Food was remembered as a principal arena where Dutch fears about contact
and contamination were played out, but also as a site where the seductive pull
of Javanese ways often proved too powerful to resist. Several people recalled
that Dutch children were not allowed to eat Javanese food sold 011the street or
slipped to them by servants in the back of the house. Ibu Sastro imitated her
Tuan's warning not to buy his child gudeg (a sweet, spicy central Javanese stew)
from streetside stands: "Don't give him rice and gudeg, later he'll know how
good it is and won't want to eat potatoes."lo3 But the child continued secretly
to buy the tasty stew and, she told us with delight, he no longer wanted potatoes.
Ibu Adi, with similar pleasure, recalled her employers' children sneaking
into the kitchen to steal the tempe (soybean cake) she was preparing for the servants'
meal