Above: the Xanthosoma corm, tayer, on sale in Amsterdam.

Below: a dish of pom.

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 COOKING POM

Karin Vaneker

O
ne of the most distinctive features of the well-
known Caribbean soup callaloo is its ingredient, the
leaves of the taro plant. These are most frequently
derived from the indigenous Xanthosoma 1 and/or the
imported Colocasia plant.2 On the South American continent
in the former Dutch colony Surinam and in the Surinamese
community in The Netherlands, not the leaves but the corm
of Xanthosoma is used to prepare a traditional festive dish.
This corm is known as pomtajer, tayer or taya, and the dish
itself is generally known as pom. It results from a mixture of
ingredients and cuisines of colonial powers, African slaves
and local Indians.

SURINAM’S ETHNIC DIVERSITY

Although Surinam is one of South America’s smallest
countries, the roots of its ethnic groups are highly diverse.
After the first Europeans settled in Surinam, in the seven-
teenth century, the native population of Carib and Arawak
Indians was forced into the margins of the new society. For
almost three hundred years, apart from a short interruption
of English rule,3 from 1667 until 1975 Surinam was a Dutch
colony with a strong focus on growing cash crops such as sugar
and coffee. Many plantation owners had little or no Dutch
background at all, but were of German, Swiss, Hungarian,
Jewish or French Huguenot origin; the character of the
colony, therefore, was not typically Dutch. Aside from local

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 Indians and Europeans, the Surinam population consisted
of West African slaves. In 1791 there were 3,790 whites,
1,330 Jews, 1,760 free non-Whites and around 50,000 West
African slaves (Stipriaan Van 1997, 74-75). After the abolition
of slavery in the nineteenth century, immigrants from India,
Indonesia and China constituted the labour force.
This ethnic diversity is reflected in Surinamese cookbooks
and recipes and also present in the contemporary Surinam
community in The Netherlands.4 Surinamese recipes of all
origins demonstrate the ingredients and methods (cooking
techniques) that are commonly used in Surinamese cooking
(Dorff 1972; Starke & Samsin-Hewitt 1976; Andringa &
others 1986; Dijkstra 2001). The cookbooks, however, do not
provide information about the origin and history of their
recipes and/or dishes. This has to be inferred from an analysis
of the ingredients and the cooking methods.

COOKING POM
According to Groot Surinaams Kookboek (1976), an important
Surinamese reference cookbook, and more popular ones, as
well as interviews across the Surinamese community in The
Netherlands, pom is the only Surinamese recipe that uses the
Xanthosoma corm designated as pomtajer. Apart from a central
corm, the pomtajer also develops offshoots. Although all parts
of the Xanthosoma are edible, only the underground part of
the main stem is used as an ingredient in preparing pom.
The first published description of pom comes from
Encyclopedie van Nederlandsch West-Indië (1914-1917) which
describes the dish as follows: ‘the big tajer, of which the stalk
grows above the earth, is grated and treated with the juice of
bitter oranges, afterwards with chicken or fish, made into a
pie, which dish is known as ‘pom”.’

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 Within the Surinamese community, in both Surinam
and The Netherlands, pom is the most popular and best
known festive dish. The expression ‘without pom there is no
birthday’ shows not only how well the dish is known but also
specifies one of the occasions for which pom is prepared (see
the picture on the following page of a Surinamese birthday
party). Another indication of the popularity of pom is that
when people from Surinam are asked to name their favourite
dish, nine times out of ten they answer ‘Pom’.5 In and outside
of Surinam, the dish is prepared by both men and women of
all ages, and each Surinamese ethnic group makes a slightly
different version.
The basic preparation method for pom is: in a high, round
metal dish, put sautéed chicken pieces between two layers
of raw, grated pomtajer, which is mixed with citrus juice6 and
a sauce made from oil and/or margarine, onions, tomatoes,
salt, pepper and nutmeg. Bake the dish in an oven for at
least one hour or until the pom becomes golden brown. Once
baked, pom is cut into pieces and either served hot with rice
and vegetables or cooled and placed between slices of bread
in a sandwich. Pom is comfort food, a filling dish that today
combines three central ingredients: chicken, 7 citrus juice and
pomtajer. Of these only the latter is indigenous.8
Surinamese consider the preparation of pom, especially the
peeling and grating of the raw pomtajer, to be time-consuming
and its ingredients, especially pomtajer and chicken, expensive.
Because of the expense, pom was traditionally prepared
using an old, de-skinned ‘soup chicken’ which, in order to
serve many, was chopped into many small pieces. In the last
quarter of the twentieth century, both in Surinam and The
Netherlands, chicken became more widely available and less
expensive; therefore, nowadays many Surinamese and Dutch

