Nyonya style cooking is prepared with a host of spices, carefully blended to create that unique level of spiciness and exquisite taste. Sambal paste is the core ingredient for many Nyonya dishes, and belacan is used widely to create this unique paste.

A host of other spices are also widely used in the preparation of Nyonya dishes - coriander, cumin, pepper, curry powder - available since the time when the Chinese first landed in Malaysia. With creativity in cooking, they skillfully combined local spices with Chinese ingredients. Thus, Nyonya style cooking was born - a fusion of Malay and Chinese cooking.