© 2017

SURAJ LAKSHMINARASIMHAN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

COOKING “INDIA”: IDENTITIES AND IDEOLOGIES IN INDIAN COOKBOOKS

FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY

A Thesis Presented to

The Graduate Faculty of The University of Akron

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts in History

Suraj Lakshminarasimhan

August 2017
 COOKING “INDIA”: IDENTITIES AND IDEOLOGIES IN INDIAN COOKBOOKS

FROM THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT DAY

Suraj Lakshminarasimhan

Thesis

Approved: Accepted:

_______________________________ _______________________________
Dr. Martin Wainwright Dr. Chand Miha
Faculty Advisor Dean of the College

_______________________________ _______________________________
Dr. Stephen Harp Dr. Chand Midha
Faculty Reader Interim Dean of the Graduate School

_______________________________ _______________________________
Dr. Martin Wainwright Date
Department Chair

ii
 ABSTRACT

This paper traces the history of Indian cookbooks from the nineteenth century to

the present, explaining how food texts and food culture act as a method of identification.

This paper attempts to illustrate how cookbooks demonstrate discourses of colonialism

and nationalism as well as postcolonial identity construction, revealing how cookbooks

both codify and contradict tradition and modernity. This study begins by analyzing

cookbooks produced by British writers in India and at home, showing how cookbook

authors represented Indian cuisine as both an antithesis to European fare, yet also as an

aspect of British identity. British cookbook authors in the subcontinent sought to

organize, simplify, or “improve” Indian cuisine, while cookbooks produced in Great

Britain understood the cuisine of the empire as the cuisine of the nation. From there, this

paper examines cookbooks and food discourse by Indian nationalists, noting how they

called for a return to traditional Indian food as well as adapting “modern cooking” to suit

norms of domesticity. The analysis moves to Indian cookbooks produced after

independence explaining how they continued to define identity through food. Rather

than a singular Indian identity produced as a result of Indian independence, cookbooks

produced after 1947 demonstrate various interpretations of Indian identity by Indian

authors, all seeking to define India and its food based on their preconceptions and

interpretations. This study concludes with the abundance of cookbooks since economic

liberalization focusing on the tension between tradition and modernity as a parallel to

India’s identity contest in present politics.

iii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER

I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………….……………………1

II. CODIFYING IMPERIALISM: COOKBOOKS AND REPRESENTATIONS OF

BRITISH IDENTITY..........................................................……………………...7
III. NATIONS, INCORPORATION, AND REDEFINITION: COOKBOOKS BY
VICTORIAN WOMEN AND INDIAN NATIONALISTS…………………….21
IV. IDEOLOGIES AFTER “THE END OF INDIAN HISTORY”: INDIAN
COOKBOOKS AFTER INDEPENDENCE 1947-1990………………………...36
V. LIBERALIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE TENSION OF TRADITION
AND MODERNITY: COOKBOOKS FROM 1990 TO THE PRESENT……...66
VI. CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………….…89
END NOTES……………………………………………………………………………91

BIBLIOGRAPHY ……………………………………………………………………105

iv
 CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

The history of India from the nineteenth century to the present day offers

historians many different eras of study. While many scholars focus on colonial India,

noting the impact of European presence, others highlight Indian nationalism as a

refutation of the West. Along with studies in postcolonialism, comparative history, and

subaltern studies, scholars have done their best to determine the identities and ideologies

of Indian people. But how did contemporary people articulate their own identity in

relation to the Indian subcontinent? How did Anglo-Indians (British officers and

administrators living in India), Victorian women, Indian nationalists, and voices after

Indian independence interpret “India”? To comprehend the multitude of voices involved

in self-identification and defining “otherness,” cookbooks and food serve as effective

lenses for understanding culture and society. Although developing out of social history,

food history largely owes its origin to the cultural turn, its multidisciplinary nature

indebted to anthropology and cultural studies as well as history. Cookbooks reflect how

their authors understood society and culture as well as individual identity; their works

expose the formation of self in the context of cultural interchange. 1

Thus, this paper traces the history of Indian cookbooks by Anglo-Indian, Western,

and Indian writers from the mid nineteenth century to the present, explaining how food

texts and food culture act as a method of defining the Indian nation. Cookbooks are more
1
than a combination of recipes; they are cultural documents in which authors imprint their

identity and ideology. British and Anglo-Indian authors used their cookbooks to depict

India in a way they might understand it, often encoding an imperial agenda in the

process. To counter Western assumptions, Indian cookbook writers used cookbooks to

articulate “the real India,” an identity based on their terms. While Britons and Indians

offered cookbooks as their interpretation of the subcontinent, often reaching vastly

different interpretations, it would be false to say there was no exchange or cultural

borrowing between European and Indian cuisine. The fact that in 2001, foreign secretary

Robin Cook declared chicken tikka masala (an English dish modeled after Indian cuisine)

a “British national dish”2 and that Indians frequently drink tea3 and serve various egg

dishes attests to two-way acculturation flowering from by imperial contact.4

Nevertheless, cookbooks represent methods of self-identification for the author as well as

their specific interpretation of India based on ideology.

Additionally, this paper examines how cookbooks both codify and contradict

tradition and modernity. Cookbooks often claim to possess knowledge of traditional

cooking, yet the decision to both publish and purchase a cookbook is an inherently

modern enterprise, breaking away from oral tradition and culinary education from family

members. Caste, class, and gender receive special attention when applicable, as the

publication of cookbooks is inherently a process of inclusion and exclusion; while the

pages of cookbooks celebrate some facets of Indian society, others fade over time.

Cookbook authors often come from the middle or upper class and in turn write for a

middle to upper class audience, demonstrating certain political agendas while ignoring or

overlooking the food cultures of the impoverished or minority groups. Cookbook authors

2
tried to understand India and its cuisine through the books they wrote, resulting in vastly

different explanations and interpretations of food, people, and nation from the nineteenth

century to the present day.

While the production of cookbooks has increased exponentially throughout the

late twentieth century, the study of Indian cookbooks, especially those produced after

Indian independence, remains overlooked except for Arjun Appadurai’s “How to Make a

National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India,” written in 1988. He argues that

India lacks a national cuisine due to the prominence of regional cuisines and Hindu

doctrine regarding the production and consumption of food. Food served as a

communication of hierarchy between castes and a basis for Ayurvedic moral axioms, but

these gastronomic issues did not affect culinary issues; the person that prepared permitted

foods mattered more than how it was prepared.5 Appadurai views cookbooks produced

by the Indian middle class as the method of determining a national cuisine. Uma

Narayan’s “Eating Cultures: Incorporation, Identity, and Indian Food” in Dislocating

Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third-World Feminism (1997) discusses the role of

food in identity formation, focusing on this process in both colonial and postcolonial

India. However, she does not cite or reference any cookbooks, integral not only for

understanding the food people ate in the nineteenth and twentieth, but for understanding

the relationship between food, identity, and interpretation of India. This paper attempts

to explain this process, how cookbook authors from the Indian subcontinent and

elsewhere understood and presented Indian cuisine, simultaneously articulating their own

identities and ideologies through the pages of cookbooks.

3
 The historiography of Indian food and cuisine includes broad overviews of the

subcontinent, most notably Indira Chakravarty’s Saga of Indian Food: A Historical and

Cultural Survey (1972), R.S. Khare’s Hindu Hearth and Home (1976) and K.T. Achaya’s

Indian Food: A Historical Companion (1994) and A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food

(1998). Chakravarty’s work traces the development of Indian cuisine throughout the

history of the Indian subcontinent, but like many works of Indian history, it follows an

Indian nationalist interpretation of history and presents India’s culinary development as

“ending” with independence in 1947. Khare’s examines India’s food ways through

anthropology, while Achaya’s meticulous survey adds a historical dimension to all facets

of Indian gastronomy. These works discuss the history of food in the Indian

subcontinent, explaining what was eaten and how cuisine changed over time, but do not

reference the importance of cookbooks for defining culinary norms for Anglo-Indian

colonialists or Indian nationalists. Even though the majority of the Indian population

relied on oral tradition to pass down culinary knowledge, cookbook publication

demonstrated an active attempt to define Indian cuisine and nation. Lizzie Collingham’s

Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (2006) as well as Colleen Taylor Sen’s Food

Culture in India (2004), Curry: A Global History (2009), and Feasts and Fasts (2015)

offer more recent overviews of Indian food history, moving past “the end of Indian

history” in 1947 and examining the emergence of the restaurant industry and cuisine

throughout the Indian diaspora. As with the previous works, Collingham and Sen devote

their study to Indian food and food culture rather than cookbooks and their

representations of Indian identity.

4
 David Burton’s The Raj at Table (1993) and Susan Zlotnick’s Domesticating

Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England (1996) serve as important

works for the study of culinary norms in the British Raj and the British nation. Both

authors cite cookbooks, with Burton illustrating the general dining habits of the British

Raj, while Zlotnick critically analyzes Victorian cookbooks, claiming that the inclusion

of Indian cuisine in British cookbooks represents incorporation and subordination of “the

other,” correlating imperialism with norms of domesticity. Nupur Chaudhuri and Mary

A. Procinda examine the relationship between British memsahibs (wives of British

officers and administrators) and their Indian servants in their respective articles

“Memsahibs and their Servants in Nineteenth-Century India” (1994) and “Feeding the

Imperial Appetite: Imperial Knowledge and Anglo-Indian Discourse” (2003),

demonstrating that daily relations with “the other” caused women to adopt a new concept

of domesticity and become active participants the process of empire building. Jayanta

Sengupta’ “Nation on a Platter: The Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial

Bengal” (2009) and Rachel Berger’s “Between Digestion and Desire: Genealogies of

Food in Nationalist North India” (2013) focus on cookbooks and food texts produced by

a growing Indian middle class in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, noting

how cookbook production in Bengali and Hindi allowed Indians to articulate conceptions

of nation, modernity, and domesticity. Uma Narayan, Tulasi Srinivas, and Parama Roy

deal with the development of Indian food and cuisine with an emphasis on diaspora and

globalization, ideas effectively synthesized in Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food,

and South Asia (2012), edited by Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas.

5
 Defining a national cuisine is not a new process, as Anglo-Indians, Victorian

women, Indian nationalists, and authors throughout the Indian diaspora defined cuisine

and identity through their cookbooks since the nineteenth century. Various iterations of

Indian cooking reveal numerous representations of national character, presenting “India”

in a way the author could understand based on lived experience. Cookbooks reveal

individual interpretations of the Indian nation, what it is and what it should be. As a

rising power in international relations, Indian national identity is a vital issue for politics

within the subcontinent as well as international diplomacy. Relations with Pakistan,

position on climate change regulations, and governing a diverse population of over a

billion people all hinge on India’s national identity, what it chooses to embrace and

ignore, to include and exclude. Cookbooks accentuate the definition of national identity,

thus serving as critical documents for understanding India’s past, present, and future.

6
 CHAPTER II

CODIFYING IMPERIALISM: COOKBOOKS AND REPRESENTATIONS OF

BRITISH IDENTITY

“I say ‘chief’ advisedly, for there can be no doubt that modern improvements in
our cuisine, and modern good taste, have assisted in a measure in elbowing off the
once delectable plats of Indian origin; and that the best curry in the world would
never be permitted to appear at a petit-diner composed by a good disciple of the
new régime”6
-Wyvern, Culinary Jottings for Madras (1885)

The production of printed recipes began almost simultaneously with the invention

of the printing press, yet until the mid-nineteenth century, handwritten manuscript recipes

and cookbooks remained the more popular method of distributing culinary information

from generation to generation. A handwritten recipe served as a method of self-education

in the domestic sphere, most often written by women for women, and because of the

distance between generations, provided a sense of intimacy between mothers,

grandmothers and daughters.7 Elite women in British society, such as Hannah Glasse,

Maria Eliza Rundell, Eliza Acton, and Isabella Beeton, published cookbooks in Great

Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, breaking the traditional mold of

disseminating culinary knowledge. Their books provided recipes as well as general

household advice, aiming to help women succeed in the mastery over domestic affairs in

7
an age of rapid and universally progressing knowledge. 8 However, the works by Dr.

Robert Riddell and Colonel Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert (under the pen-name Wyvern)

serve as the most influential British cookbooks written in the subcontinent as well as

systematic attempts to define India based on Western norms. The cookbooks of Robert

Riddell and Wyvern represent attempts to articulate identity and imperial ideology based

on their understanding of the contemporary political and social landscape

Riddell, a superintending army surgeon at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad,

first published his Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book in 1841, a book

subsequently reprinted throughout the late nineteenth century, hoping it would serve as a

work of general utility throughout India. 9 He claims that he wrote his receipts as clearly

as possible, not so Anglo-Indians could understand it easily, but to make communicating

with Indian servants as effective as possible. 10 Riddell presents English words with

Anglicized Hindi translation, allowing for easier communication between memsahibs and

Indian servants. The hands-off approach to domestic work allowed Anglo-Indian women

(as well as British women that could afford a maid at home) to devote attention to other

pursuits, namely pursuing women’s education and suffrage in the name of female

liberation and the ideology of the British Empire. 11 Cooks proved to be among the most

expensive servants, and Riddell notes that a typical cook was “[…] usually a Native

Christian of the lowest caste of Hindoos from Madras or the Coast.”12 Orthodox

Brahmins, historically employed as cooks due to high caste status and therefore the

ability to prepare food for any member of society, avoided consuming or handling meat

in the name of religious purity, as food served as the essential caste distinction well into

the twentieth century. 13 Indian Christians from lower castes replaced Brahmins as cooks

8
for Britons in India, as the latter could not prepare the highly carnivorous diet of the

British Raj, breaking traditional axioms of Indian cookery.

The book also contains advice for animal husbandry as well as methods for

preparing food, implicitly contrasting British cultural identity with that of both Hindus

and Muslims. Riddell guides those wishing to raise calves for veal to give them eggs

throughout life to properly fatten them, as Indian calves result in poor tasting veal. 14

Because most Hindus did not eat beef, Indians raised cattle for producing milk and

manure for fuel rather than for slaughter, resulting in meat Riddell did not consider up to

European standard. The fact that Riddell includes chapters regarding the preparation of

beef and pork signifies the power of the British within the subcontinent, as East India

Company merchants and administrators would not eat beef and pork in the presence of

Indians when the Mughal Empire was at its strength. Chapters devoted to raising

European livestock, cultivating familiar vegetables, and preparing distinctly British

cuisine parallel the rise of British power. British agriculture, animal husbandry, and

imposition of European cuisine on Indian cooks served as methods to understand, order,

and “civilize” Indian space.

Riddell discusses Indian food in his chapter “Oriental Cookery,” immediately

distancing the cuisine of Hindus and Muslims as cuisine of “the other.” He initially

differentiates between Hindu and Muslim cuisine, explaining that “Hindoos” delight in

cakes wheat and various grains, rice, and curries of vegetables, while Muslims prepare

their food more substantially, albeit using meat nearly as indigestible as leather. 15 His

use of the word “curry” signifies a rather blunt and oversimplified understanding based

on British norms and expectations. 16 Curry, an English word likely derived from the

9
Portuguese word caril or caree, in turn derived from karil or kari in Tamil, signifies a

broad generalization of Indian cuisine, ignoring individual categorizations and regional

styles of cooking for a misused pan-Indian term.17 Moreover, his inclusion of various

kebabs, pulaos and biriyanis (fragrant and spiced rice with meat, often with nuts and

raisins), dopiaza (meat slowly cooked with onions), and kormas (meat or vegetables

braised in a sauce of yogurt or cream), represents Mughlai cuisine developed under

Mughal rule based on Persian, Turkic, and various Indian influences. Despite the

obvious inclusion and exclusion of various cultures, the cuisine of the Mughal court

presented in Riddell’s cookbook only represents a subsection of Indian cuisine.

