I love writing about weird, whimsical items. Antiques, vintage oddities, nick-nacks, and things that you just don’t see every day. Typewriters, old sewing-machines, straight-razor kits, fountain pens, old furniture, household goods…anything strange, whacky, weird, whimsical, and unusual.

While on a trip around Singapore, I got my hands on just such a thing as I have described. Weird, whimsical and unusual. On the surface it sounds like nothing that anyone might be in the least bit interested. If I told you in-essence what it was, it’d be a simple case of “Meh!…”, and then you’d go back to your Facebook page…

Don’t believe me?

Okay…It’s a lunchbox.

*Tumbleweedz*

See? I told you. What’s interesting about a lunchbox? Probably not much, but how many of you have seen one like what I’m about to show you? Probably not many, unless you grew up, or live in Southeast Asia. Here it is:

With the spread of Japanese food around the world, you may be familiar with a ‘bento box’, the traditional Japanese lunchbox used to store sushi. But have you ever seen one of these?

They’re called different things depending on where you buy them and find them. To most English-speaking people, the correct term is a Tiffin-Carrier. If you went to India, in particular the city of Bombay, most people would call them Dabbas. But what is it?

What is a Tiffin-Carrier?

A Tiffin-Carrier, Tiffin-Box, Dabba, or just a ‘Tiffin’, is a compartmentalised food-storage unit. It consists of between two-to-four (usually three, or four) bowls or tins of the same, or similar sizes, stacked up on top of each other, with a lid on the top, sealed down and clamped shut with locks down the sides or top. It’s meant to act in a similar fashion to a thermos-flask, in that it keeps hot food warm, and cold food cool…but in the middle of tropical Asia, the most important aspect of the tiffin-carrier was that it kept the flies away – and therefore prevented food from being contaminated in the midday heat!

Tiffin-carriers came in various sizes and styles. From single, lidded pots, to double-stackers, triple-stackers, and even four-stackers. Sizes of the bowls range from tiny units, with each bowl only capable of holding a couple of mouthfuls , to large units capable of feeding as many people as there are bowls in the stack. How the carrier-bowls are clamped together in their familiar stacked-up formation varies from design to design. Older tiffin-carriers use friction-clamps built into the steel frame, under the carrying-handle, to produce tight seals, but most modern tiffin-carriers have pull-down clamps built into the frames, similar to those seen on glass kitchen-jars:

The History of the Tiffin-Carrier

Uuuh…hmm.

Good question.

A very good question.

And possibly, one without an answer…

Exactly where and when they were invented is not precisely known. Most people would probably say India, since that is where they are used the most, even in the 21st century, however, others contend that they were actually designed in China.

No-matter where they were invented, tiffin-carriers have been part of Southeast Asian culture for over a hundred years. Since at least 1890, they were being used by the colonising British in major cities around India, in particular, Bombay, to store and transport their lunches. In Bombay, where they are called “Dabbas”, they were, and still are, carted around town by dedicated “Dabbawallahs”, or tiffin-couriers, who shift thousands of these metal lunch-pails around town every single day, delivering hot, home-cooked meals
to thousands of office-workers for just a few dollars a month.

These unique lunch-pails followed Indian and British migrants during their travels around Southeast Asia. Use of tiffin-carriers therefore spread to Malaya, Singapore, China, Hong Kong and Indonesia (back then known as the Dutch East Indies). In these countries, just as in India, they were (and still are) used to store and transport hot food for short periods of time.

Tiffin-carrier use peaked during the mid-20th century, in the decades immediately before and after the Second World War. Changing tastes caused its decline in certain countries, but the food of southeast Asia is ideally suited for the tiffin-carrier, for which it was primarily designed to contain!

These days, brand-new tiffin-carriers are still manufactured, and you can buy them cheaply online or from kitchenware dealers who sell Asian products. They’re still widely-used in India, particularly the city of Bombay, but remain popular around Asia as general-purpose food-storage units.

What is ‘Tiffin’?

‘Tiffin’ is an Anglo-Indian word. It’s derived from the old English slang terms of ‘tiffing’, or to ‘tiff’, meaning to have a light drink – a comparable term still in use might be ‘tipple’. From ‘tiffing’ was derived ‘tiffin’, which eventually came to mean any light drink, snack, late-morning meal, morning tea or light luncheon, and even later, just lunch itself. The metal canisters used to store and transport the food which made up these meals were called ‘tiffin boxes’, ‘tiffin carriers’, or just ‘tiffins’.

‘Tiffin’ isn’t a word you hear much anymore, but from the mid-1800s until the end of British-colonisation of Asia, it was everywhere. It virtually replaced the word ‘lunch’ for the midday-meal for anyone who spoke English in the region! You didn’t go for lunch, you went for tiffin. And tiffin could be anything from soup, curry, rice, noodles, or light snacks and cakes. Something to tide you over in the moist heat of the Far-Eastern reaches of the British Empire. These days, the word ‘Tiffin’ is only ever heard in relation to India, or to tiffin-carriers. One rare exception is Raffles Hotel in Singapore, with its famous…Tiffin Room!