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 Birthday with pom: Irene Dongen was one of the nurses from Surinam who came
to The Netherlands after World War II. To celebrate her birthday she traditionally
prepared pom. This picture shows her serving pom to her colleagues in her room
(9 February 1959).
Collection: I. Huisden-Dongen, 03. Used by permission of: Historisch Beeldarchief
Migranten, IISG (www.iisg.nl), Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Traditional pom baking dishes.

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 prepare pom with chicken pieces and/or breasts. In Surinam,
indigenous pomtajer is widely available and inexpensive; in
The Netherlands, by contrast, although widely available both
fresh and in frozen, grated form through ethnic supermarkets
and open air markets, pomtajer remains a costly ingredient.
In and outside the contemporary Surinamese community
and cookbooks, pom is referred to as a dish of Creole descent,
but in John de Bye’s historic novel Ter dood veroordeeld (1999),9
and in popular speech, it is still said that pom is a potato dish
of Jewish origin (see Appendix I for one such narrative). Both
its cooking methods and its ingredients – the use of the oven
and grating the root – provide support for this contention.

COOKING METHODS
Unlike most Surinamese dishes, pom is not prepared on an
open fire but in an oven. In general, until the beginning of
the twentieth century an oven was neither common nor
frequently used in either Dutch or Surinamese domestic
cooking (Van Otterloo 1990, 125; Smith 1956). The preparation
of oven dishes was restricted to professionals and/or wealthy
households which commonly employed domestic help.
Although modern Surinamese and Dutch cookbooks contain
several recipes for cakes, savoury oven dishes are exceptional
in the domestic cooking of both kitchens.10 In Jewish cuisine,
on the other hand, the use of a community oven is an old
custom. Already in the Middle Ages Jewish housewives
brought both the Ashkenazi cholent and the Sephardi hamin
to a professional or community oven. These oven dishes for
Sabbath were either served either hot or warm, and it was
also customary that these Sabbath dishes included meat or
fowl (Cooper 1993, 101-103). This practice also would have
been customary in the first Jewish households in Surinam.11

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 ROOTS OF POM
After the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from
Spain and Portugal, wealthy Jews settled in countries,
such as England and Holland, where they could profess
their religion more openly. Already under English rule, in
the 1650s, Jews settled in Surinam, and after the Dutch
conquered the country in 1667, many more Jews arrived,
mostly of Sephardi [Spanish-Portuguese] origin. Both the
English and the Dutch granted these Sephardim special
rights, among others the right to practise their religion
according to their own rituals, including building synagogues
(Marcus & Chyet 1974, ix, 21; Stipriaan Van 1997, 74-75).
Religiously observant Sephardim followed the religious laws
prohibiting cooking on Sabbath and ate according to Jewish
dietary laws. Apart from taking an active part in the Dutch
colonial slave trade, they established sugar plantations which
mostly were located in Jodensavanne,12 an entirely Jewish
village on the bank of the Surinam river. By the eighteenth
century, the Sephardi community had become influential
and contributed substantially to the economic growth of
Surinam (Buddingh 1999, 53). Around 1730, a quarter of the
approximately 400 sugar plantations were in Jewish hands, as
well as a large number of slaves. Despite their rather different
circumstances, both Jews and West African slaves were
minorities in the colony, which from the beginning resulted
in close contact between the two groups.13 By the second half
of the eighteenth century, sexual relations between Jewish
men and female slaves resulted in a community that, from
a few dozen, had risen to around one hundred ‘Coloured’
Jews (Marcus & Chyet 1974, x; Stipriaan Van 1997, 80).14 At
the end of the seventeenth century, the first Ashkenazi Jews
[from German and Eastern European origins] migrated to