Additionally, there is only one recipe for dal, a legume or pulse that makes up much of

the Indian diet, throughout the entire book. Similar to the accumulation of knowledge of

India’s languages and history, the Orientalist project described by Edward Said and

Bernard Cohn, the British used their knowledge of the Mughals to consolidate their

rule.18 To eat like the Mughal dynasty was to act like the Mughal dynasty, legitimizing

British presence and demonstrating mastery through consumption. Riddell’s cookbook

offers European and Indian recipes as well as domestic advice for Anglo-Indian readers,

allowing for mastery of not only the domestic sphere, but the subcontinent as a whole.

More than a simple food text, Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book defines India

as a land vastly different from Great Britain, but one that the British could organize and

understand as simply as the contents of his book.

Wyvern’s Culinary Jottings for Madras, first published in 1869 and republished

in 1885, also seeks to define Indian food and space but includes a shift in tone. Wyvern’s

work was published after what is variously known as the Sepoy Mutiny, Rebellion, or

10
Revolution in 1857, an event that led to outright rule of the British Raj rather than the de

facto rule of the British East India Company. The event destroyed previously established

cultural bridges, beginning a shift in policy from attempts to “civilize Indians” based on

educational reform to a society predicated on exclusion based on presumed racial

inferiority.19 Exemplifying this, Wyvern states that all Indians, personalized through

constant reference to his cook Ramasamy, are “intensely conservative and sworn foes to

innovations,” diverging from Riddell’s consideration that only particular Indian servants

were untrustworthy because of low caste.20 Furthermore, the cook, being a child in

Wyvern’s opinion, required constant supervision from the memsahib, lest he fall back on

“ancient barbarisms of his forefathers.”21 Wyvern’s cookbook is explicitly a work of

identification, as he aims to explain the superiority of the new order of consumption,

dispelling domestic assumptions about British lifestyle in India. 22 In his attempt to

display the modern sensibilities of Anglo-Indians, he includes recipes for several French

dishes, providing instruction for the preparation of a proper consommé, a clear soup, and

including recipes for various cassoulets, slow cooked French casseroles, and

bouillabaisse, a seafood stew. Of course, Wyvern also includes preparations for English

fare, including a bread sauce for poultry that would undoubtedly provide a nice lunch for

a working husband. 23 Rather than preparing the food of previous generations, Wyvern’s

cookbook defines Anglo-Indian cuisine as the pinnacle of modernity and civility,

paralleling the rhetoric of the British Empire.

As with Riddell, Wyvern devotes time to the curries and food of India, but

exemplifies a higher degree of British input on Indian cuisine, epitomizing increased

British control over India. He provides a recipe for kedgeree, a dish composed of boiled

11
rice, minced fish, hard-boiled eggs, butter, salt, pepper, herbs, calling it a substantial

British breakfast and an effective method to use leftovers. 24 This dish owes its origins to

khichiri or khichdi, which K.T. Achaya defines as a vegetarian dish composed of rice and

moong dal. 25 The addition of meat and eggs to an Indian dish exemplifies a degree of

hybridity, yet consumption of kedgeree incorporates an aspect of Indian culture to British

norms, as eating large quantities of meat in ostentatious meals served as a legitimization

of British authority. 26 However, the molten curries, according to Wyvern, “lost caste” in

British formal settings; it was faux pas to serve Indian food at dinnertime or special

occasions, yet curry remained a popular dish for lunch or at clubs, hotels and private

dinners due to nostalgia. 27 Curry had to improve based on modern sensibilities,

according to Wyvern, leading to the suggestions of beef suet and bacon to Indian dishes,

resulting in entirely new dishes fit for civility while violating the religious prescriptions

of most of India’s population. Wyvern’s cookbook concludes with a portrayal of Indian

kitchens, describing them as dirty and substandard and requiring an English range cooker

to be a proper culinary establishment,28 serving as a visual image justifying the need for

British governance in the India. While Riddell presents Indian cuisine through the

limited vision of the Mughals, Wyvern interprets Indian food as having lost its way and

requiring improvement. Culinary Jottings for Madras identifies India as a colony firmly

under control of the British Empire; India required civility and modernity, which would

only occur through British improvement and guidance.

The works of Riddell and Wyvern are the most well-known from the Indian

subcontinent, but because of norms of domesticity, women dominated the production of

cookbooks. Women such as Flora Anna Steel, Grace Gardiner, Angela Spry, and Carrie

12
Cutcrewe produced cookbooks that offered recipes as well as general advice for

housekeeping and maintaining a household in India. Indian space needed to be

“civilized” according to British norms and tastes, and British women, because of their

moral superiority, were the true agents of civility, maintaining racial homogeneity and

superiority in order to maintain empire’s strength and legacy. 29 The proper

administration of even a small household needed both the brain and heart of an educated

women, as the home was the base unit of civilization where British families learned their

duties. 30 As mothers and educators of the empire, British women had the responsibility

to domesticate India, making it fit for proper European sensibilities. Cookbooks

produced by Anglo-Indian women provided instruction in maintaining a modern

household, as proper governance of the household ensured the proper rule, dignity, and

prestige of the Indian empire. 31

Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables, first published in 1879 by an anonymous author,

aims to improve cookery in India, explaining that the main stumbling block to preparing

dishes was “[…] the impossibility of relying on the memory of [Indian] cooks to retain

the numerous ingredients and complicated processes of European cuisine of which they

have no record.”32 The book confines itself strictly to the preparation of European dishes,

continuing Wyvern’s emphasis to defend Anglo-Indian life and consumption as the

epitome of civilization. The author considers Indian cooks entirely unskillful in

European styles of cooking, which required different culinary techniques and often

possessed a completely different flavor profile than regional Indian cuisines, and further

argued that English cookbooks were useless for life in the subcontinent. 33 As with

Wyvern’s cookbook, Dainty Dishes includes many French and Italian dishes, particularly

13
pastries and desserts, to go along with English chops, meat pies, and puddings to

demonstrate the refined nature of Anglo-Indian dining. Meat, per the author, played too

important a part in the British diet, as a gentleman at the time could consume up to 74

kilograms of meat in a year,34 leading to greater inclusion to vegetables, eggs, and

macaroni dishes. The ability to produce a varied menu with the most fashionable food in

large quantities was a key skill of the memsahib, as the ability to throw a good dinner

party was a key component for career advancement within the colonial administration. 35

The second edition of Dainty Dishes, published in 1881, explains that the author

added chapters devoted to curry and pulao due to “the suggestion of numerous friends,”

indicating a demand for inclusion of Indian food while simultaneously revealing an

attempt by the author to ignore Indian food in the Anglo-Indian culinary lexicon. 36 These

chapters contain eleven curries and four pulaos, and the recipes instruct the reader on the

specific amount of spices to use for each dish, while anything else in the book similar to

an Indian dish merely calls for the use of curry powder. There are two Indian fish

recipes, one called “Fish Curry” and another labeled “Another Fish Curry,” even though

the second recipe uses different spices, such as cinnamon, cardamom, and cloves, to

indicate a more Bengali iteration and completely different dish. The book includes a

recipe for a kebab made with veal, but rather than grilling the meat, the author advises the

reader to season the meat with curry powder before pan-frying. While Riddell sought to

organize Indian cuisine and Wyvern aimed to improve it through additional European

dishes, Dainty Dishes attempts to ignore Indian cuisine, forcing Indian cooks to prepare

only proper food suited for the modern and civilized British Raj.

14
 Continuing the trend to minimize Indian cuisine after 1857 and promote

domesticity within the empire, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, first

published in 1888 by Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner and subsequently republished

into the early twentieth century, dedicates itself to the English girl with the task of being

a house mother in “our Eastern empire.” 37 As with Riddell and Wyvern, Steel and

Gardiner consider Indian servants untrustworthy, requiring the constant guidance of the

memsahib. They proclaim, “The Indian servant is a child in everything save age, and

should be treated as a child; that is to say, kindly, but with the greatest firmness.” 38 A

few days of absence or neglect by the mistress would cause the servants to fall back on

bad habits; it was imperative that the memsahib enforce her will through the threat of

fines or making the servants swallow castor oil. 39 Steel and Gardiner stress domesticity

based on racialized imperial rhetoric, advising their readers, “Never do work which an

ordinarily good servant ought to be able to do. If the one you have will not or cannot do

it, get another who can.”40 The best oil for household machinery, according to Steel and

Gardiner, was human sympathy, a woman’s touch, to maintain economy, efficiency, and

peace in the domestic sphere, the base unit for the vitality of British rule in India.

The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook views Indians, Indian food, and

Indian culture with utmost contempt, as Steel and Gardiner view the customs of their

servants as foolish or barbaric due to the author’s ignorance of various Hindu traditions.

The authors bemoan the fact that on many occasions,

“[…] with the curious perversity that characterizes so many Indian customs, one
often sees three table servants waiting on two people, while the whole cleansing
work of a large, dusty, dilapidated Indian bungalow is left to one man, who is also
scavenger, dog man, poultry man, and general scapegoat.”41

15
Rather than general laziness or foolishness by the table servants, this is an example of the

caste system, as undesirable and impure tasks such as cleaning and leatherwork were the

responsibility of “untouchables” or Dalits, considered the lowest strata of Indian society.

Steel and Gardiner do mention caste during a brief discussion of dining customs, but do

not relate it to the division of labor. Steel and Gardiner declare the cow as the most

misunderstood animal on the Indian subcontinent, remarking that the servant charged

with taking care of the cows, the gowwala, fed ghee (clarified butter used in Hindu

ritual), sugar, spices, and oil to a pregnant cow, believing that without these items the

cow would die. 42 Hinduism considers the cow a sacred animal due to the importance of

milk in the Indian diet and the necessity of milk for the growth and development of

children. Thus, this incident represents a typical aspect of Hindu tradition, an offering

hoping for good health of the cow, but Steel and Gardiner view it as barbaric, atypical to

British norms.

Indian Housekeeper and Cook includes a chapter devoted to advice for the Indian

cook written in a pejorative tone, urging the cook to maintain a clean cooking space to

ensure the comfort and health of the home. The authors claim that through their

instruction, the Indian cook would not only be “cleverer than his fathers” but could

become a real cordon bleu; the Indian servant civilized through contact with British

domesticity. 43 “Vegetables,” Steel and Gardiner explain, “are not to be boiled in the

soup, or all together in one saucepan, as is too often done by Indian cooks,” discounting

Indian norms of cooking as inferior and unfit for Anglo-Indian tables. 44 Moreover, they

asserted that a good cook used animal fat in cooking and seldom used ghee, completely

disregarding the role of ghee as a “pure” food in Hindu cooking. 45 Continuing the trend

16
toward more dainty dishes to embody modern trends, most of the recipes in Indian

Housekeeper and Cook are English, French, and Italian, with the authors noting that a

French dictionary proved necessary to produce high class dinner entrees.46 However,

Steel and Gardiner include eight “native dishes” due to reader request, noting that the

native cooks “invariably know how make them fairly well.”47 In similar fashion to

Dainty Dishes, reader request dictated the inclusion of Indian cuisine in Anglo-Indian

cookbooks, indicating both a desire for Indian food as well as separation between the

intentions of cookbook authors and the attitudes of readers. Nevertheless, Steel and

Gardiner’s Indian Housekeeper and Cook represents the evolution of imperial attitudes

toward India and the subcontinent. Their cookbook is an attempt to disparage and

“other” Indian servants and Indian food in the name of civility, domesticity, and

promoting the legitimacy of the British Raj.

Carrie Cutcrewe’s Memsahib’s Book of Cookery, first published in 1894 and often

credited to Angela C. Spry, continues the trends presented in Dainty Dishes and Indian

Housekeeper and Cook, reducing the presence of Indian cuisine while seeking to impart

British domesticity on Indian space. The book stresses the importance of economy and

efficiency in running a household due to the reduced value of the rupee by the end of the

nineteenth century, a point of contention between colonial rhetoric and Indian

nationalists. The logic of colonialism dictated that economic struggles in colonies

indicated inherent backwardness, while Indian nationalists asserted that British colonial

rule itself stagnated the Indian economy. Although less derogatory than Steel and

Gardiner, Cutcrewe emphasizes the need for “civilization” in the Indian subcontinent,

stating that Indian kitchens would stand to benefit from an Eagle brand range cooker, as it

17
would render every memsahib independent from the village baker, as Cutcrewe believed

typhoid and cholera could be traced back to bazaar bread.48 With regard to Indian

cuisine, she explains that cooks prepare and serve curry once a day, but with such poor

results that the memsahib herself should make or instruct the cook to make a proper

curry. 49 As with other Anglo-Indian cookbooks published after 1857, Memsahib’s Book

of Cookery includes more French recipes and desserts to exemplify civility and

modernity, while various tea sandwiches perpetuate gender norms of daintiness.

Cutcrewe’s work attempts to accentuate the elegance of Anglo-Indian consumption and

life governing the subcontinent, the British in India personifying haughty imperial

rhetoric.

Unlike Dainty Dishes and Indian Housekeeper and Cook, Memsahib’s Book of

Cookery does not include a separate chapter for Indian or native dishes, but they are in

fact present throughout the book. Cutcrewe presents two recipes for fowl pulao, the first

with fewer spices and more suitable for those unfamiliar with Mughlai cuisine, a recipe

for mutton kebab, a lentil and dhal soup (a British understanding of Indian sambhar),

Indian pickles made with lemon and mango, and instructions for proper preparation of

ghee rather than dismissing it as an inferior cooking fat. There are more dishes in this

work, particularly lunch sandwiches, that call for curry power, corroborating with

Wyvern’s explanation that spicier foods retained their popularity at informal meals.

Finally, Cutcrewe offers a pastry recipe made of semolina, but calls it “Soojee (Suji)

Pastry,” borrowing the Hindi word for semolina. 50 Just as English words entered the

lexicon of Indian languages due to colonial encounter, Indian languages affected the day

to day vocabulary of Anglo-Indians. The fear of “going native” or “becoming country

18
cousins” proved to be a major concern for Anglo-Indians returning to Great Britain, as

Cutcrewe offers recommendations to purchase new clothes, furniture, china, cutlery, and

art upon returning home.51 Despite the rhetoric of incorruptible British civility, there was

apprehension regarding the impact of daily interaction with Indians. This fear of

corruption legitimized the need to consume large quantities of meat and fine European

cuisine and distance oneself from anything Indian in the minds of Anglo-Indians. While

Cutcrewe’s work attempted to minimize the prevalence of Indian cuisine and Indian

influence on British norms, it reveals that it was impossible to completely eliminate the

influence of the subcontinent.

