815-1885.” (2021) Salcedo Auctions.

Quirino, Carlos (1961) "Damian Domingo, Filipino Painter." Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, 9(1), pp. 78-96.

“Jose Honorato Lozano (c. 1815-c. 1885).” (undated) Christie’s.

Sorilla IV, Franz (8 February 2021). “Letras y Figuras: The 19th Century Philippine Art Form’s Origins and Legacy.” Tatler Asia.

Buenconsejo, Jose S. (2018). “Keyboards in the Nineteenth-Century Philippines.” In Tan, Arwin Q. (ed.), Saysay Himig: A Sourcebook on Philippine Music History, University of the Philippines Press, pp. 234-242.

Navarro, Raul Casantusan. (2018). “Opera in the Philippines, 1860s-1940s.” In Tan, Arwin Q. (ed.), Saysay Himig: A Sourcebook on Philippine Music History, University of the Philippines Press, pp. 234-242.

Mallat, Jean (1846). The Philippines: History, Geography, Customs, Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce of the Spanish Colonies in Oceania (Pura Santillan-Castrence, Trans.) (2021). National Historical Commission of the Philippines.