Jewels of Flavors

This article describes the making of the Indonesian cookbook Mustikarasa that was commissioned by Indonesia’s first president Sukarno and covers foods from across the archipelago. The cookbook was first published during a period of political flux in 1967 and then reprinted almost fifty years later in 2016 and 2020 by Komunitas Bambu, under publisher JJ Rizal. The article provides a critical commentary of Rizal’s 2020 introduction and an excerpted Indonesian-to-English translation of his text. This translation shares the historical context for the cookbook’s creation, notably, Sukarno’s politics of self-reliance and his concerns over the country’s heavy dependence on rice imports. It also includes eight translated entries from the recipe portion of the cookbook.