Riddell, Wyvern, Steel, Gardiner, and Cutcrewe composed cookbooks as

interpretations of the India and its relation to British identity. All of these cookbooks

represented a facet of the imperial project, with varying attitudes regarding the nature of

the Indian subcontinent and its people. Paralleling the efforts of British Orientalists,

Riddell sought to simplify, organize, and understand Indian cuisine, space, and resources.

After the events of 1857, colonial attitudes changed, as Wyvern, Dainty Dishes, Steel,

Gardiner, and Cutcrewe endeavored to make India and its cuisine more suitable to axioms

of empire, either through civilizing or improving India’s food and people or simply

excluding them as inherently inferior. However, rather than completely discarding Indian

food in favor of European cuisine, Indian food remained in the pages of cookbooks, along

with new Anglo-Indian dishes and additions of European ingredients to “improve” the

cuisine of India. Mulligatawny soup, an Anglo-Indian soup of meat and vegetables

deriving from Tamil words translated as “pepper water” and kedgeree became popular

dishes among Anglo-Indians. Furthermore, one cookbook, titled The Indian Cookery

19
Book published in 1880 by another anonymous writer, provides over one hundred

distinctly Indian recipes, noting differences between dopiazas, koftas, kormas, pulaos,

and vindaloos rather than generalized Indian dishes, noting that some dishes are more

suited to European taste than others. The adoption of curry throughout the British

diaspora further attests to a lack of absolute dismissal of Indian food. It would be an

overstatement to say that the British “conquered curry,” as adoption of food of the

“other” was a series of exchanges between the British Empire and the Indian population.

Acculturation occurred between the British and Indians when it came to food, but the

food texts produced by Anglo-Indian authors reveal their conceptualization of the

subcontinent. Colonial cookbooks represent imperialist interpretations of Indian identity;

India was a colony under British control that needed to be understood, organized, and

improved through the marginalization of Indian barbarity based on British standards of

civility and modernity.

20
 CHAPTER III

NATIONS, INCORPORATION, AND REDEFINITION: COOKBOOKS BY

VICTORIAN WOMEN AND INDIAN NATIONALISTS

“With these we have intermingled many foreign ones which we know to be

excellent of their kind, and which now so far belong to our national cookery, as to
be met with commonly at all refined modern tables.”52
-Eliza Acton, Modern Cookery in all its Branches (1858)

“Indian Cookery is regarded by a foreigner as an indivisible whole and it is true to

some extent. Cookery practised in the different parts of India e. g. Bengal, Orissa,
the United Provinces, Madras, Bombay or the Punjab is the same in the sense that
one method is followed.”53
-I.R. Dey, Indian Cookery and Confectionery (19--)

Just as imperial rhetoric dictated the production of cookbooks to establish British

norms of modernity, civility, and domesticity in the British Raj, cookbook production by

Victorian women codified these themes in Great Britain. Cookbooks published in the

Victorian era aimed to help middle and upper class women achieve the feminine ideal, in

which a woman’s spirit permeated the domestic establishment through the happiness,

comfort, and well-being of the family. 54 While the rhetoric of empire touted that the

British embodied the peak of civilization, some of the British elite, such as Eliza Acton,

feared that their cuisine remained far inferior to less advanced nations. 55 The need to

preserve and advance British civility incorporated women and maintenance of the

21
domestic sphere into the mission of empire. The cookbooks produced by women in

Great Britain and India represent the confluence of British domesticity and the expansion

of empire, a process that Susan Zlotnick calls “the domestication of imperialism.” 56

There was certainly an attempt to incorporate the various identities and cultures of the

British Empire in the pages of cookbooks, but to say that Victorian cookbooks

subordinated Indian cuisine, as Zlotnick argues, is an overstatement. Rather, the

inclusion of chapters on Indian cuisine in Victorian cookbooks demonstrate a new but

specifically British identity, a vision where nation and empire represented one entity

rather than separate from one another.

As with cookbooks produced by Anglo-Indian authors, Victorian cookbooks

simplified Indian cuisine to a collection of curry dishes. The inclusion of curry in British

cookbooks did not begin in the nineteenth century, as Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery

made Plain and Easy written in 1747 includes a curry recipe containing fish and rice,

while only using black pepper and coriander seeds for spice. 57 However, the Victorian

era saw greater inclusion of curry recipes due to greater familiarity with India, as Eliza

Acton and Isabella Beeton made it a point to include Indian cuisine in their cookbooks.

Written for English housewives rather than Anglo-Indian memsahibs, Eliza Acton’s

Modern Cookery in All its Branches, published in 1845 and republished for an American

audience in 1858, stressed economy in the kitchen, listing ingredients and providing

cooking times to assist wives in small households.58 Acton proclaims that England,

beyond all other countries, was rich not only in the varied and abundant produce of its

soil, but in its commerce; the empire allowed access to all the necessities or the luxury its

people could demand.59 British cuisine was no longer limited to the produce and

22
livestock of the British Isle; the resources from seven continents were available and,

according to Acton, must be utilized to fully embrace modern cooking.

Along with traditional English dishes, Acton’s work intermingles foreign dishes

known to be excellent in kind and commonly found at all refined modern tables,

emphasized through a chapter devoted entirely to curry.60 Rather than ignoring,

condescending, or seeking to improve India’s cuisine, Acton views “oriental curries”

superior to English versions due to the use of fresh, native ingredients. 61 Moreover, she

argues that cooks in the East compound and vary this class of dishes “with infinite

ingenuity, blending in them very agreeably many condiments of different flavor, until the

highest degree of piquancy and savor is produced,” a far cry from the condescension by

Anglo-Indian cookbook authors about the lack of skill among Indian cooks.62 Acton

criticizes English versions of curry for containing too much turmeric and cayenne, as

cooks preparing curry and curry powder believed that the spicier the dish was, the greater

the authenticity, resulting in the stereotype of Indian food as unbearably hot that persists

into present day. 63 To produce a proper curry and close the culinary gap between Great

Britain and “less advanced nations,” Acton calls for the reader, in the more rational and

liberal spirit of the times, to profit from the superior information and experience of others

and employ “a high caste chemist” to make curry powder.64 While Anglo-Indian

cookbooks articulated modernity through the production and consumption of European

food at the expense of “lower caste” curries, Acton’s cookbook interprets modern British

cuisine through the inclusion of Indian food. India, according to Acton, was a case study

of British superiority, a component of British cuisine and civility.

23
 As with Acton’s Modern Cookery in all its Branches, Isabella Beeton’s Book of

Household Management attempts to define modern cooking, demystifying food

preparation and helping the Victorian wife and mother run a household with great

efficiency. Unlike Acton, whose most important goal was to improve the standing of

British cooking, Beeton stresses economy in the kitchen. Rather than employing a

servant to grind spices for curry power, Beeton instructs the reader to compose curry

power with coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne, mustard, ginger, allspice, and

fenugreek and keep it on hand, but ultimately concludes that a curry powder “purchased

at any respectable shop is, generally speaking, far superior, and, taking all things into

consideration, very frequently more economical.” 65 For Beeton, curry served as an

flavorful way to use leftover meat, as thrift of the housewife part of the Victorian ideal of

domesticity, and thus presents several versions of curry, ranging from a beef version

made with beer, curried chicken and curried veal requiring minced apple and flour66 to a

more authentic recipe combining chicken and chickpeas along with cinnamon, cloves,

and cardamom for spice.67 Beeton includes other Indian recipes favored by Anglo-

Indians, such as mulligatawny soup, mango chutney, and an Indian pickle while

subsequently creating a fowl pulao with bacon and hardboiled eggs, an effective way to

consume leftover protein but a departure from a standard Indian dish. A mainstay in

Victorian Britain for its recipes as well as medicinal and general household advice, many

women traveling within the empire packed Beeton’s cookbook to bring English

domesticity to the colonies. 68 Beeton’s Book of Household Management interprets Indian

flavors as useful tool to maintain the economy of the household, paralleling the

importance of India in maintaining the international superiority of the British Empire.

24
 Susan Zlotnick argues that the inclusion of Indian recipes in Victorian cookbooks

and Indian cookbooks produced by women represent an attempt to domesticate

imperialism, as the incorporation of foreign food into English cuisine would reduce the

power of the Orient. Citing Modern Domestic Cookery, published in 1851 by an

unknown author, she asserts that curry became a completely naturalized English food by

the middle of the nineteenth century. 69 She also references Eliza Acton’s chapter on

curries and potted meats, noting that Acton did not place curry dishes in the chapter

labeled “Foreign and Jewish Cookery,” indicating that curry had been incorporated by the

British culinary lexicon. 70 Curry certainly became more familiar to the British diaspora

throughout the nineteenth century, but not due to subordination by domesticity in the

manner Zlotnick describes. Rather, the inclusion of curry in Victorian cookbooks

exemplifies what David Cannadine describes as “Ornamentalism.” Instead of a strict

binary between nation and colony, civilized and Oriental other, the British viewed the

totality of the British Empire as a series of ornaments composing their own identity. 71

The empire and all its holdings were as much a part of British national conceptions of

identity as the nation was for imperial identity. Some Britons and Anglo-Indians, as a

display of cultural or racial superiority, chose to reject Indian food.72 Others viewed

Indian food pejoratively, such as Steel’s belief that most Indian recipes were inordinately

greasy or sweet.73 Nevertheless, the incorporation of Indian dishes in Victorian

cookbooks demonstrates India as a facet of British identity, an ornament in the British

Empire. The relationship between Britain and India during colonial rule was far from

harmonious and British imperial rhetoric stressed the physical and intellectual weakness

of Indians based on racial norms. Nevertheless, Victorian cookbooks acknowledge that

25
Indian food, therefore Indian identity, was a part of British identity necessitating presence

in the food texts of Victorian women, Anglo-Indian women, as well as Riddell and

Wyvern.

Just as Acton and Beeton’s cookbooks encoded modern cuisine and advice for

maintaining domesticity in the home for readers in Great Britain, The Englishwoman in

India, written in 1864 by an anonymous author, offers useful advice on the wants of a

lady on a modest budget in the subcontinent.74 Similar to the works by Steel, Gardiner,

and Cutcrewe, The Englishwoman in India aimed to assist women arriving in India, as

many memsahibs had no idea how to cook themselves; they arrived in India knowing

what British food should taste like, but no real notion of how this was achieved. 75

However, The Englishwoman in India is written specifically for an English audience with

little to no idea what to expect in India rather than a cookbook with practical advice for

women “already on the ground.” The author explains that India is an “equally

overpraised and over abused country,” and insists that the native cook puts an English

one to shame due to the former’s repertoire of dishes and the ability to create delicious

dishes in such a primitive kitchen.76 The memsahib should make sure to offer coffee and

curry with their Indian servants, as they often fail to take care of their own meals.77

Nonetheless, the household required a firm, but not wicked, hand to supervise the

servants, as they were prone to slack off or lie to escape work.

As with Wyvern, Steel, Gardiner, and Cutcrewe, The Englishwoman in India

follows the post Sepoy Mutiny trend by including more Italian and French dishes

combined with an emphasis on making proper English puddings. Like the Anglo-Indian

Cookbooks and Acton’s Modern Cookery in all its Branches, the author devotes a special

26
chapter to “curries,” but Indian food is simplified to recipes for curry powder and

chutneys, coupled with a few scattered dishes with Indian influence, such as

mulligatawny soup and a recipe for “oyster pulao.” Borrowing from Riddell, the author

deems meat and eggs produced in the subcontinent inferior in size and goodness and

recommends larding the meat in numerous recipes to improve taste.78 Dal makes one

major appearance in the book, but the author uses it as an ingredient for washing powder

rather than cuisine. 79 As with Anglo-Indian cookbooks and other Victorian cookbooks,

The Englishwoman in India recognizes India as a colony under British control, therefore

a facet of British identity. Despite the rhetoric of the empire as a “civilizing” enterprise

and the belief that the increased presence British women would domesticate foreign

space, this cookbook acknowledges that life in India differs from life at home and the

ideals of imperial rhetoric do not always match reality. Rather than a mystical land of the

imagination, “India” was a reality for many British women, requiring advice and different

methods of living to adapt to Indian life.

Anglo-Indian cookbooks authors like Steel, Gardiner, and Cutcrewe sought to

minimize Indian cuisine and influence and present Anglo-Indian consumption as the peak

of civility, but when British officers retired to England and left the land for which they

worked so hard, they found that they missed the Indian subcontinent and its food.80

When the Raj were in India, they lived their lives in the best facsimiles of English

customs and traditions they could devise, but demanded the piquant curries and chutneys

upon their return to the British Isles in contrast to the “fear of corruption” through contact

with the Orient.81 Those unfamiliar, curious, or nostalgic about the “empire in the East”

attended the British Empire Exhibition 1924-1925, an exhibition so successful that 27

27
million people journeyed from one end of the empire to another to experience the

showcase.82 Edward Palmer, a restauranteur and founder of E.P. Veerasawmy

(alternatively spelled Veeraswamy) & Co. Indian Food Specialists, served as catering

advisor for the Indian pavilion and produced a cookbook in 1936 to illustrate the

complicated art of Indian cuisine and benefit country and empire. 83 Palmer, the great-

grandson of the Hyderabadi Muslim princess Begum Fyze Baksh and an English

lieutenant general, had an interest in producing authentic Indian food and insisted that it

was possible to make a proper curry to rival the very best made in India, as long as one

used his “Nizam” brand of spices.84 As with Beeton, Palmer views curry as a delicious

and economical method to use leftover meat and vegetables. Capitalizing on demand for

Indian cuisine and nostalgia for the empire, Palmer defines Indian cuisine based on

Western familiarity, commodifying the British Raj.

Palmer’s Indian Cookery works to break assumptions and previous mistakes

presented by British and Anglo-Indian cookbook authors in order to portray Indian

cuisine more accurately. First, Palmer explains,

“Indian cookery is not the cookery of a single nationality or of a recent

civilization. It dates back centuries and is a combination of the cookery of many
nationalities. The result is a complicated art dating back to the remote ages and
dependent on religion, health, customs, taste, and climatic conditions.”85
Rather than the subsection of Mughlai cuisine most familiar to Western readers, Palmer

indicates a knowledge of regional differences in Indian food ways. Underscoring this, he

includes not only English terms and their Hindi translations, but Tamil translations as

well, aiming to appeal to returning Anglo-Indians that lived in South India while also

refuting the notion of a singular Indian language. Contradicting Acton’s advice regarding

fresh ingredients being the key to proper cooking, Palmer claims that “those who speak

28
of fresh ingredients know absolutely nothing beyond what their native Indian servant as

told them,” citing his experience catering for the imperial exhibition and cooking for

Indian princes as proof that curry powder, if it is the right curry powder, leads to

delicious results.86 Flour, apples, and animal fat should not be used in Indian dishes,

refuting the advice and recipes from Beeton and Wyvern, and pulaos and biriyanis, rather

than “unfit for European taste,” deserved the foremost place in the cuisine of the Orient. 87

Palmer justifies the ubiquity of yogurt and dal throughout Indian cuisine by noting that all

castes and classes ate these foods, demonstrating some familiarity with the Indian caste

system as well as Hindu beliefs of vegetarianism and purity. 88 Moreover, he urges

Westerners to utilize lentils in their cooking for their nutritive and economic value. 89

Seeking to improve Indian cookery throughout the British Empire, Palmer’s Indian

Cooking corrects previous mistakes in Indian food writing and endeavors to produce a

more intricate encapsulation of Indian cuisine.