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 Surinam by way of Amsterdam and, by 1750, large numbers
of these less fortunate Ashkenazim started to arrive (Blom
and others 1995, 133). This created a Surinamese Jewish
community with three subgroups: Sephardim, Ashkenazim
and Coloured Jews.
When the Ashkenazim arrived in Surinam they brought
with them a different type of cuisine for which they needed
specific ingredients, amongst others, potatoes. Because
Surinam had such a strong focus on growing cash crops, the
production of food for local use was neglected. Many foods,
like dried beans and salted and/or dried fish and meats, had
to be imported from Europe. So it was with potatoes which,
unlike indigenous pomtajer, do not grow well in (sub)tropical
climates.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries potatoes
rapidly gained popularity as a staple food for both the
Northern European commoner and the Jew. Although there
are several indicators of the importance of the potato in
lower-class diet, it is unknown when, exactly, potatoes became
a staple food in both Northern European and Ashkenazi
diets. Around the time of the arrival of the Ashkenazim in
Amsterdam, potatoes were a crop of commercial value, having
been officially imported into the city since January 1712.
This is one of the indicators that potatoes were reasonably
naturalized in Amsterdam (Zaag Van Der 1999, 33) which was
also the case in the Central and Eastern European countries
of origin of the Ashkenazim. Another indication of the
importance of the potato in the average diet comes from an
enumeration of the Jewish chronicler Braadbard, who in 1745
wrote that although everything was cheap, ‘potatoes were
very expensive’.15 In 1787, Prints, another Jewish chronicler,
wrote, ‘When the Prussian people arrived in Amsterdam,

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 everybody brought a lot of turnips, potatoes and cabbage with
them.’16 Furthermore, potatoes are listed on the inventories
of European ships such as those engaged in bringing goods
and slaves from Africa to Surinam (Brommer 1993, 33-49).17
In Central and Eastern Europe at that time it was common
for Jews to eat potatoes boiled in their skins. To vary the
daily monotony, various recipes were ‘invented’ for a variety
of potato dishes. Of these a number are today labelled as
typical, traditional Ashkenazi Jewish dishes (Cooper 1993,
153, 154; Nathan 1995, 4). The use of raw, grated potatoes
became a common preparation technique, for instance, for
potato kugel (pudding), latkes (pancakes) and potatonik (bread)
(Nathan 1995, 4; Vaneker 2004, 119, 122). With the ongoing
migration of the Ashkenazim into various parts of the world,
such as Surinam and North America, and the overall growth
of the cultivation and the popularity of potatoes in the diet
of commoners in Northern Europe, newly developed recipes
and preparation methods migrated as well.
The Napoleonic War in Europe made it impossible for
Surinam to import foods such as potatoes, from Europe.
Oral Surinamese tradition and John de Bye’s novel claim that
during this period, around the beginning of the nineteenth
century, pomtajer replaced potatoes in pom.
Why is it likely that it was in a Jewish kitchen that pomtajer
was substituted for potatoes in an oven dish? In indigenous
South American, but also in West African cuisines, roots
and tubers like pomtajer are an important part of the staple
diet. Traditionally, they are boiled whole in their skins. Other
common methods of preparation include roasting and baking.
Also, like potatoes and most roots and tubers, pomtajer is very
much suited for slow cooking in one-pot recipes suitable
for the oven. Yet in all of these preparations, the roots and

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 tubers are used whole or cut into chunks.
According to medical doctor F.A. Kuhn (1828), the slave
diet was unbalanced and monotonous, and mostly consisted
of starch-rich and hard-to-digest roots and fruit. In 1850 the
normal food ration of slaves consisted of two bunches of
bananas and 2 lb of dried fish (Emmer 1998, 179). In order to
augment these poor provisions, slaves were often allowed to
cultivate fruits, vegetables and roots such as bananas, tayer,
yams, cassava, corn and sweet potatoes in gardens near their
quarters (Buddingh 1999, 87, 120; Emmer 1998, 179; Kuhn
1828, 6-11). Although the diet of West African slaves and
indigenous Indians largely consisted of roots and tubers,
whenever vegetables cultivated and eaten by both slaves
and Indians are mentioned in literature, there is no mention
of potatoes. Also, eighteenth-century inventories18 from
Surinam plantations do not list potatoes but do mention
tayer. Although it remains unclear whether Xanthosoma or
Colocasia is meant, nor is it specified who was cultivating and/
or using the plant, these inventories do, however, establish
the presence of tayer as a cultivated crop at the Surinamese
plantations and therefore available for use in the kitchen.
The contrast between the food of the slaves and their
masters was enormous. In Reize naar Suriname en door de
binnenste gedeelten van Guiana (1799-1800),19 John Gabriel
Stedham describes how, from morning until evening, the
tables of the non-Jewish planters were filled with meats,
fowl, fish, fruits and vegetables. These were consumed several
times a day together with lots of heavy beer, Champagne,
Madeira and/or German wine. The slave diet, which mostly
consisted of bananas, roots and tubers lacked meats and fowl.
Also, the diet of the Surinam Jews was different from that
of their fellow inhabitants, for the main Sabbath meal they

