Featured Octagon Shaped Silver Plate Box Help With Writing

thanks for the replies folks
beautiful box in that link Shangas - I wonder if mine had little compartments at one time.

I love that box bear!

 

Isn't it cute? It was filthy,which is why I think it was a mere sixty cents. Iron inlaid silver.

 

You can't go wrong at sixty cents

 

That's often my philosophy.

 

these are things i found online for Pandan box....that remind me of the box in question....

 

Good photos, I thought a tray was missing in the OP's photos and had nothing to compare.

 

Which reminds me. I've a brass pandan box somewhere, but the house has eaten it.

 

If one cat or another didn't knock it under the sofa. Their Imperial Furry Majesties are wont to do that when they want your attention. Or just want something to bat.

 

Thank-you for all the photos Komokwa! Very cool pieces with the compartments still there.

 

Pandan also has medicinal uses, anti-inflammatory, anti-viral, anti-fungal. A healing plant is often considered sacred, even if there is a lot of it and it is used in just about every dish in Southeast Asia and quite a few in India as well. Here is an Indonesian cake with pandan you probably recognize, Shangas, we call it spekkoek. Enjoy:


By the way, the box looks like a traditional Indian pandan box, made for, traditional Indian use, the way it would have been made long before British rule. Would it still be classified as colonial silver?
I thought that applied to items made for or influenced by non-Indians in India. That is certainly the case with items made in the former Dutch occupied parts of India. The local style was always local, only if there was some colonial involvement in the style or use of the item would it be called colonial.

Devanagari is indeed used for Sanskrit, but also for later Indian languages like Hindi. There are only about 1500 native speakers of Sanskrit.
This box would only have a Sanskrit inscription if it was made for the small Sanskrit-speaking community or had a religious purpose. There is no evidence of either, so I think it is Hindi or another one of the many Indian languages.

 

That looks very familiar! We have a similar one in Singapore/Malaya called Kueh Lapis (literally 'layered cake'):



One of the main ingredients is pandan, and it tastes AMAAAZING!!

 

Spekkoek is also called kueh lapis legit, a thousand layer cake. Although I like pandan, I prefer spekkoek without it. It always has a lot of cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom, cloves and ginger.
This is the regular variety, made by adding an extra layer after the last one is baked, until you have 12 - 32 or more layers. I made it once and decided it was easier to buy one at the toko.

 

I'm officially drooling. I've done a dobosh torte before and this looks like just as much work. Which cake? Any and all; I'm an equal opportunity carb eater, but that Malaysian one looks amazing.

 

Keuh Lapis is a traditional Straits-Chinese or Peranakan dessert. I have family friends and relatives who make this all the time (my family on my father's side is Straits-Chinese). The Peranakan lived in Singapore, Malaya and Indonesia, so you can find variations on these desserts in all three countries.

 

I have a friend who's Straits-Chinese; I'll have to ask her about it. It would be of interest to a friend who has Celiac Disease too - a cake with no gluten, and not because it's full of substitutions that don't taste right.

 

If she's Straits Chinese she'll know what Kueh Lapis is. I stuff my face with it at every opportunity! Or you can ask her about my favourite Peranakan dessert: Ang Ku Kueh ('Red tortoise cakes'). Just don't ask her to make you a batch or she'll probably hit you! They take forever!

 

The red tortoise cakes look good, but they must be a bear to make.

I've done a dobosh torte (Hungarian fancy dessert cake)...precisely once. Not doing it twice. I do make Stollen every year; you start that at 9am and finish around dinner time. It's a Christmas bread most often purchased from a bakery, if one lives in a German-speaking country. The rest of us have to make our own unless we're lucky enough to have a good bakery handy that knows how. The recipe I use starts with butter, a pound of raisins, half a pound or so of nuts, and enough flour and sugar to hold those bits together.

 

Ang Ku Kueh are a nightmare to make. Even with 2-3 assistants, and modern technology, you'll be there for at least a couple of hours or more. In the days of my grandmother and great-grandmother (1900s-1930s), they would've ground the sweet paste-filling by hand in a mortar and pestle. It would've taken FOREVER!!!

 

I'm betting the hand ground stuff officially tasted better! My grandma's oatmeal raisin cookies were probably great-grandma's. The raisins and oats had to be run through a meat grinder by hand, although I'd imagine a mortar and pestle would do about as well. That one can't be automated, since the raisins just gunk up most mechanical grinders. The cookies at least aren't filled and then wrapped in banana leaves to be steamed.

 

Hi, I'm New here and was wowondering if anyone can tell me how to post an item that I need info on?