Despite Palmer’s efforts to define authentic Indian cuisine, he establishes himself

as a citizen of the empire and adapts Indian cooking to suit British norms. Indian

Cooking only contains dishes that Westerners would have some familiarity with, dishes

those nostalgic for the cuisine of the British Raj would be willing to purchase and

consume. Additionally, Palmer instructs readers to use white flour rather than chickpea

flour to make samosas, fried savory pastries stuffed with either minced meat or

vegetables, and includes recipes for curries made with rabbit, beef and dal, tripe curry,

and eel, adapting Indian flavors to British ingredients to make new yet more familiar

dishes. Palmer uses the language and rhetoric of empire to differentiate between West

and East, referring to Europeans as “European races” and asserting that due to greater

29
quality of meat and vegetables available in Western countries, the Western housewife has

a great advantage over her Eastern sister, even in the creation of Indian dishes.90 Though

Palmer depicts a more complete representation of Indian cuisine, his Indian Cookery

views the Indian subcontinent as a component of the British Empire, one that could be

commodified and sold to curious or nostalgic audiences.

Just as British cookbook authors used Indian food as a method to define India,

either as a colonial holding, a representation of barbarity, or an ornament in British

identity, Indians used food and cookbooks to articulate their own varied identities and

interpretations of “India.” Despite the narrative of Indian nationalism as a united front

overthrowing the oppressive British Empire, the Indian population reacted to the British

in different ways depending on their background and social standing. The adoption of

Western food customs by Indian princes, rulers of states not under direct control of the

British Raj, exemplifies this point. A state banquet of an Indian prince was a hybrid

mélange of Hindu, Mughal, and English culinary traditions, as the adoption of certain

cuisines and dishes to supplement preexisting traditions, called “the paraphernalia of

eating” by Angma Jhala, served as a reflection of power.91 Indian princes looked to

maintain their wealth within the British Raj, while the British sought to empower an

Indian aristocracy to engineer society in a familiar way, resulting in the British

supporting princes as puppet rulers.92 Due to their alliance (and reliance) on the British,

the rulers of the princely states adopted many Western customs, most notably cricket and

European dining etiquette. Meals now had courses rather than all dishes presented at one

time, a European style menu, dressing for dinner, and eating meals at a table.93 Royal

families played an important role in preserving the cosmopolitan nature of Indian cuisine,

30
as the food of maharajas litters the pages of cookbooks in the present day. 94 However,

Indian princes represented a one portion of India’s colonial population and food culture,

as nationalists used food and cookbooks as a method to reject British rule and articulate

their own conception of Indian identity.

Modern Indian nationalism began in the latter decades of the nineteenth century

as a result of a growing middle class and intellectual base, arguing for greater inclusion in

governance and administration as well as challenging the imperial logic of Indian racial

inferiority. As nationalist movements developed into the nineteenth and twentieth

centuries, they defined themselves as the antithesis of the British Empire, most famously

through Mohandas Gandhi’s embrace of khadi, handspun Indian cloth, and using Hindu

history and symbols to defy imperialism. Food served as another battleground for

defining national identity, as nationalists urged the population to return to a traditional

diet.95 Food emerged as category of analysis and discussion amid broader movements to

rationalize and modernize middle-class domestic space; it was made scientific according

to the logic of home economics and the new concern over family health. 96 To codify

what this entailed, middle class Bengalis and North Indians began printing cookbooks as

an articulation of identity, defining their cuisine in contradiction with European fare.97

These cookbooks not only included regional dishes, but stated that an ideal modern

housewife, grihini, should be skilled in the cuisine of the past and present, ranging from

Brahmin dishes of rice and curry to meat in the style of the Mughals. 98

The change in food culture can be seen as a transformative component of a

broader project to articulate, identify, and delineate the nationalist ideals of Indian middle

class life. 99 Bengali cookbooks, such as the Pak-Pranali, Amish o Niramish Ahar, and

31
Hindi publications, such as J.A. Sarma’s Paka-Vijnana and Yashoda Devi’s Pakshastras

established identity as well as the importance of female domesticity. Nationalists argued

that the lack of culinary skill among Indian women resulted in a loss of identity and

Indian power.100 Nationalist rhetoric often emphasized rescuing women (either as an

embodiment of the “nation” or in the literal sense), from the depravity of “the other;”

Indian nationalist cookbooks sought to reclaim Indian cooking, therefore Indian women,

from British and Anglo-Indian corruption. Cookbooks published by Indian authors

ensured that “their” women would have the culinary skill to promote a happy marriage

and the strength of the nation, the task of the modern Indian woman. To combat anxieties

over aggressive methods toward modernization, cookbooks invoked tradition and ancient

wisdom, particularly regarding health edicts of Ayurveda, the fusion of tradition and

modernity producing a distinctly Indian identity in refutation of the British Empire. 101

The production of cookbooks by Indians represented identity politics; Indians could and

should cook their own cuisine on their own terms, just as India must be left for Indians to

govern.

Although published after the first attempts to produce Bengali cookbooks, I.R

Dey’s Indian Cookery and Confectionery (dates of initial publication range from 1900 to

1942) reiterates nationalist discourse and represents an interpretation of India and its food

as the opposite of European norms. Dey explains that her cookbook signifies an attempt

to properly depict Indian cuisine, as she asserts,

“The present system of cooking in many provinces of India has lost its old
reputation, having fallen into the hands of some who do not regard cooking as a
fine art and of illiterate and stupid professional cooks of different provinces who
having failed in every sphere of life resort to cooking.”102

32
In her opinion, contemporary cooks followed stereotyped and defective methods in the

preparation of every food, likely referring to attempts to make “curry” based on European

expectations, as Dey later criticizes the use of pre-made curry powder.103 Dey insists that

Indian cooking is an indivisible whole, echoing nationalist rhetoric, yet believes that

Bengal is the most advanced in cuisine, displaying contradictions to an assumed united

national character.104 As with earlier published Bengali cookbooks, Dey’s work

conceptualizes Indian cuisine and India as the opposite of British norms.

British and Anglo-Indian cookbook authors advocated the use of metal cookware

as a display of modernity and wealth, yet Dey calls for a return to earthenware pots as

used by Indians throughout history. 105 She does not discuss “curries” in a separate

chapter, but refers to dishes based on their regional names in chapters devoted to meat

and fish. Moreover, she includes individual chapters for rice and dal, a shift away from

European focus on Mughal dishes and a more accurate depiction of typical Indian

cuisine, as even today cereals and dal make up more than seventy percent of all calories

and protein consumed. 106 Dey informs her reader that rice is nutritionally superior when

husked by indigenous implements rather than industrial mills, placing traditional methods

of food production in higher esteem compared to “civilized” methods established by the

British Empire.107 Yet, paralleling Anglo-Indian cookbooks inclusion of Indian food,

Dey does not exclude British cuisine entirely. Her recipe for khichiri includes eggs rather

than the traditional vegetarian version, and she also includes omelets, poached eggs,

“English curry with crabs,” and a dish with rabbit or hare in her cookbook. Moreover,

the cookbook displays acculturation and appropriation of European food, a mutual

exchange of culinary fashions. However, Dey adapts the European style dishes into a

33
cookbook based on an entirely different interpretation; Dey’s cookbook abides by the

development of Bengali domesticity. The proper Bengali housewife was to cook based

on tradition as well as new fashions, and the ability to prepare European cuisine along

with popular Indian dishes embodied the ideal grihini. Moreover, Indian Cookery and

Confectionery demonstrates a specifically Bengali interpretation of Indian cuisine, as

many items call for garam masala (a warming northern spice mix of cinnamon, cloves,

and cardamom as the main components along with the selective addition of peppercorns,

nutmeg, mace, bay leaf and cumin) and mustard oil, ingredients used regularly in

Northern India but not as commonly in southern regions. Dey’s cookbook represents a

nationalist attempt to redefine India, albeit a Bengali articulation of Indian identity that

neglects regional differences and attitudes toward Indian nationalism. Rather than merely

an ornament of British identity, Indian nationalists used cookbooks and food to represent

India as the opposite of British cuisine.

While Bengalis published cookbooks as an articulation of identity, the fact that

much of India’s population did not publish cookbooks reveals just as much about Indian

identity. Despite the assurances by cookbook authors that their work represents

traditional, authentic ways of cooking, the production of a printed cookbook involves

breaking away from manuscript and oral tradition. In India, culinary knowledge passed

between women from generation to generation; a new wife sent to live in her husband’s

home learned how to cook from her mother-in-law and other female in-laws. This

traditional method of teaching and learning to cook persisted well into the twentieth

century. It is only with the breakup of geographically centered families that young

housewives (and men wishing to cook) desired cookbooks.108 Although not necessarily a

34
conscious decision, the lack of cookbook production for much of India’s history reveals

identity articulation just as much as codifying identities through cookbooks. India’s

identity was up for interpretation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as

Indian nationalists, Hindu nationalists, Muslims, Anglo-Indians, and the British all

differed on what India meant and what India should mean. The wide range of

interpretations did not dissipate with independence in 1947. On the contrary, “India” was

up for debate more than ever with its emergence as a nation state.

35
 CHAPTER IV

IDEOLOGIES AFTER “THE END OF INDIAN HISTORY”: INDIAN COOKBOOKS

AFTER INDEPENDENCE 1947-1990

“In most instances, the Indian cook will add an ingredient or two beyond what is
required in a dish, without deviating from the classic flavor, simply to give it his
or her own personal stamp. This is commonly referred to in Indian as Hath ki bat,
meaning “one’s touch.”109
-Julie Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking (1980)

In Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, Gyanendra Pandey explains

that because of an overwhelmingly nationalist historiography, India’s history “ends” with

independence in 1947.110 The historical narrative includes development in the ancient

world, a glorious past, rupture caused by invasions and colonial rule, and the culmination

of Indian history in achieving independence. Yet, it is precisely the period after

independence, Indian history’s supposed epilogue, that proves vital for present day

political issues in India. Religious tension and violence within the nation, rivalry and war

with Pakistan, poverty and access to resources, and India’s status in the international

community are all issues beyond the nationalist struggle for independence. Attempts at

non-alignment during the Cold War further muddle India’s identity internationally. With

uncertainty regarding the identity of the newly independent, men and women throughout

the Indian diaspora used food texts to envision their mataram (motherland), what India

36
was and what India should be. Cookbook production increased dramatically during the

twentieth century, resulting in numerous representations of Indian cuisine and in turn

many interpretations of national identity. Authors such as Srimathi Meenakshi Ammal,

Santha Rama Rau, Madhur Jaffrey, Pranati Sengupta, Julie Sahni, Sudha Koul, Ismail

Merchant, Yamuni Devi, and even the Indian government itself attempted to understand

and define post-independence Indian cuisine through the pages of cookbooks, thus

offering their own articulations of the independent nation.

As India struggled to define itself beyond the nationalist struggle against

colonialism, Srimathi Meenakshi Ammal published her cookbook, Samaithu Par

(translated to “Cook and See”) in 1951, emerging at a time when there was a dearth of

good cookery books to suit modern times. 111 Indian women began recognizing the

“uneconomics” of maintaining maids and servants, and took to self-cooking to decrease

household expenditure in the uncertain postcolonial Indian economy. 112 Breaking from

the oral tradition of passing down culinary knowledge through generations as well as the

belief among Indian girls that it was beneath their dignity to enter the kitchen, Samaithu

Par made South Indian recipes available for families throughout the subcontinent.113

Unlike Anglo-Indian and Bengali cookbooks, Ammal’s work not only ignores Mughlai

dishes stereotyped as a complete representation of Indian food, it does not include meat

dishes of any kind, instead focusing solely on rustic vegetarian dishes composed of rice,

grains, dal, and vegetables. Moreover, Ammal’s cookbook was originally published in

Tamil rather than Hindi, the latter officially declared the language of the nation a year

earlier, demonstrating the power of regional languages and customs and signifying a

disconnect between the rhetoric of a united India and the reality of a multiethnic, multi-

37
confessional, multicultural, and multilingual society. When the book was finally

translated in 1968, it was translated to English, as it was a more commonly shared

language among the Indian population despite the fact that Parliament initially planned to

end the use of English for official purposes in 1965, signifying a key legacy of British

colonialism. Thus, the book uses Tamil terms to describe food items, such as

karunaikizhangu for yams, and utilizes specifically South Indian ingredients and dining

customs. For example, Ammal provides instructions for correctly preparing coffee rather

than tea, as is South Indian custom. Additionally, many recipes call for tamarind as a

souring agent, not widely used in North India, and garlic is replaced with asafoetida, a

gum extracted from rhizomes or taproot of ferula herbs. Samaithu Par uses Indian

measurements, such as palam (equivalent to 35 grams) and ollack (about a quarter of a

liter) and does not define specifically Indian ingredients, such as jaggery, a sweetener

made from palm sap often used instead of sugar, indicating that Ammal wrote for a

specifically Indian audience that did not require definition of common food terms.

Samaithu Par represents an attempt to define Indian after independence, revealing a

disconnect between the nationalist rhetoric of a united India and offering a specifically

South Indian interpretation on what India was and should be.

Just as Ammal’s Samaithu Par attempted to articulate identity based on lived

experience in postcolonial South India, Savitri Chowdhary’s Indian Cooking, published

in 1954 as part of the Andre Deutsch cookbook series in the United Kingdom, illustrates

an attempt to demystify India to an English audience as while serving as a navigation of

the immigrant experience. Before the popularity of published cookbooks, manuscript

cookbooks and handwritten recipes allowed women to tell their life stories as well as

38
their interpretation of community, society, and culture.114 For many immigrants,

experiencing a complete upheaval in their lives and often isolated from family and former

communities, a recipe or cookbook lent a degree of familiarity and intimacy, while

creating recipes involved adapting to a new environment. Additionally, Uma Narayan

argues that immigrant women, particularly women of Indian origin, play a significant and

peculiar role in maintaining Indian identity, particularly in Great Britain. 115 Thus,

Chowdhary’s cookbook serves as a case study of the immigrant experience to the United

Kingdom, demonstrating how she adapted her cultural norms to her new setting as well

as her interpretation of India and its cuisine.

Chowdhary was born in Multan, in present day Pakistan, immigrating to the

United Kingdom in 1932 after a four-year separation from her husband. Although she

struggled at times to adjust to new way of life as a doctor’s wife in a small English town,

she negotiated her traditional identity with her new surroundings, cutting her waist length

hair and wearing Western clothes during the day while wearing saris (long multi-colored

gowns made of silk) for evening occasions, cooking Indian food at home and socializing

with the middle class Indian community. 116 Chowdhary moved from Punjab (part of

which became Pakistan after the Partition of 1947) to the United Kingdom, and her book

self-admittedly focuses on Punjabi dishes, yet another limited interpretation of Indian

cuisine.117 She includes paneer, an Indian cheese made from curd, as a “basic material”

for proper Indian cooking, ignoring the fact that it is mostly used in North India rather

than ubiquitous throughout the subcontinent. She also provides a method to make garam

masala, a Northern spice mixture, yet instructs readers to use a coffee grinder as a more

efficient way to break down spices, adapting tradition based on culture and technology.

