"AS TRUE AS MUM'S COOKING" The mother, her food, and the study of Vietnamese gastronomic identity

In recent years, 'chuan co'm me nau' (as good/correct/true as mum's cooking) has become a popular term used widely in Vietnamese communities in Vietnam and elsewhere when talking about not only food but also the state of being correct. In its original form, which derives from a social media phenomenon of being absolutely correct, the term is widely used to confirm how true/correct a thing or statement is in informal daily oral and written context. In relation to food, it has been used as a magical spell in marketing and food writing in different senses to evoke people's nostalgia to sell their products. Within the context of Vietnamese culture and language, the mother figure and her food have been exploited to perform a heavily socio-cultural gendered duty, which happens to become the aesthetic of food, eating, knowledge, and all other life's matters to the Vietnamese. In this paper, I explore how this figure of the mothers and their food was formed, has changed, and is now used to form and express a Vietnamese gastronomic identity, where everything must be 'as mum's cooking'.