Lamprais, also spelled "lumprice", "lampraise" or "lumprais", is a Sri Lankan dish that was introduced by the country's Dutch Burgher population. Lamprais is an Anglicised derivative of the Dutch word , which loosely translated means a packet or lump of rice, and it is also believed the dish has roots in the Indonesia dish

lemper ''Lemper'' is an Cuisine of Indonesia, Indonesian savoury snack made of glutinous rice filled with seasoned shredded Chicken (food), chicken, fish ''abon'' (meat floss) or serundeng. The specific ''lemper'' filled with seasoned shredded chicken ...

History

From 1658 until 1796, the coast of Sri Lanka was under Dutch rule. The Dutch Burghers (an ethnic group of mixed Dutch, Portuguese Burghers and Sri Lankan descent) came up with the dish. The dish itself is not a native dish to the Netherlands but is based on the Javanese meal ''

''. Lemper is a snack consisting of shredded seasoned meat and glutinous rice wrapped in a banana leaf. The Dutch in

Dutch Ceylon Dutch Ceylon (; ) was a governorate established in present-day Sri Lanka by the Dutch East India Company. Although the Dutch managed to capture most of the coastal areas in Sri Lanka, they were never able to control the Kingdom of Kandy locate ...

are likely to have adapted this dish from the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies (; ), was a Dutch Empire, Dutch colony with territory mostly comprising the modern state of Indonesia, which Proclamation of Indonesian Independence, declared independence on 17 Au ...

in the early 16th century. One of the first literary mentions of lamprais was in Hilda Deutrom's ''Ceylon Daily News Cookery Book'', published in 1929.

Composition

It consists of two special curries (a three-meat curry, often including beef, pork and chicken, and ash plantain with aubergine), seeni sambol, belacan, frikadeller meatballs and

rice Rice is a cereal grain and in its Domestication, domesticated form is the staple food of over half of the world's population, particularly in Asia and Africa. Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice)—or, much l ...

boiled in stock, all of which is wrapped in banana leaves and baked in an oven. The rice is made by frying raw short-grain rice with onions and spices in butter or ghee and then cooking it in a meat stock. A hard-boiled egg which has been deep-fried is also a common, but non-traditional, addition. The traditional recipe always contains three meat items; however, modern versions can include just a single meat, such as fish or chicken, or may be vegetarian.

References

Meat and rice dishes Sri Lankan rice dishes Dutch Ceylon Sri Lankan lamb dishes Sri Lankan egg dishes {{SriLanka-cuisine-stub

History

Composition

See also

References