39
 Although limited in its presentation, Chowdhary’s cookbook works to break

Western assumptions of Indian food and culture. Chowdhary informs readers that,

despite popular belief, Indian dishes are not inherently spicy; one easily could create a

flavorful dish without using chili powder based on her cooking experience, as her father

never cared for overly spiced food.118 Moreover, one could leave garlic and onions out of

recipes as well, for many Hindus do not eat them because of their pungent flavors and

because they may harbor life through sprouting plants. While describing dining customs

in India, she explains that Indians eat “with well washed hands” aiming to move away

from stereotypes of Indians as dirty or uncivilized perpetuated during colonial rule and

exemplified through Wyvern’s description of Indian kitchens.119 Contradicting the

culinary advice of Victorians and Anglo-Indians, Chowdhary’s “chicken curry” calls for

garam masala and turmeric rather than prepackaged curry powder. At the same time, she

adapts Indian cuisine and customs based on English cultural norms as well, illustrating

acculturation and her interpretation of the immigrant experience. Her recipe for pulao

states that it makes a great side dish rather than a main dish, and she provides instructions

for making pulao with cod and prawns. There is a dish that calls for meat rolled in a

potato pastry as well as dishes devoted to tea time. Chowdhary’s cookbook reflects her

identity as an Indian immigrant, fusing Indian tradition with her current environment, as

well as an attempt to break assumptions of Indian cuisine and character.

In his article “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary

India,” anthropologist Arjun Appadurai argues that because of the strength of regional

culinary styles and greater focus on food preparation rather than specific dishes in Hindu

tradition, India “lacks a national cuisine.” He calls upon India’s middle class to define a

40
national Indian cuisine through cookbook publication in the late twentieth and twenty-

first centuries. Not only did various cookbooks published since the nineteenth century

attempt to define Indian food and nation, but the state itself engaged in cookbook

publication to define Indian cuisine, thus defining its own identity after independence.

Indian Cuisine, published in 1960 by India’s Department of Tourism, serves as a

national definition of Indian cuisine, an articulation of identity celebrating culinary

tradition and cosmopolitan influence from India’s diverse population. Rather than

ignoring regional differences in cuisine, the government’s cookbook remarks that “[…] it

is unlikely that any comparable area in the world has such a variety of dishes.”120 The

Department of Tourism insists that not all Indian dishes are inherently hot and that hands

are carefully washed before each meal, echoing Chowdhary’s efforts to refute Western

stereotypes regarding Indian food and people. North Indian food, the cuisine most often

served at government banquets, restaurants, and hotels, possessed quality and richness

reflecting the resplendent glory of the Mughal Empire, illustrating a celebration of Indian

history before British colonial rule. 121 The attempt to establish the intricacy and

splendor, the legitimacy of Indian cuisine, ironically limits the Department of Tourism’s

Indian Cuisine, as the cookbook mainly focuses on Mughlai dishes in the same manner as

colonial cookbooks. Likely attempting to present food familiar and popular among

tourists, presenting this small subsection of Indian cuisine undercuts the stated goal of

celebrating India’s diversity in its dishes.

Interestingly, the government cites Delhi, Bombay (Mumbai), Calcutta (Kolkata),

and Madras (Chennai) as the centers for the main styles of Indian cooking. Even though

much of India was and still is rural, Indian Cooking establishes urban India as the integral

41
component defining India’s culinary development and identity, paralleling criticism by

subaltern historians that urban, middle and upper class nationalists of Hindu descent

overwhelmingly dominate India’s history writing. Though Indian Cooking notes that

there are not many typically Indian dishes but rather broad techniques, seeming to

underscore Appadurai’s point, the fact that the government itself published a cookbook

represents an attempt to define a national cuisine and articulate India’s identity after

independence. The Department of Tourism’s cookbook attempts to legitimize Indian

cuisine and nation on the international stage after colonial rule, celebrating India’s

glorious past while also looking to urban India as the vanguard of India’s future.

Just as the Indian Department of Tourism defined the Indian nation through

cookbook production, the Indian Council of Medical Research published Common Indian

Recipes and their Nutritive Value in 1964, seeking to connect traditional Indian cuisine

with nutritional science. While the Indian Cooking stressed the grandeur and legitimacy

of Indian food, the Indian Council of Medical Research aims to display the modernity of

the newly independent nation. Unlike early Hindi food texts and cookbooks produced

after this work throughout the late twentieth and twenty-first century, Common Indian

Recipes and their Nutritive Value does not mention Ayurveda as a form of ancient

wisdom in any way; the work links modern science such as calorie count and percentage

of nutrients to the health benefits of food items. The Council of Medical Research insists

that their work provides valuable information for preparing several common dishes along

with their nutritive value, particularly helpful to housewives and persons in charge of

catering establishments.122 Continuing the new standard of domesticity established

through Indian nationalist cookbooks, the ideal grihini must not only be able to create a

42
wide variety of cuisine, but should know the relative nutritional value of ingredients and

common dishes.

Most of the recipes listed in the book are vegetarian, of which a majority are

desserts and sweetmeats to be all inclusive and prove useful for all Indians. Though

Colleen Taylor Sen explains that seventy percent of the Indian population eats meat at

some point in their lives, many Indians are de facto vegetarians simply because meat is

expensive rather than due to religious taboos.123 With regard to the prevalence of Indian

sweets, Achaya states that sweets, being fried vegetarian dishes, managed to cut across

religion, class, and caste.124 The Council of Medical Research recognized sweets as

common ground among a diverse Indian population and included numerous dessert

recipes in order to reach a greater portion of the Indian population. Understanding

modern nutritional science in food preparation represented an important facet of

postcolonial domesticity as well as an example of Indian modernity. Far from the

colonial stereotypes of backwardness and barbarity, Common Indian Recipes and their

Nutritive Value interprets India as understanding and incorporating modern science into

daily life.

Looking to define Indian identity and resolve common misconceptions to an

American audience, Santha Rama Rau’s Recipes: The Cooking of India, part of Time-

Life’s “Foods of the World” series and published in 1969, presents Indian cuisine in a

cookbook devoted for middle class American readers, aiming to add a sense of adventure

to their dining routine. Rama Rau the daughter of Benegal Rama Rau, a member of the

Indian Civil Service and the longest tenured governor of the Reserve Bank of India, was a

writer most famous for her book Home to India, her memoir “By Any Other Name,” and

43
adapting E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India to theater; her works offered Americans an

insider’s view of Indian culture, tradition, and history to counter serious misconceptions

in the public mind. 125 Through her cookbook, Rau’s intends to help readers go far

beyond the rudiments of a simple curry and prepare dishes that are most practical for

American cooks.126 As with Chowdhary’s cookbook, the author assures readers that

Indian spices are neither odd tasting nor fiercely hot and calls for no more than three

chilies per dish.127 Unlike the cookbooks by Chowdhary and Dey, however, this book

includes recipes from all over India, ranging from dosa and idli from South India to

vindaloo from Goa, a city on the West coast colonized by the Portuguese. Rama Rau had

a history of indicting scholars for Orientalizing and simplifying Indian cuisine and culture

for Western consumption. Although Time-Life merely wanted an Indian cookbook

published for revenue sales, Rama Rau composed Recipes: The Cooking of India to help

American readers understand India as a cosmopolitan subject in its own right, not just a

sovereign player on the world stage. 128

In The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau, Antoinette Burton notes that

though cookbook authorship was not completely to Rama Rau’s liking as compared to

her previous works, she pursued the project to identify India as a dynamic and diverse

subcontinent while striving to rescue India from the condescension and “othering” of

Cold War commentators.129 As with the Indian Department of Tourism, she considered

Indian cities, not villages, the greater representation of the authentic Indian experience,

owing in large part to her desire to challenge the stereotype of India as a land of

famine.130 Although Indian cooking appeared sporadically in American publications like

Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, and the New York Times, headlines about

44
Indian famine, a stereotype of Indian poverty while simultaneously a drastic concern

throughout colonial rule and after independence, overshadowed celebrations of Indian

cuisine.131 The series editors, initially hiring Rama Rau to write a cookbook to combine

Indian and Indonesian cuisine, requested that the author include a chapter on Pakistan,

reflecting contemporary global politics of two nations on the Indian subcontinent. Rama

Rau vehemently responded that Pakistan was already included in the cookbook, as

Pakistan was a part of India for so many centuries that it would be impossible to discuss

North Indian and Mughlai cuisine without including Pakistan by name or implication. 132

Rama Rau fervently rejected the “Two Nation Theory” proposed by the Muslim League

during the struggle for Indian (and eventually Pakistani) independence; her view of India

contained Pakistan and its Muslim population as part of India’s cosmopolitan society.

Her interpretation of Indian identity celebrated India’s complexity and diversity, an

articulation not accepted by the editors of the cookbook series.

Almost certainly due to disconnect between the cookbook author and series

editors, the American definition of India through this cookbook is that of the “other”

rather than Rama Rau’s cosmopolitan ideal. Rama Rau’s role in what the cookbook

ultimately became was quite limited, and this reflects throughout the cookbook through

word and artistic choices that would have appalled the “author” of the cookbook. The

book describes a karahi, a deep skillet used extensively in Indian cooking (similar to a

wok), as “an Oriental deep fryer.” 133 The chapter headings include mock-Hindi script,

English words with a line above the letters, along with “Oriental” imagery. Against

Rama Rau’s wishes, the editors brought in a new author to write a chapter on Pakistan,

reiterating Mughal style cooking along with support for the “Two Nation Theory.”

45
Unlike the United Kingdom, which had extensive contact with India through the empire

and experienced greater immigration from the subcontinent, the United States had little

experience with India. The fourth wave of immigration to the United States was just

beginning by the early 1970s, and India’s friendly ties with the Soviet Union as a reaction

to United States financial and military aid to Pakistan chilled diplomacy due to the strict

Cold War binary of “us and other.” Thus, despite Rama Rau’s effort to demystify India

to her American audience, the United States’ conception of India demonstrated through

the Time-Life cookbook was that of the unknown other.

While authors from the West used cookbooks to present their interpretations of

Indian identity, Indian cookbook authors responded, articulating their own interpretations

of Indian cuisine and the subcontinent. Just as Julia Child achieved celebrity, Madhur

Jaffrey rose to international fame through her cookbooks and television program teaching

people how to cook Indian cuisine. She describes her first work, An Invitation to Indian

Cooking written in 1973, as “a maneuver of self-defense,” as she felt a sense of guilt that

she could never recommend a good Indian restaurant to friends and acquaintances. 134

This is not due to a lack of familiarity with Indian cuisine; on the contrary, she explains

that there are no restaurants that provide the top quality food of Indian households.135

Indian restaurants displayed timidity when it came to cuisine, fearing the use of too much

spice and providing a limited menu of generalized “curries” to appeal to American tastes.

With regard to the word “curry,” Jaffrey emphatically states, “To me the word ‘curry’ is

as degrading to India’s great cuisine as the term ‘chop suey’ was to China’s.” 136

Furthermore, she condemns the use of curry powder, as it oversimplifies and therefore

destroys Indian cuisine; the constant use of curry powder makes all dishes taste alike

46
rather than celebrating their differences based on regional ingredients and blend of

spices. 137 Collecting various recipes from her mother and grandmother, the traditional

method of distributing culinary knowledge, and assuring the reader that she cooked the

dishes herself, Jaffrey aims to break culinary insularity, inviting audiences to cook and

eat Indian cuisine. 138

As with the cookbooks of Dey and Chowdhary, Jaffrey attempts to redefine

Indian cuisine for a Western audience, but presents a limited interpretation of Indian

food. Jaffrey grew up in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, and admits that her recipes are limited

to those regions rather than a systematic inclusion of all of India’s regional recipes. 139

Likewise, her cookbook demonstrates acculturation and accommodation to her audience;

she uses olive oil rather than mustard oil, coconut oil, or ghee and presents a dish labeled

“Pork Chops à la Jaffrey,” which she describes as “[…] really my very own concoction

and unlikely to be served in any Indian home other than mine.” 140 Her recipe for khichiri

(spelled khitcherie) follows the Anglo-Indian preparation, she even refers to the dish as

“scrambled eggs, Indian style.”141 Like any other cookbook, Jaffrey’s involves a process

of inclusion and exclusion based on background, upbringing, and purpose for writing.

Jaffrey grew up in a non-vegetarian upper class household with a cook providing their

meals, meaning that her family had easier access to food and resources than other strata

of the population. Thus, the fact that she briefly mentions parliamentary debates on cow

slaughter in India almost as a humorous anecdote is troubling and a misunderstanding of

India’s political climate. Middle to upper class Hindus advocate protecting cows through

law as a method of maintaining religious tradition, which has the explicit effect of

denying food to non-Hindus, most notably India’s Muslim population that already has

47
greater difficulty accessing resources.142 Moreover, she concludes her book with a

chapter on paan, betal leaf often combined with sugar or nuts that is eaten after a meal to

aid digestion, with a story of how a delivery of paan to her Urdu radio program at United

Nations headquarters resulted in physical altercation. She remarks, “Then, like wild

demons, we all leaped upon him snatched the paan, […] There was no excuse except that

it was unpremeditated! That is what paan can do to Indians and Pakistanis!” 143 While

this incident between Indians and Pakistanis is rather benign, it makes light of the heated

conflict between the two nations, as Partition of the countries in 1947 was one of the

most horrific events in the twentieth century; the geographical divide brought

displacement and death, rape and plunder, benefiting the few at the expense of the very

many. 144 Partition violence and religious tension sparked during the nationalist struggle

boiled over after independence into four Indo-Pakistani wars, continued hostility, and the

threat of future nuclear conflict. While attempting to produce a more authentic version of

India’s identity through its cuisine, Jaffrey’s interpretation is limited based on regional

focus and social class.

Jaffrey published an expanded version of her cookbook titled Indian Cookery in

1982, in which she emphasizes cooking as a method of emulating the traditional methods

of ancestors as well as the notion that India is “the melting pot of the East.” She begins

this version with a childhood story, describing the various dishes her friends would bring

to school based on their cultural norms and food restrictions. A friend of Jain faith

brought pooras, a pancake made of dal, a Muslim from Uttar Pradesh brought beef

cooked with spinach, while a Christian from Kerala share idlis with sambhar.145 Jaffrey

remembers delighting in all of these dishes, all of which were Indian, presenting a rosy

48
ideal of communal and confessional harmony throughout India. This ideal does not

reflect the reality of India’s religious groups after 1947, as Hindu and Muslim

communities suffered from violence during Partition, Muslims experienced what

Gyanendra Pandey calls “routine violence” through denied access to resources and

economic opportunities, and Sikhs formed their own separatist movements at the time of

Jaffrey’s writing. Jaffrey’s cookbooks presented her vision of what India was and what

India should be, a nation of various regions, religions, and cultures living harmoniously

with one another with each adding to what it meant to be India. Certainly not every

Indian felt ill will towards those of another religion, but to gloss over the political

realities of conflict and religious tension is to do further violence to those suffering from

these issues. Jaffrey uses her cookbooks not only to define her own experience but to

define India, a limited version based on regional focus and glossing over political

realities.