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 would, for instance, prepare fowl (Marcus & Chyet 1974, 153-
154). Apart from the traditional use of ovens, the preparation
of fowl, especially chicken, for Sabbath was a common Jewish
custom.20
Another strong indicator that pom was a Jewish ‘invention’
is the combination of chicken and citrus juice. Already in
the Middle Ages, both the bitter orange and the lemon were
cultivated and consumed by Jews (Cooper 1993, 93, 94). In
the Caribbean both chicken and citrus fruit were introduced
by Spanish explorers. In Jewish cooking traditionally citrus
fruits, particularly lemon juice, are used to neutralize the
smell of chicken. Raw Xanthosoma contains small crystals of
calcium oxalate, which can cause an irritating effect in the
mouth and throat. Boiling, roasting and baking are known
to make Xanthosoma digestible. Citrus juice is known to
eliminate the acidity in Xanthosoma. It is quite likely that
potatoes were substituted for Xanthosoma in an existing
Jewish oven dish. The accidental combination of citrus juice
and Xanthosoma may thereby have resulted in the creation of
what is, today, Surinam’s best known festive dish.

SURINAMESE CUISINE AND ITS MIGRATION TO THE NETHERLANDS

Following independence in 1975, a third of Surinam’s
population migrated to The Netherlands. Many settled in
the capital, Amsterdam.21 From their homeland they brought
with them other dishes, many of which like pom, needed
specific ingredients such as Xanthosoma.
The Surinamese immigrants arrived during a period of
culinary transformation in both Dutch gastronomy and
domestic cuisine. Due to internationalisation, and aside
from the influence of French gastronomy, recipes from
European cuisines such as, for instance, Spain, Greece and

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 Italy, and from Asian countries, such as China and Japan,
were embraced and adopted in restaurants and at home. At
the same time a substantial number of ethnic butchers, food
stores, market-stalls and restaurants were opened.22 Initially,
these enterprises, including those of the Surinamese, catered
exclusively to their own communities. But, especially in
the bigger cities such as Amsterdam and Rotterdam, with
both exotic and cheap merchandise, these shops started
to attract growing numbers of Dutch customers. Although
in Amsterdam and other major Dutch cities there are a
number of restaurants and take-aways serving Surinamese
cuisine, even today, 30 years after their arrival, it has not been
widely adopted outside the Dutch Surinam community (van
Otterloo 1990, 231). It is only in recent years that recipes for
pom have started to appear in modern Dutch cookbooks and
newspapers, and that the first television chef of Surinamese
origin, Ramon Beuk, has made an appearance. Gradually,
Surinam eateries and lunchrooms are gaining popularity, and
‘broodje pom’ (a sandwich made with pom), a derivation of
the national dish, is starting to appear on the Dutch menu
and can even be ordered in Dutch take-aways and for home-
delivery.
Today, pom is considered to be a typical Surinamese dish.
But this analysis of its ingredients and cooking techniques
shows that its origins lay outside of Surinam. Pom is a mixture
of cuisines and ingredients from three continents: Asia,
Europe, and South America. In this way, pom is an example
of a dish whose multiple, ‘foreign’ origins have been obscured
as it has come to be taken as ‘authentic’ Surinam cuisine.

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 Above: a dish of Jewish pom.
Below: a shop in Amsterdam listing pomtayer on its poster.

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 23
APPENDIX. JEWISH POM
An interview with Mrs J. Emanuels (born Surinam, 1927) in
Amstelveen, The Netherlands, October 2004.

