The name comes from the sound. The old charcoal steamers used to make the first kueh tutu produced a rhythmic tutu sound as steam escaped through the vents — and the snack took the sound of its own cooking as its name. The steamers have been modernized since then but the name stayed, which is both practical and charming.

The origin is specific and documented. Tan Yong Fa arrived in Singapore from Fujian province in China in 1932 and began selling song gao — large plain steamed rice cakes made from pounded rice flour, a traditional Fujian preparation — on the streets. The cakes were initially sold in large portions, sliced for individual serving. Gradually Tan shrank the portions to individual bite-sized pieces, added fillings of coconut and peanut, and placed each finished cake on a pandan leaf. The result was something that did not exist in Fujian and did not exist anywhere else in the region — a specifically Singaporean creation built on a Hokkien Chinese foundation. Malaysia, despite its proximity and shared food heritage with Singapore, does not have kueh tutu. It is consistently identified as unique to the island.

The flower shape of the mould is deliberate — the chrysanthemum motif was common among first-generation Chinese migrants in Singapore who drank chrysanthemum tea for relief from the tropical heat, and the mould carried that visual reference into the snack. The brass moulds used in the original production have since been replaced by stainless steel, but the shape has not changed.

Kueh tutu was a fixture of pasar malam — the Singaporean night markets — and of traveling hawker carts throughout the mid-20th century. At its peak it was one of the most common street snacks on the island, accessible and cheap, made fresh and eaten warm. The hawker stall format replaced the cart, but the preparation remained entirely handmade at the most dedicated operations — rice ground from scratch, coconut grated fresh, peanuts pounded by hand. Tan’s Tu Tu Coconut Cake, run by Tan Yong Fa’s descendants at Havelock Road and Clementi, continues that practice, making each kueh tutu individually by hand, up to six per minute, at a rate that the family has maintained across three generations.

It is one of Singapore’s disappearing foods — beloved in memory more readily than it is sought out in practice, the kind of snack that prompts recognition and nostalgia from anyone who grew up eating it, and that fewer people make the effort to find than the sentiment would suggest. The snack that a Fujian immigrant invented on a street cart in 1930s Singapore has been formally recognized as a heritage food by the Singapore government, which is one way of acknowledging that something worth protecting is already beginning to disappear.

• Chinese Influence

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Regional Roots

• Singapore