While Jaffrey’s sought to be inclusive through Invitation to Indian Cooking and

Indian Cookery, celebrating the regional and religious differences of India and its cuisine,

Pranati Sengupta’s Art of Indian Cuisine serves as a work of exclusion, presenting a

narrow definition of Indian food and nation and rendering India’s diversity invisible.

Published in 1974, Sengupta reveals that “This book is the result of many years spent

away from India, in which I did my own cooking and entertaining without the assistance

of cooks and servants.”146 As with previous cookbooks, Sengupta discusses the Indian

dining customs such as sitting on the floor and eating with hands rather than utensils,

claiming that because Indians like to mix their rice with curry and scoop it up with

chappati (unleavened Indian flatbread), it is more practical and more satisfying. 147

49
Seeking to counteract stereotypes highlighted by colonial cookbooks, Sengupta explains

that though Indian kitchens appear primitive, they are more suitable to the preparation of

Indian dishes. 148 Publishing for a Western audience, Sengupta works to correct Western

assumptions about Indian life and cuisine, offering a new but limited interpretation of

Indian identity after independence.

Sengupta’s articulation of Indian identity is a limited one, rendering Muslims,

Jains, Parsis (a Persian community that moved to Indian to escape religious persecution),

Sikhs, and other religious groups invisible from Indian cuisine despite their importance in

shaping many culinary techniques and dishes. She describes Indian as a land of festivals

and holidays, but follows with a discussion of harvest festivals and Hindu holidays such

as Durga Puja and Diwali without any mention of celebrations of other religions, such as

Eid-al Fitr in Islam. She briefly notes that Indian vegetarians do not eat garlic or onions

without any explanation regarding the Hindu philosophical thought, influenced by Jain

and Buddhist concepts of ahimsa (nonviolence), behind this food restriction. Sengupta

includes recipe for vindaloo, a hot and sour dish traditionally made with pork (though it

can be made with lamb or other meat) developed by Christians in Portuguese Goa,

without any reference to its origin. Similarly, Mughlai dishes like biriyani and korma are

co-opted as Indian cuisine without any deference paid to their Muslim origins. One Parsi

dish makes an appearance, as Sengupta provides a recipe for making a “Parsi Omelette,”

a European style dish rather than an original Parsi creation. Many of the dishes are made

incorrectly or based on Western tastes and assumptions. For example, the author presents

one recipe for dosa, a crepe made from rice and lentils made in South India, served with

shrimp stuffing. While this is a popular dish in Kerala, a coastal southern state in India,

50
Sengupta refers to this dish as simply dosa rather than a specific regional iteration; a

typical dosa is most often served as a vegetarian comfort food. Another dish called

“Qorma Chawal” is referred to as “hot curried rice,” despite the fact that korma refers to

a braising technique with milk, yogurt, or cream, ingredients this recipe does not use.

Sengupta’s Art of Indian Cuisine aspires to define Indian cuisine and identity, but

minimizes or co-opts India’s regional and religious differences to present a “pan-Indian”

cuisine fraught with misconceptions and misunderstandings similar to colonial

cookbooks. Pandey argues that the writing of history and propaganda aided the position

of Hindu elite in society allows a fragment of the population to define itself as the

“mainstream culture; the culture of the majority is in fact a minority parading as a

national entity. 149 Sengupta’s work parallels and assists in this process, reducing India’s

diversity and complexity and presenting a narrow definition of Indian cuisine and

national identity.

Though much of the British Empire achieved independence shortly after World

War II, Hong Kong remained a British colony until the 1997. Thus, Sita Patel’s Easy

Indian Cook-Book published in Hong Kong in 1974 represents the legacy of the British

Empire as well as the presence of the Indian diaspora. In similar fashion to Ammal and

Sengupta, Patel learned to cook when there were no servants, as the household cooks and

maids fled during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong. 150 The book is North Indian in

scope due to her upbringing, but this is not a limitation according to Patel, as she claims,

“The diet of North India is probably the best balanced in the whole country from the

nutritional point of view, as it contains plenty of wheat, meat, milk, vegetables, and

fat.”151 Though she concedes that it is best to cook with ghee, she notes that modern

51
science recommends that vegetable oil, mustard oil, and corn oil are a more suitable

cooking medium, following the push for modernity advocated by the Indian Council of

Medical Research. 152 Patel’s cookbook displays influence from her new environment, as

she instructs the reader to make a vegetable curry with Chinese kale and gives recipes for

brussels sprouts, an ingredient that can be used but is uncommon in Indian cuisine. Some

recipes sacrifice authenticity in the name of convenience for the reader, as she calls for

chicken to be deep fried to make tandoori chicken rather than grilled on a skewer in a

tandoor (clay oven). Just as Savitiri Chowdhary’s cookbook served as an articulation and

adaptation of Indian identity through migration to the United Kingdom, Patel’s Easy

Indian Cook-Book represents a navigation of Indian identity in Hong Kong, adapting to

new surroundings and defining Indian identity to a foreign audience. Her cookbook

illustrates the vestiges of British colonial rule as well as growing Indian influence

throughout the world.

As with Jaffrey, executive chef and culinary instructor Julie Sahni offers cuisine

as a uniting factor for India’s diverse population, stating in her 1980 publication of

Classic Indian Cooking that people of varied race, color, and religion are bound together

in “Indian Culture.”153 Sahni asserts that each regional style is to be appreciated and

holds a distinct place in the culinary world, noting religious and regional differences

rather than ignoring them. 154 Whereas Jaffrey labeled her work as a “maneuver of self-

defense,” Sahni’s acts as a method of legitimizing India and its cuisine to the world.

During her introductory discussion of Indian spices, a common starting point among

Indian cookbooks, she mentions the importance of spices in Ayurvedic medicine, tying

Indian cuisine and the modern nation to the wisdom of an ancient civilization. Further

52
seeking to make the presence of Indian cooking known and celebrated on the world stage,

she remarks in her chapter devoted to dal recipes,

“Glancing though cookbooks by well-known authors, I am constantly surprised

and disappointed when I come to the section on legumes. They mention German
split pea soup, French cassoulet, Egyptian hummus, Mexican refried beans, Cuban
black bean soup. They even talk about the soybean and its use in Chinese
cooking. But there is no mention of legumes in Indian cooking.”155
With thinly veiled anger, she declares, “Indians knew the versatility of legumes before

many civilizations even heard of them.”156 Moreover, Sahni insists that India is the best

at cooking rice and agrees with Jaffrey regarding the deliciousness of morel mushrooms.

Her interpretation of India’s cuisine focuses on the Mughals; which she considers the

most popular and refined regional style of cooking.157 This focus not only owes to her

culinary training, but presents India’s most recognized, sophisticated, and ostentatious

food to compare and compete with other celebrated global cuisines. Feeling that Indian

cuisine was long ignored or misunderstood, Sahni aspires to legitimize Indian cuisine and

improve India’s presence among conceptions of international nations.

In her attempt to legitimize Indian cuisine, to illustrate an identity of greatness

proclaim India’s glory in a postcolonial era, Sahni concentrates on traditional, familiar

Mughlai cooking, though she does mention changes to India’s culinary landscape. She

recognizes that Indian meals are more frequently served with appetizers rather than all

courses being served at once due to India’s rising middle class adopting Western dining

customs. Many Indians began substituting ghee for unsaturated cooking oils due to health

concerns and took to shallow frying rather than deep frying, borrowing Western cooking

techniques. Additionally, Sahni makes false or misleading claims about certain

ingredients or culinary norms. She discusses the importance of paneer, claiming that it

53
serves as protein for Brahmins, Jains, and Buddhists.158 Yet, this ignores the that history

of paneer is up for debate, as some argue it owes its origin to the Portuguese, lifting

Hindu taboos on milk curdling, while others attest to its Indian origin. 159 In a recipe for

ande ki kari (eggs cooked in a spice tomato sauce), she claims that Indians take eggs very

seriously, pampering them the same way they do meat and preparing and serving them

with equal care.160 Egg dishes are a case study of European influence on Indian cuisine

rather than traditional Indian fare. Furthermore, her excerpt regarding the treatment of

eggs ignores debates regarding serving eggs to India’s poor due to vegetarian tradition of

India’s elite. 161 Sahni’s Classic Indian Cooking represents an attempt to legitimize

Indian cuisine; she hopes her cookbook places the Indian food on the same celebrated

level French and Italian cuisine in culinary canon, paralleling India’s desire to be

recognized as a global power.

Sahni discusses the cuisine of South India, ignored in her previous book, in

Classic Vegetarian and Grain Cooking, published in 1985. Vegetarianism, she explains,

“came naturally and effortlessly to someone living in India,” as the vegetarian meals

Sahni grew up with were always “tasty, wholesome, and downright satisfying.”162 Only

upon moving to the West did Sahni become nonvegetarian, a similar experience for many

Indian immigrants and a shift away from Indian roots, a source of anxiety among devout

Hindus. Sahni’s states that her book adds variety and adventurous flavors to a Western

vegetarian diet, adding that regardless of motives, “there is certainly a great deal from a

vegetarian cuisine that has existed for four thousand years.”163 Ancient Hindu Brahmins,

she argues, recognized the importance of modern nutrition for thousands of centuries,

[…] guiding them to enjoy meals that not only taste good but automatically fulfill the

54
body’s nutritional requirements.”164 She praises the inventiveness and skill of Indian

cooks, insisting that the Brahmin women of Maharashtra are the most creative of all

vegetarians.165 Vegetables, in the hands of skilled Indian cooks, cease to be dreaded

accompaniments put on the plate due to necessity; if children in the West ate Indian

spinach, there would be no need for Popeye. 166 As with her previous book, Sahni aims to

legitimize and demonstrate the expertise utility of Indian flavors in the modern world.

As with Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery, Sahni includes numerous personal anecdotes,

the most prominent one recounting her sister’s wedding precession from North India to

the south by train. Her story culminates with their arrival at a South Indian temple,

witnessing the priests chanting hymns while stirring rice, breaking coconuts, and

preparing for the wedding feast.167 Sahni’s cookbook is the first to explicitly address

caste since colonial condemnation of low caste servants and Veerasawmy’s discussion on

the prevalence of yogurt in Indian diet. Long considered a black mark on Indian society

and a point of condemnation within the international community, cookbook authors

simply ignored caste, possibly because it was not the focus of their book, but likely to

avoid the negative connotations it elicits. Sahni’s mention of caste is brief and

celebratory, as she is in awe of the Brahmin priests preparing the large amount of food,

harkening back to the cooking methods of the ancient past. As with religious tension,

caste is still an issue in the present, a focus of discrimination and outright violence.

Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking serves to promote and Indian tradition as

well as allowing Sahni to preserve childhood memories growing up in an Indian

vegetarian household. Sahni believes the world can learn from an ancient cuisine;

55
Westerners can add new techniques and flavors to their culinary repertoire, while Indians

far from home can recapture childhood by recreating classic Indian cuisine.

Increased immigration from the subcontinent to the United States combined with

the popularity and success of the cookbooks by Madhur Jaffrey and Julie Sahni resulted

in a greater curiosity regarding Indian cuisine. To answer this call, Sudha Koul published

Curries Without Worries: An Introduction to Indian Cuisine in 1983, endeavoring to

“make some contribution toward satisfy growing curiosity of American housewives about

Indian cuisine.”168 She contends that even in the 1980s, most Americans had “[…] a

vague impression of an entrée called curry containing mysterious ingredients and is too

hot,” demonstrating the power of colonial stereotypes. 169 Repeating Jaffrey’s

condemnation of curry power, Koul informs the reader that using a single combination of

spices was unthinkable, the equivalent of using the same blend of herbs for all Western

dishes.170 Unlike Sengupta and Sahni, who concentrated on cuisine of the elite, Koul

believes that the demand for Indian food overstepped the confines of gourmet clubs;

people wanted to prepare day to day food, the Indian equivalent of steak and potatoes or

spaghetti and meatballs. 171 Like Rama Rau, Jaffrey, and Sahni, Koul’s cookbook serves

as an attempt at helping the West meet and understand the East, the point of convergence

being the enjoyment of Indian cuisine.172

While Koul promises to cover daily Indian food in her cookbook, the recipes are

her individual interpretation of commonplace Indian cuisine. She includes instructions

for preparing lamb biriyani, tandoori chicken, and shahi korma, dishes representative of

Mughlai cuisine she deems far richer than everyday fare. 173 Tandoori chicken, arguably

the most popular Indian entrée, is an invented tradition rather than a traditional dish, as it

56
only became mainstream in the 1950s through the emerging Indian restaurant industry. 174

Shahi korma is the refers to the braising technique used to create the dish and is literally

named for the Mughal emperor, a far cry from typical Indian cuisine. Though dal and

vegetables make up a greater proportion of the Indian diet even for nonvegetarians, the

chapter on nonvegetarian recipes is larger than the vegetarian. Koul admits that some

recipes have been adjusted to adapt to a new time and place, exemplified by substituting

ground turkey for ground lamb and making vada, a vegetarian appetizer, out of corn flour

rather than lentils. Ultimately, Koul’s book is her interpretation of food and family, as

dishes created, influenced, or perfected by family members have their names attached to

the recipes. Curries Without Worries represents Koul’s attempt to articulate Indian food

and identity while maintaining connections to her family. Like any cookbook, it is an

encapsulation of the author’s interpretation of society and culture, adapting Indian food

culture to an American setting.

Increased contact and curiosity with Indian food and culture led to the flourishing

of Indian restaurants, an industry that makes approximately five billion dollars annually,

throughout the United Kingdom and the United States.175 “Going for a curry” became a

weekly trip for many in the British Isles, and restaurants allowed new immigrants,

typically from present day Pakistan and Bangladesh, to carve a niche and gain a foothold

in an unfamiliar land.176 After World War II, Sylethi immigrants from Bangladesh

bought bombed out fish and chips shops, gave them a fresh lick of paint, and tacked curry

onto the old menus, placing Indian food in the mind and heart of British working and

middle class life. 177 Uma Narayan argues that acceptance of Indian food in the West

demonstrates “the acceptable face of multiculturalism,” temporarily consuming the

57
Orient to define one’s own identity, while Elizabeth Buettner claims that curry serves as a

vehicle for denying, masking, and articulating racism. 178 Nevertheless, Indian restaurants

serve as the most familiar setting for consumption of Indian food in the West, with The

Bombay Palace Cookbook by Stendahl accentuating the popularity of Indian food as

interpreted by Indian restaurants.