Mrs. J. Emanuels was born and raised in Paramaribo and

arrived in The Netherlands at the age (approximately) of 36.
She observes the Jewish dietary laws. She said: ‘Also today,
Surinam Jewry prepares its food in its own way. Surinam
Jews, for instance, will never eat elsewhere. If you employ a
Hindustani or your neighbour is Chinese, the common way to
familiarize yourself with their cuisines is to ask these people
to prepare their foods at your home. The Jewish cuisine of
Surinam adopted and integrated the use of many ingredients
from slaves such as, bananas, cush-cush yam, amaranth, sweet
potatoes, cassava and pomtajer. Originally, Jews prepared pom
with potatoes, but the taste is different. It is said that slaves
brought pom to Surinam, but in my opinion that is highly
unlikely, because when West Africans migrated to Surinam,
pomtajer was already there. Some twenty years ago, my son-
in-law [film director Willy Lindwer] made a documentary
in which he searched for pomtajer in Africa. The Africans
knew yams, but both the plant and its name (pom)tajer were
unknown.’
According to Mrs Emanuels pom also resembles the
Jewish oven dish potato kugel. She also remarks that within
the Jewish community of Surinam, the old-fashioned way
to prepare pom is to pre-cook the dish before putting it in
the oven, ‘to make certain that the dish is well done. If not
prepared this way, pom has to be baked in an oven for at least
one hour and a half. Lemon neutralizes the taste and typical
smell of chicken.’
Furthermore, Mrs Emanuels says, because regular

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 cookware is not high enough, pom traditionally is prepared in
a high, round, enameled bowl. As for the Surinamese kitchen,
she remembers that in her youth, the kitchen used to be in
the garden. She also mentions a brick oven. ‘For Sabbath
pom is either baked overnight or baked beforehand and kept
warm on a warmhoudplaat [warming dish]. It is common to
serve pom on festivals and birthdays. Traditionally, pom was
served on Rosh Hashana [New Year].’

MRS EMANUEL’S POM RECIPE

1 chicken, cut in pieces

1 fresh tajer, peeled and grated
1 onion
1 or 2 tomatoes
1 bunch celery leaves
juice of bitter oranges
lemon juice
salt, pepper
nutmeg
vinegar and oil

1. Wash the chicken pieces with lemon juice, sauté the

pieces in oil (if the chicken is fat, use little oil), remove
the chicken from the pot.
2. Sauté chopped onion, tomatoes and finely chopped
celery in the pot.
3. Mix the grated tajer with the juice of bitter oranges,
salt and vinegar in a separate bowl. Mix the onion,
tomato sauce and the tajer together. Add salt, pepper
and nutmeg to taste. Sauté the tajer for a few minutes
in a pot.

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 4. Put oil in a high-rimmed, round, enamel oven dish.
Put half of the tajer in the dish, put the chicken pieces
on top, and cover the chicken with the rest of the
tajer.
5. Bake the pom for an hour in the oven (approx. 375°F/
180°C).

REFERENCES
Andringa, Wiebe, (eds. & others). 1986. Heerlijke gerechten uit Suriname. (Delicious
dishes from Surinam.) The Netherlands, Best: Zuid Boekproducties.
Benjamins, H.D. & Snellman J.L. eds. 1914–1917. Encyclopedie van Nederlandsch
West-Indië. The Netherlands: The Hague/Leiden.
Blom, J.C.H., Fuks-Mansfeld, R.G., Schöffer, I., eds. 1995. Geschiedenis van de joden
in Nederland. (History of the Jews in The Netherlands.) The Netherlands,
Utrecht: Contact.
Bye de, John. 1999. Ter dood veroordeeld: Liefde en dood in de Surinaams-joodse
geschiedenis. (Sentenced to death: Love and death in the Surinam-Jewish
History.) Paramaribo: Ralicon.
Brommer, Bea, (ed.). 1993. Ik ben eigendom van… : Slavenhandel en plantageleven.
(I am the property of…: slave trade and plantation life.) The Netherlands, Wijk en
Aalburg: Pictures Publishers.
Buddingh, Hans, 1999. Geschiedenis van Suriname. (History of Surinam.) The
Netherlands, Utrecht: Het Spectrum.
Cooper, John. 1993. Eat and Be Satisfied: A Social History of Jewish Food. Northvale,
New Jersey, USA:
Dijkstra, Fokkelien. 2001. Surinaams Kookboek. (Surinamese Cookery book.) The
Netherlands, Hoevelaken: Verba.
Dorff, Ilse Marie. 1992. Surinaams Koken. (Surinamese Cooking.) The Netherlands,
Houten: Unieboek.
Emmer, Pieter. 1998. The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580-1880. Trade, Slavery and
Emancipation. Aldershot, Brookfield USA: Ashgate Variorum.
Jobse-van Putten, Jozien. 1995. Eenvoudig maar voedzaam: cultuurgeschiedenis van
de dagelijkse maaltijd in Nederland. (Simple but nutritious: cultural history of
the daily meal in The Netherlands.) The Netherlands, Nijmegen: Sun, in
collaboration with the P.J. Meertens-Instituut, Amsterdam.