Using a Tiffin-Carrier

The stacked, segmented-storage bowl system of the tiffin-carrier is ideal for storing and transporting most Asian foods for on-the-go sutations. Noodles, rice, dumplings, curry, soup, and even sushi are easily stored in these handy, cylindrical bowls.

However, what kind of foods you store inside a Tiffin-Carrier is limited only by the size of the carrier, and your imagination. One compartment might hold salad, another compartment might hold rice, and another compartment might hold curry and sauce. Or noodles, or fried-rice, or sushi-rolls, soy-sauce and wasabi, or miso soup with soba noodles.

Perhaps you don’t like Asian food? Fine. Put your sandwich inside. And some cookies. Or a small packet of chips. Or some of that leftover spaghetti from last night’s dinner. Or Caesar Salad…what you put into it is limited only by its size, and your imagination!

Filling up a Tiffin-Carrier

When filling a tiffin-carrier, there are certain rules or guidelines that should be followed for successful packing, to prevent spills or leaks. Dry food at the bottom, wet food at the top. Stuff like rice and noodles can be stored in the bottommost chamber. Curry, meat and vegetables in the middle chamber/s, and soup or sauce in the topmost bowl. With its own lid, and it being the most tightly-sealed of all the bowls, this is the most leakproof of all the compartments, and thus best reserved for fluids.

And at any rate, being the compartment closest to your hand when the carrier is being…carried…soup or sauce will not slosh around so much inside the topmost compartment, as it might in the bottommost, where jolting, shaking or swaying would affect the liquid much more.

Advantages of a Tiffin-Carrier

Tiffin-carriers have certain advantages over other forms of food-storage and transport containers which have aided in their longevity as practical and useful food-containers.

– Plastic lunchboxes are prone to warping, cracking, and leeching or outgassing, where components of the plastic can contaminate the food.

– Thermos-flasks, usually lined with a sleeve of glass, are prone to breakage if accidentally dropped. The narrow openings cane make it difficult to access food easily and cleanly.

– The ability to store food components separately, unlike with a thermos, allows a greater variety of foodstuffs to be transported in a tiffin-carrier, and generally in greater quantities.

– Being made of metal, tiffin-carriers retain heat well, and last for ages. They’ll never warp, melt, crack or fade like plastic lunchboxes will. And with proper care, one good-sized, well-designed, quality-made tiffin-carrier could last in a single family for generations.

– Being able to break a tiffin-carrier down to its component parts makes it easier to eat out of. Much easier than trying to dig into a steel tube like a thermos, with a fork, or spoon, or pair of chopsticks…I’m suddenly reminded of Aesop’s Fable of the Stork and the Fox.

What are Tiffin-Carriers Made Of?

Modern tiffin-carriers, which you can buy online, in Asian countries like India, Malaysia, Singapore or Indonesia, or at Asian kitchen and homewares shops, are typically made of plastic, or more commonly, high-quality stainless steel. Older tiffin-carriers were made of brass, aluminium, or carbon-steel, with an enamelling of paint over the top, to prevent rusting.

Tiffin-carriers made of brass were prized because brass conducts heat very well, meaning that the food would stay hot. At the same time, brass does not rust, so tiffin-carriers lasted a long time, especially in the humid climates of India and Southeast Asia, where tiffin-carriers were used the most.

The Tiffin-Vendors of Bombay

The city of Bombay has a longstanding tradition of using tiffin-carriers. Long? Over 120 years! From at least 1890, specialist couriers or ‘wallahs’ transported prepacked tiffin-cans, filled with home-cooked lunches, to office-workers all around Bombay in India. Originally established by the British, the ‘Dabbawallahs’ or ‘Tiffin-Wallahs’ have continued their work well into the 21st century. Tiffin-cans are collected every morning before lunch, organised, and then packed onto trains, bicycles and carts and shunted all over town, to arrive, piping-hot, in the tiffin-carrier’s office-building on-time for lunch. Once the food is consumed, the tiffin-wallahs do another round, to pick up the tiffin-carriers, and send them BACK to their homes, where grateful housewives, daughters, sisters or mothers will clean them, in preparation for the next day’s meal.

The price for this amazing service? $6.00 a month.

The accuracy of this service? 99.99% Only ONE, in every 15-20 MILLION deliveries is ever misplaced.

Buying a Tiffin-Carrier

If you’re looking for a new or different type of lunch-storage and transporting means, and you’re sick of plastic lunchboxes, recycling takeout-boxes, ‘doggy-bags’, or having to fiddle with thermos-flasks with dinky little screw-on ‘cups’, maybe a tiffin-carrier can help you out? Strong, with large storage-capacity, they come in a wide variety of sizes, and are easily washed, used, stored, and most importantly – transported!

Tiffin-carriers are easily purchased brand-new, from online dealers, or from Asian countries, like Singapore, India, Malaysia, etc., where they’re normally found in homewares, or kitchenwares shops. If you’re looking for an older one, you might try eBay, or specialist antiques shops. If you’re intending to use an older tiffin-carrier, make sure you buy one which is clean and in usable, non-leaking condition. You don’t want to get lockjaw or food-poisoning from a rusty old tiffin-box!

I hope you enjoyed reading this little posting about tiffin-carriers, as much as I’ve had, writing it. Feel free to leave comments and ratings.

Anyway…

…its tiffin time…