Published in 1985, The Bombay Palace Cookbook describes the cuisine served

throughout the restaurant chain as based on ancient Mughal recipes to which chefs have

added a modern flavor, refining them to suit the Western palate, illustrating a fusion of

tradition and modernity in the name of commercialism. 179 Though Mughlai cooking

makes up the majority of the cookbook and restaurant menu, Stendahl includes examples

of vegetarian and nonvegetarian cooking based on the different food styles of the vast

Indian subcontinent.180 Reiterating previous cookbooks, the book explains that though

Indian cuisine requires spices, as cooking without spice is not Indian cooking, North

Indian cuisine is suave rather than fiery, once again prescribing every spice mixture as a

garam masala.181 Contradicting Madhur Jaffrey’s declaration that it was impossible to

find good Indian food in restaurants, Stendahl states,

“Unfortunately, poor Western cooks have given Indian cuisine a bad name by
making a flour-thick white sauce sprinkled with a spoonful of desiccated ‘curry
powder’ (which too often is little more than weakly spiced ground turmeric). The
resulting gluey mess has neither flavor nor interest.”182
Contrarily, Stendhal maintains that a béchamel sauce combined with a good curry

powder makes an effective dish, still promoting an oversimplification of Indian cuisine

based on Western misunderstandings. The Bombay Palace version of dosa serves as

another misrepresentation, as it lists rice flour and wheat flour as the key ingredients

rather than the combination of rice and lentils in a traditional dosa. Recipes for “Stir

58
Fried Curry” and “Curried Tuna,” a recipe which the author admits is “a long way from

Indian cooking,” exhibit adapting Indian flavors to other gastronomic styles. 183

Ultimately, The Bombay Palace cookbook serves as a commercial for the Bombay Palace

restaurant, indicated by mentioning the restaurant’s “famous luncheon buffets” and

claiming it was impossible to make authentic tandoori dishes at home, but one could

certainly enjoy them at restaurant locations. 184 Yet, an Indian restaurant perfectly

illustrates an individual conception of Indian identity, articulating “India” in a

commercialized manner that dominates conceptions of Indian food in the Western

imagination.

While The Bombay Palace Cookbook attempts to encapsulate the entirety of the

restaurant menu and Julie Sahni’s works provide and extensive array of Indian food,

Vijay Madavan’s Cooking the Indian Way, published in 1985, simplifies Indian cuisine to

a small selection of entrées one could use to prepare daily menus. Nowhere, Madavan

declares, do contrasts of geography, climate, and people appear as extreme as in India,

referring to India’s disparity between tropics, mountains, deserts along with diversity

among the population.185 Madavan’s discussion of “the people of India” focuses

extensively on the proposed Aryan invasion, a theory laced with the remnants of the

British Orientalist project and a debate among present day Indian scholars with political

motivations. According to Madavan, Indians in the southern part of the country,

belonging to a dark-skinned ethnic group, descend from the earliest inhabitants of India,

pushed south by the light-skinned invaders as they established their own powerful

empires. 186 This racialization of the Indian population is another vestige of colonial rule,

as ethnographers such as H.H. Risley utilized scientific racism to divide the Indian

59
population in order to more effectively rule over the subcontinent. 187 Additionally, the

Aryan invasion theory is a point of contention in present day Indian politics and

academia, as Hindu nationalist scholars and politicians discredit the theory, itself only the

best possible answer regarding India’s ancient history based on available archaeological

and linguistic evidence rather than an absolute fact, to justify their political agenda. 188

Madavan’s family originally lived in Kerala in South India before settling in Malaysia,

resulting in a South Indian interpretation of the invasion as “light skinned imperialism

from the North.”

Further displaying a South Indian perspective, she attests that North Indian

cuisine changed numerous times due to various invasions, while South India, preserving

more of its early culture, “represents classic Indian cooking at its finest.”189 Despite this,

her cookbook reflects a North Indian menu, with recipes for kebab and yogurt chicken

(murg dahi). The only particularly South Indian dish is a recipe for “pumpkin curry”

translated to sambhar. Rather than a specific dish, sambhar represents a category of

dishes made with lentils and dal eaten over rice; a sambhar made from a specific

vegetable bears a separate name to differentiate it from other dishes. Her recipe for the

pumpkin sambhar calls for brown or red lentils (masoor dal) even though a sambhar is

typically made with yellow pigeon peas (toor dal). Though a comparatively limited

cookbook compared to the works of Jaffrey, Sahni, and others, Madavan’s Cooking the

Indian Way reveals a specific interpretation of India’s identity based on family heritage

and lived experience.

Most cookbooks published after Indian independence strive to define Indian

cuisine through the examining food practices within the subcontinent, with varying

60
degrees of success based on agendas and biases. Rather than a book discussing food

prepared in India, Ismail Merchant’s Indian Cuisine is an interpretation and adaptation of

Indian flavors based on his experience cooking in the United Kingdom and the United

States. Merchant, a film producer and friend of Madhur Jaffrey (an actress before

engaging in culinary writing), sought to recreate in New York City the Indian flavors he

and Jaffrey grew up with.190 Merchant’s experience parallels Jaffrey’s, as both grew up

in urban India (Merchant in Bombay and Jaffrey in Delhi) with servants that cooked for

the family, though he notes that his mother and all six of his sisters were superb cooks. It

was upon leaving India that Merchant took an interest in food and cooking, learning

about French, Italian, and other culinary traditions while living and working in the United

States.191 Despite similar backgrounds, Merchant and Jaffrey achieve their goal of

defining Indian flavors to Americans in different ways. Jaffrey, though limited to Uttar

Pradesh and Delhi, presents recipes for characteristically Indian dishes with new

creations added sparingly to underline the versatility of Indian spices. Though claiming

that his dishes are essentially Indian, many of Merchant’s recipes are not Indian in origin,

but an application of Indian flavors to new dishes, a pragmatic and experimental

approach to cooking. 192 For every traditional dish like rogan josh (a curry of lamb),

dhokla (a Gujarati snack make of fermented chick pea batter), or bhindi masala (okra),

there is a dish like “Broccoli in Garlic-Lemon Butter” made with cumin and chili powder

or “Indian Gazpacho.” Showing little concern with depicting daily Indian fare, Merchant

devotes very little time to recipes with dal, instead concentrating on meat recipes that are

admittedly not examples of traditional Indian cooking. 193 In his review of Ismail

Merchant’s Indian Cuisine, food critic Craig Claiborne remarks that Merchant’s work,

61
“[…] is not national. It does not deal with traditional concepts. And it is not regional. It

is simply one man’s inspired notion of what his native land’s food should taste like.” 194

Merchant’s cookbook is not a representation of Indian national cuisine, but it is an

interpretation and expression of Indian identity, adapting Indian flavors to new

ingredients and dishes as Indians adapt to new places and developments in a rapidly

changing world.

In similar fashion to Merchant’s individual interpretation of Indian cuisine,

Yamuna Devi’s Lord Krishna’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking offers a

unique, individual interpretation of food, religion, and the Indian nation. Yamuna Devi

was born Joan Campanella, but upon meeting A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami, known to his

disciples as Srila Prabhupada, in New York before her sister’s wedding, she became

enchanted with the man, his philosophy, and Indian vegetarian cooking, joining the

International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), commonly referred to as the

“Hare Krishna” movement. Hare Krishna, popular in the 1960s as a segment of Western

counterculture, represents an individual interpretation of India and Hindu religion, as

Srila Prabhupada’s reading of the Bhagavad Gita led to coopting and reworking aspects

of Hinduism, presenting Krishna as the supreme deity in a monotheistic religion. In an

era of social upheaval highlighted by social movements and protest of the Vietnam War,

Hare Krishna provided a vehicle for those dissatisfied with Western politics to latch onto,

an appropriation of agreeable aspects of the East to refute disagreeable aspects of the

West.

Initially feeling “inexorable apathy toward anything spiritual,” Devi cites cooking

with Srila Prabhupada the key event that led her to embrace the Hare Krishna movement.

62
Descended from a family of serious cooks, some of them trained in classical French

cuisine, she considered this experience “the most formative and thrilling of my life.”195

Because of her culinary background, Devi became Srila Prabhupada’s personal cook, and

she made it her life’s work to please the swami through cooking; to earn the favor of Srila

Prabhupada was the equivalent of earning approval from Krishna. 196 Akin to theories of

Brahmin spiritual purity, she informs the reader in her recipe for chappati that Srila

Praphupada knew how to create perfect dough simply feeling the wheat flour, revealing

his holiness through food preparation.197 “Perfection assuredly comes with determined

practice,” Devi explains, whether that be making pooris (fried Indian bread) or living a

spiritual life in the name of Lord Krishna. 198 The stories of travels and experiences

throughout Devi’s cookbook preserves the memory of her swami and keeps the ISKCON

alive, a limited and problematic Western interpretation of India’s identity.

The embrace of the Hare Krishna movement by Western counterculture signifies

an appropriation of Hindu religion and symbols, embracing a sense of ancient wisdom

and timelessness to reject contemporary politics and modernity. Though Devi’s

cookbook is an extensive study of India’s vegetarian cuisine, discussing regional

differences and presenting a wide variety of dishes, it renders India as primordial and

static, ignoring India’s rapid modernization in the late twentieth century to suit the

spiritual needs of ISKCON followers. Devi claims that eighty percent of India’s

population is vegetarian, approximately 600 million people out of an estimated 760

million at the time of publication in 1987, aiming to legitimize vegetarianism by

demonstrating the sheer volume and labeling vegetarians as the majority in the Indian

subcontinent.199 Although the majority of Indians could be considered de facto

63
vegetarians due to the expensive price of meat, K.T. Achaya notes that in 1994 only

twenty five or thirty percent of the Indian population as a whole identified as total

vegetarians; it would be impossible for that many people to completely change dietary

habits in only seven years. 200 Devi later states that the Indians (erroneously referred to as

“Vedic” throughout the book) by and large embrace a diet similar to their ancestors and

that cooking stoves in India changed very little since the ancient past, portraying India as

unchanging despite millennia of societal development. 201 Tradition is certainly a

highlighted factor in Indian cuisine and culture, Indians themselves celebrating the fact

that their culture descends from a society as old if not older than Babylon and Ancient

Greece, but the representation of India as static ignores a history of change and upheaval

and weakens the very culture one is trying to celebrate. Additionally, Devi refers to the

Third Indo-Pakistani War as a skirmish, trivializing the rivalry and conflict between the

two nations.202 Though looking to India seeking and embracing spirituality, Devi’s

cookbook and the Hare Krishna movement demonstrate an imperfect interpretation,

objectifying Indian culture as an icon employed to refute Western modernity.

Nonetheless, it serves as another articulation of identity, defining India through its cuisine

in a limited manner as with other cookbook authors seeking to establish Indian identity in

a postcolonial world.

Rather than being “the end of Indian history,” the period from 1947 to 1990 saw a

contest over interpretations of India’s past present and future. Unlike the colonial or

nationalist cookbooks, there are no uniform voices regarding Indian identity after

independence, as individuals offered unique and specific incarnations of what India was

and what India should be. Some cookbook authors continued to refute Western

64
misconceptions and stereotypes regarding Indian food and culture, while others

consciously or unconsciously perpetuated vestiges of colonialism into the present day.

Rather than a single “Indian culture,” voices after independence reflect various

articulations of a specific Indian identity. Just as the same Indian dish can taste

completely different in two neighboring households, interpretations of Indian identity in

cookbooks vary based on the environment and life experiences of the author. The

conclusion of the nationalist struggle and the achievement of independence resulted in a

nation with an uncertain identity, an identity cookbook authors attempted to interpret

through discussions of Indian cuisine. The complexities of identity only persisted after

economic liberalization in the 1990s, as India dealt with the tensions of tradition and

modernity as well as its status as a rising power in a globalizing world.

65
 CHAPTER V

LIBERALIZATION, GLOBALIZATION, AND THE TENSION OF TRADITION AND

MODERNITY: COOKBOOKS FROM 1990 TO THE PRESENT

“However, while I was researching this book, I came to realize that times have
changed all over the world, even in India, and that many Indian housewives
working outside the home, have had to make the same sort of practical
compromises that women in Europe, in the United States and Australia have had
to make. Nostalgic descriptions of British homes fragrant with the scent of
freshly baked bread and cakes, or of Italian kitchens festooned with sheets of
homemade golden pasta give as false an impression as Indian cookery books full
of descriptions of family servants who spend each day grinding spices for
elaborate dishes. In India today, in households without domestic help, good
traditional food is still prepared, but the more complicated and exotic dishes are
reserved for special occasions.” 203
-Diane Seed, Favorite Indian Food (1990)
In response to economic crisis in 1991 caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union

(India’s ally due to the United States’ backing of Pakistan to establish a sphere of

influence in the Middle East) and a spike in oil prices, India initiated economic

liberalization. This ended many of the self-sufficiency measures supported by Prime

Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to prevent another epoch of Western colonialism, such as high

tariffs and public monopolies. Since the liberalization of India’s economy, India’s GDP

increased from $274.8 billion to approximately $2.84 trillion, ranking seventh in the

world based on nominal GDP and third based on purchasing power parity, making India

one of the preeminent economic powers.204 India has asserted its military strength over

66
the past two decades, as the nation currently has the third largest military defense force

fueled by the world’s sixth highest military expenditure. 205 As a potential world

superpower, India’s identity is a prominent issue not only for deciphering Indian

cookbooks, but for understanding and predicting domestic and international policy.

Indian cookbook production expanded tremendously since 1990, coinciding with

the development of cooking shows for Indian television channels and food blogs,

exemplifying what Tyler Cowen labels as the “Cookbook Theory of Economics,” which

states that countries more advanced economically are more likely to produce cookbooks

found on bookshelves. Cookbooks measure how far these societies moved toward

greater commercialization, large-scale production, and standardization of the production

process.206 The Indian cookbooks of the 1990s display many modern trends, such as

“quick and easy recipes,” greater inclusion of international cuisine, and increased

emphasis on healthy items, all elements of modern culinary fashion. Nevertheless, many

traditional elements remain in Indian cookbooks, allowing readers not only to make

dishes “like their mothers and grandmothers did,” but representing the inherent tension

and resulting hybridity between tradition and modernity. Just as India attempts to define

its identity in a period of growth and uncertainty, cookbook authors offer wide-ranging

interpretations of India’s cuisine and identity.

While authors of Indian descent continued to articulate their interpretations of

identity in the postcolonial era, authors of European descent simultaneously offered their

conceptions of late twentieth century India. Jennifer Brennan’s Curries and Bugles: A

Memoir and Cookbook of the British Raj and Diane Seed’s Favorite Indian Food reveal

divergent outlooks regarding the identity of the Indian subcontinent, a far cry from the

67
logic of colonialism and Ornamentalism embedded in British cookbooks published in the

late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though both published in 1990, these

cookbooks present Indian cuisine in different fashions based on the author’s experiences

living in India. Brennan, an author of Thai and East Asian cookbooks as well, deems her

work an intensely personal book due to being a child and grandchild of the British Raj;

the cookbook celebrates the food, people, and places of the British Raj “to recapture and

record what that long-ago life was like: how colonialists and empire builders lived.”207

Brennan’s cookbook drips of nostalgia for the British Empire. As she notes that the world

for children in India was a wonderful place she shall never forget, with food serving as

the catalyst for so many events integral to her upbringing and childhood memories.208

Similar to cookbooks by Anglo-Indians, many of the recipes are ornate European fare

such as “Potato Crepes of Lobster with Salmon Roe Crème” and “Glazed Duck and

Stuffed Apples in Calvados,” but Brennan also includes Indian style dishes favored by

the Raj such as mulligatawny soup and saag ghosh (lamb or mutton cooked with greens,

typically spinach). Though not seeking to enforce colonial rule or completely

subjugating Indians as inherently inferior to British civility, colonial stereotypes do

persist in Brennan’s work. After surviving a bout of dysentery as a child, Brennan’s

family considered curries bad for her due to the notion that “all curries were too spicy.”