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 Gitlitz, David M. & Davidson, Linda Kay. 1999. A Drizzle of Honey: The lives and
recipes of Spain’s secret Jews. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin.
Kiple, Kenneth F. & Ornelas, Kriemhild Coneè, (eds.) 2000. The Cambridge World
History of Food. Volume One & Two. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University.
Kuhn, F.A. 1828. Beschouwingen van den toestand der Surinaamsche plantageslaven;
Eene oeconomische-geneeskundige bijdrage tot verbetering deszelven. (Considerations
about the condition of the Surinamese plantation slave; an economic-medical
contribution for their augmentation.) Amsterdam.
Marcus, Jacob R. & Chyet Stanley F. (eds). Cohen, Simon, translation. 1974
[1788] Historical Essay on the Colony of Surinam 1778. (orig. Essai Historique sur
la Colonie de Surinam.) Cincinnati: American Jewish Archives/New York:
KTAV Publishing House.
Nathan, Joan. 1995. Jewish Cooking in America. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Otterloo, Anneke H. van 1990 Eten en eetlust in Nederland [1840-1990]: een historisch-
sociologische studie. (Food and appetite in The Netherlands [1814-1990]: a
historical-sociological study.) The Netherlands, Amsterdam: Uitgeverij Bert
Bakker.
Salaman, Redcliffe. 2000 [1949]. The History and Social Influence of the Potato.
Revised edition with a new introduction and corrections by J.G. Hawkes,
1985. UK: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, Raymond T. 1965. The Negro Family in British Guiana. htttp://home.
uchicago.edu/~rts1/first.htm. Accessed 27 June 2006.
Starke, A.A. & Samsin-Hewitt M. 1976. Groot Surinaams Kookboek. (Big
Surinamese Cookbook.) The Netherlands, Rotterdam: Stichting Kankantrie.
Stedman, John Gabriel. 1799-1800. Reize naar Suriname en door de binnenste gedeelten
van Guiana. (Travels to Surinam and the interior of Guiana.) Amsterdam. [An
abridged English version of this is available as Stedman’s Surinam, edited by
Richard Price and Sally Price, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.]
Stipriaan Van, Alex. 1997. ‘An Unusual Parallel: Jews and Africans in Suriname in
the 18th and 19th Centuries.’ Journal for Jewish Literature and History in the
Netherlands and Related Subjects. Studia Rosenthaliana. Volume 31-Number
1/2-1997: 74-93.
Vaneker, Karin. 2004. ‘Aardappelmoeheid: over de aardappel in de joodse keuken’
(Potato fatigue: about the potato in the Jewish kitchen.) Bouillon! 2004.
Najaar [Fall] 2004: 115-122.
Zaag Van der, Douwe. 1999. Die gewone aardappel, Geschiedenis van de aardappel en
aardappelteelt in Nederland. (The ordinary potato, the history of the potato
cultivation in The Netherlands.) The Netherlands, Wageningen: Wageningen
Academic Publishers.
NOTES

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 1. Already domesticated and cultivated during pre-Columbian times,
.Xanthosoma or elephant grass is the only indigenous American aroid species
widely used for food.
2. Because Xanthosoma and Colocasia share numerous common names, the
nomenclature many times is confusing, therefore here the Latin names are
used. Throughout the article I will refer to Xanthosoma as pomtajer.
3. During the Napoleonic War in Europe between 1799 and 1816.
4. One source estimates the population of Surinam in July 2005 at 439,117
(http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ns.html accessed June
27, 2006). The Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS) in 2003 estimated
the Surinam community in The Netherlands at approximately 350,000. In
2005 the total number of people in The Netherlands coming from Surinam
and the Dutch Antilles was 459,968 (http://statline.cbs.nl/statweb/table.
asp?pa=60032&D1=0-4 accessed June 27, 2006).
5. Based on interviews with many Surinamese in The Netherlands since August
2004.
6. Citrus Aurantium (Seville or bitter orange; Kiple & Ornelas 2000, 1826).
7. Thus far, no recipes for pom with fish have been retrieved.
8. Both chicken (Gallus domesticus) and citrus fruits (Citrus) originate in Asia.
9. Meaning ‘Sentenced to death.’
10. In The Netherlands, the preparation of savoury oven dishes became more
common in the 1970s.
11. In interviews with two Surinamese women with Jewish roots (Mrs Juliette
Emanuels, born 1927, and Ms Natasha Adama, born 1955), both remembered
the kosher households of their grandmothers in Paramaribo and, like many
non-Jewish Surinamese, that the kitchen, as well as the oven, was in the yard.
According to Ms Adama (1955) and others, the less fortunate in Surinam
did not possess ovens. The preparation of chicken dishes, Adama says, was
typical of Jewish cuisine.
12. Meaning ‘Jewish Savannah.’
13. In Sranan Tongo, the Creole language spoken by about 100,000 Surinamese,
‘trefoe’ means allergy, sensitivity to certain foods, which is derived from the
Jewish ‘treifa’, meaning ‘non-kosher.’
14. Free Coloured people that were raised in the Jewish religion, but remained
second-class citizens. A permission to establish their own community and
synagogue was refused by the authorities (Stipriaan Van 1997, 80). According
to Ms Natasha Adama three-quarters of the Creole people from Surinam
have Jewish blood.
15. For a long period potatoes were cheap and considered food for pigs,
therefore, unfit for human consumption.
16. Ariana Zwiers, author of Kroniek van het Jiddisj [Yiddish Chronicles] (2003)

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 (personal correspondence).
17. Using archival documents from 1780, among others the cargo list, Blom
(1993) reconstructs the departure of the ship ‘Juffrouw Elisabeth’ for the
coast of West Africa. Furthermore, Salaman (2000, 555) describes how in
Jamestown between 1830 and 1835, of the 4,000 bushels of potatoes brought
to the market, 3,200 were sold to ships calling at St. Helena.
18. A query for potato shows no search results. A query for ‘tayer’ shows 87
results. http://landsarchief.sr/zoek/query.nl.pl?query=tayer (accessed 28 June
2006)
19. Meaning ‘Travels to Surinam and the interior of Guiana.’
20. The popularity of chicken in Jewish cuisine, for instance, was already
described in Al-Andalus, a thirteenth-century Arab cookery manuscript
(Gitlitz & Davidson 1999, 121).
21. The population of Surinam in July 2005 was estimated at at 439,117 (http://
www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ns.html accessed June 27, 2006l),
whereas the Surinam community in The Netherlands in 2003 numbered
approximately 350,000 (Dutch Central Bureau for Statistics (CBS)). In
2005 the total number of people in The Netherlands coming from Surinam
and the Dutch Antilles was 459,968 (http://statline.cbs.nl/statweb/table.
asp?pa=60032&D1=0-4 accessed June 27, 2006).
22. In the 1970s large groups of Turkish and Moroccan migrant workers in The
Netherlands were united with their families.

Karin Vaneker has organized an exhibition of pom and all

it means to Surinam and The Netherlands. It is running
at Imagine Identity and Culture, Bijlmerplein 1006–1008,
1102 ML Amsterdam (http://www.imagineic.nl) from May to
August 2007. Karin invited the American-Dutch artist Debra
Solomon to create new recipes with Xanthosoma and she has
written about it in English on her Culiblog:
http://www.culiblog.org/2007/04/pomtajer-is-the-new-
cocoyama-friend-of-kugel-and-latke

Karin herself can be contacted on <karinv@pardonreeds.nl>

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