Furthermore, Brennan states that she ate many versions of stuffed eggplant, believing that

the cook forgot what he made last time and concocted a new filling for each occasion, a

comment displaying the low regard for the memory of cooks dating back to Dainty

Dishes for Indian Tables in 1879.209 Brennan’s Curries and Bugles reveals the continued

nostalgia for the British Empire despite decolonization occurring decades earlier. Just as

68
the James Bond films celebrated the mystique of British colonialism and superiority,

Curries and Bugles keeps the memory of the British Raj alive into the late twentieth

century. India as a colony remains a part of the British imagination, colonialism still

serving as an integral part of postcolonial identity articulation.

In contrast to this longing for carefree childhood days in British Empire, Diane

Seed’s Favorite Indian Food reflects a cosmopolitan interpretation on the relationship

between India and Europe. Seed’s first contact with Indian came through literature and

teaching English to Indian students in Italy, the students and their parents freely indulging

her passion for the subcontinent.210 Seed regards Indian food as flexible; rather than

serving Indian food by itself for a dinner party, she recommends serving European food

as an accompaniment for a main course of Parsi fish parcels (patrani machi), resulting in

an international food experience. 211 Instead of claiming that her cookbook represents the

perfect representation of Indian cuisine, Seed remarks that culinary information is often

turned upside down or contradicted based on regional differences, exemplified through

her collection of prawn curries of different color based on the local variation of spices.212

Though attempting to situate and legitimize Indian cuisine among the food ways of the

West, there are some adjustments to recipes based on more commonly found ingredients,

such as making a South Indian vegetarian dish with mung beans and Swiss chard (the

latter not used in Indian cuisine). Additionally, Seed focusing on the “heady excesses” of

Wajid Ali Shah in a chicken dish bearing his namesake, akin to the stereotype of Oriental

decadence discussed in Edward Said’s Orientalism.213 Just as lived experiences dictated

cookbook content of Anglo-Indians in the British Raj, Indian nationalists, and post-

independence authors of Indian descent, Seed’s status as a world traveler rather than a

69
citizen of the British Raj or the Indian nation states results in her book adopting a

cosmopolitan stance on Indian cuisine. Rather than defending the colonizer or colonized,

Seed places Indian food in tandem with European fare in an interconnected world.

Favorite Indian Food serves as a compromise between East and West as well as tradition

and modernity, as Seed stresses that through modern technology, such as electric coffee

grinders for spices and food processors to make dough for bread, “Indian food is within

reach of everyone.”214 Compared to Brennan’s nostalgia for the British Raj, Seed’s

interpretation of Indian cuisine places India within a modernizing and globalizing world.

Dhershini Govin Winodan’s Indian Food Today further highlights India’s

connectedness with the rest of the world, presenting classic Indian dishes as well as

entrées with a definite influence by other Asian flavors.215 As with Sita Patel’s Easy

Indian Cook-Book adapting Indian food to a Hong Kong setting, Winodan’s dishes are

created by the influence of neighbors in cosmopolitan Singapore, a multicultural trading

port with a significant Indian population. 216 Dishes such as “Chili Chicken with Oyster

Sauce,” a combination of Chinese and Indian flavors, “Garoupa in Spicy Black Sauce,”

an Indo-Thai fusion, and a version of “Fish Head Curry” with tamarind, eggplant, and

okra demonstrate the acculturation of food customs between numerous different cultures.

Along with internationalism, Winodan’s work urges the reader to take full advantage of

modern help, acknowledging that the greatest obstacle to cooking is the time it takes. 217

Kitchen appliances such as pressure cookers, choppers, blenders, deep-fryers,

microwaves, and even rice cookers along with one dish meals make cooking significantly

easier for a new generation of women (and men, she notes).218 Advocating use of

modern technology in cooking marks a shift away from the instructions of nationalist

70
writers like I.R. Dey, who urged her readers that only using clay pots and Indian tools in

the traditional manner resulted in authentic cuisine; the use of metal utensils represented

the corrupted cooking of the colonizers and their cooks poorly imitating true Indian

flavor. Winodan admits that even the best blender cannot quite achieve the same results

as a stone or mortar and pestle for grinding spices, but for the sake of convenience, she

favors using a blender.219 Indian Food Today, the title alone indicating a newer

representation of Indian cuisine, mirrors the inherent tension between tradition and

modernity in contemporary India, a rapidly modernizing country yearning for world

power while simultaneously looking to preserve its traditions and prevent succumbing to

the values of the West. This internal conflict of identity is one of the biggest influences

on India’s domestic policy and thus international politics into the twenty-first century.

Explicitly focusing on the convergence of tradition and modernity is Julie Sahni’s

1990 publication of Mogul Microwave. Like Classic Indian Cooking, this book

specifically focuses on the cooking of the Mughal aristocracy, though she insists that this

is because of the large percentage of braised dishes in Mughlai cuisine, as this cooking

style is extremely successful when adapted to the microwave. 220 Sahni, a classically

trained chef and self-proclaimed “guardian of Old World traditions” informs her readers

that she had to “come out of the closet” to use and embrace the microwave as a cooking

tool rather than a method to heat leftover food.221 She, like many people in the culinary

world, viewed microwave cooking as scientific, precise, and inhumane, fearing

displacement of traditional methods of cooking by dispassionate machines.222 Yet, after

cooking in a microwave every day for almost two years, Sahni argues, “The microwave is

neither a savior nor devil, neither miracle nor monster.; it is a tool for cooking food.”223

71
Microwaves did not threaten conventional methods of cooking, it worked in tandem with

other kitchen appliances and cooking techniques under the control and supervision of the

cook. Rather than a binary between tradition and modernity, Sahni’s Mogul Microwave

attempts to bridge the divide between the two opposing concepts, to adapt traditional

Indian cooking to modern technology.

Sahni’s cookbook provides recipes for many of the most popular dishes in

Mughlai cuisine and Indian restaurants, such as lamb rogan josh, malai kofta (meat or

vegetable balls in a tomato cream sauce), matar paneer (peas with paneer cheese), and

tandoori chicken. Most of the recipes claim to take less than thirty minutes to make,

allowing busy cooks to make ostentatious Mughal food quickly and efficiently,

perpetuating Victorian norms of domesticity regarding economy in the household. Sahni

explains that not only can a microwave produce classic Mughlai cuisine, some dishes turn

out better cooked in a microwave than through traditional methods. For example, making

traditional papad (crisp lentil wafers) is an elaborate process that involves a great deal of

time, cooking oil for frying, mess, and a certain loss of flavor as spices leach into the

oil. 224 By contrast, papad made in the microwave cook in about thirty seconds or less,

retaining flavor without the unhealthy fat and mess. Dal, notorious for taking a long time

to cook, sticking to cookware, and boiling over without notice, benefits greatly from

microwave cooking, which combines pressure cooker speed with stove top texture

control.225 As with Classic Indian Cooking, this cookbook features very little

representation of South Indian dishes, and there are few explicit mentions of Sikh and

Jain cuisine. Rather than defending traditional methods of cooking and shunning the use

of technology, Sahni embraces microwave cooking, embracing modernity as a method to

72
preserve and expedite classic Mughlai cuisine. Unlike other cookbook authors and

contemporary Indian politicians, Sahni does not see a strict binary between tradition and

modernity, where embracing one results in the loss of the other. Microwaves and modern

kitchen appliances serve as methods to preserve traditional cuisine, adapting traditional

aspects of Indian identity to modern conceptions of the nation and its food.

Similarly seeking to rework traditional Indian cooking into a contemporary

setting, Neelam Batra’s Indian Vegetarian, published in 1994, reiterates themes of

tradition, modernity, and legitimacy established in earlier cookbooks published after

Indian independence. Batra intends to depart from more traditionally focused cookbooks

a blend the best of Indian and American cultures “[…] to create a flavorful marriage

between the abundance of the New World with the treasures of the Old.”226 Recipes such

as “Cherry Tomatoes Filled with Yellow Mung Beans” and potato skins stuffed with

ricotta as a paneer replacement spiced with cumin and garam masala exemplify the

attempt to unite culinary styles. Batra notes the evolution of American cooking from

“meat and potatoes” dishes of the 1950s to the gradual acceptance of pasta dishes and

stir-fry meals; these dishes became so familiar to Americans that the labels of “Italian” of

“Chinese” are no longer affixed.227 It is Batra’s goal that Indian cooking, which is heart

healthy, earth friendly, modern, easy, and fun, be as readily accepted into the American

culinary lexicon, an ornament to American cuisine and identity. 228 Batra argues that

Indian vegetarian cooking serves great utility due to its health benefits, as a combination

of dal, rice, and vegetables results in a nutritionally sound meal. Seeking to move past

“exotic and mysterious visions” of Indian food in the American imagination, Batra aims

to merge the binaries of East and West as well as tradition and modernity, adapting

73
traditional Indian cooking to a modern American audience with the hope that Americans

recognize the benefits and pleasures of Indian vegetarian cuisine. 229

Though Batra’s work claims to bridge divisions between Eastern and Western

cuisine, The Indian Vegetarian paradoxically results in a new binary, in which Eastern

cuisines are superior to their counterparts in the West. In contrast to Indians, Batra

believes Americans condition their taste buds to a very narrow definition of seasoning,

i.e. the addition of too much salt; because of this, Americans need to change their

traditional cooking and consumption habits. 230 Batra finds teaching Americans about

Indian spices ironic, as the quest to obtain Indian spices led to the discovery of the New

World and the beginning of European imperialism. 231 Furthermore, she contends that

while adding lemon or lime slices to cold water is chic in Western countries, the

adventurous nature of the Indian cook prompts frequent and imaginative uses of all sorts

of herbs and spices to continually surprise, quench, and refresh thirsty palates. 232 It is

Indian cuisine in Batra’s opinion that demonstrates creativity, skill, and produces diverse

and delicious flavors when compared to those from the West. Additionally, Batra

presents Indian culture and vegetarianism as timeless, deeming India as ageless and

seamless in the passing of time.233 As with Yamuna Devi’s vegetarian cookbook, Batra

ties Indian vegetarianism to ancient wisdom, and claims that there are few outside

influences on Indian culture. This is a false statement that ignores acculturation from

numerous sources and presents India as static and unchanging in a way that does not

match the reality of India’s history, akin to the Orientalist project by European

imperialists to render “the other” as fixed and unchanging to aid and justify colonialism.

In her quest to demonstrate the efficacy of traditional Indian vegetarianism in the present

74
day, to legitimize Indian cuisine to an American audience in the same manner as Sahni,

The Indian Vegetarian creates a binary between superior cooking in the East and bland

cooking of the West. The conflict between Eastern and Western identities plays a

significant role in Indian politics and decisions, with the anxiety of India “losing its

Eastern identity” in the name of industrialization a significant question in the postcolonial

era. In particular, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) seeks to refute the West entirely,

embracing Hinduism and tradition while simultaneously looking to guide India to

prominence as an international superpower. Neelam Batra’s vegetarian cookbook

represents her interpretation of Indian identity to an American audience, essentializing

Indian cuisine and the nation as inherently superior to its counterparts in the West.

The interplay between tradition and modernity, using modern cooking methods to

produce traditional food with no alleged loss of authenticity, serves as the crucial theme

of Step by Step Indian Recipes: Tandoori, part of a series of cookbooks published by

Padmini Mehta in 1995. Unlike the ponderous tomes produced by Julie Sahni and

Yamuna Devi (with varying degrees of success in that regard), Mehta’s cookbook is only

sixty-four pages and focuses on a specific style of cooking rather than a regional cuisine

or an all-encompassing representation of Indian food. The desire for specialized

cookbooks in the 1980s and 1990s resulted in the ascendance of niche cookbooks,

smaller and more accessible texts relating to one ingredient, cooking method, or even

medical issue.234 Though tandoori cooking specifically refers to the oven used for

cooking, a tandoor, Mehta’s recipes call for a conventional oven to cook meat, bread, or

veggies if one does not have a personal tandoor. Most of the recipes require high heat

but thus entail reduced cooking times, the most time-consuming portion of food

75
preparation being non-labor-intensive marinating, making traditional tandoori cooking

accessible to those with a busy schedule. Beloved Indian food, “a cuisine as ancient as its

civilization,”235 is achievable with clear instruction and proper kitchen equipment, uniting

traditional cuisine with modern technology and desire for efficiency. Yet, as is the case

with other niche cookbooks, a book devoted tandoori style cooking represents a limited

interpretation of Indian cuisine. Though archaeological evidence suggests that Indus

River Valley Civilizations utilized clay ovens, tandoori food is another branch of

Mughlai cooking used exclusively in North India. Moreover, tandoori cookery, most

notably tandoori chicken, was made popular by Indian restaurants beginning in the 1950s

rather than representing a traditional and timeless entity in Indian cuisine. Mehta’s Step

by Step Indian Cooking: Tandoori offers another reflection of Indian identity, an attempt

to reach a compromise between the concepts of tradition and modernity in the same

manner as the Indian nation.

While Madhur Jaffrey and Julie Sahni became renowned culinary authors in the

1970s and 1980s, Monisha Bharadwaj published numerous cookbooks in the 1990s and

2000s, becoming a prominent voice in defining India’s cuisine, and therefore the nation’s

identity. Like Sahni, Bharadwaj is a professional chef, teaches cooking classes, and uses

her cookbooks to legitimize Indian cuisine to a Western audience. Bharadwaj’s Indian

Spice Kitchen, published in 1996, discusses Indian history and cuisine through spices,

linking recipes based on spices rather than separating dishes based on courses or

vegetarian and nonvegetarian chapters. Bharadwaj describes each spice, its appearance

and taste, how to store it, and culinary and medicinal benefits, such as mustard for

arthritic pain or licorice for sore throat. Continuing the trend started by Sahni’s Classic

76
Indian Cooking, Bharadwaj discusses Ayurveda, ancient Indian holistic medicine,

regarding it as a viable, efficient way of life tried and tested in India for three thousand

years. 236 Faith in the healing powers of Ayurveda, which Bharadwaj argues is so

embedded in Indian society that many accept its health guidelines as natural customs, 237

reveals another attempt to tie Indian cuisine to ancient wisdom and combine tradition

with modern living. Tradition, Bharadwaj contends, is the common thread linking India’s

regional cultures, even in the hustle and bustle of the present.238

Recognizing the diversity of Indian food customs, Bharadwaj attempts to present

all of India’s regional cuisines, analyzing a different state or region based on popular

lentil and by actively including South Indian recipes for the reader that may only know of

the more generally accepted North Indian dishes.239 Bharadwaj’s emphasis on regional

differences in cuisine and culture signifies an articulation of identity that celebrates

India’s diversity and complexity rather than presenting cookery of one region as the

singular representation of Indian identity. Bharadwaj seeks a unified Indian cuisine

through highlighting diversity and tradition; she declares that each community in India

has its own way of cooking, but insists each method is greatly enjoyed by the rest.240

Spices serve as the fundamental building block for Indian dishes, a common link between

culinary practices of North, East, South, and West. By dedicating an entire cookbook to

spics rather than dishes, Bharadwaj offers an interpretation of a united India strengthened

by its diversity just as Jaffrey did in the 1980s. Though this ideal does not always reflect

reality, with sectarian tension and “routine violence” still problems in twenty-first century

India, Indian Spice Kitchen offers an interpretation of what India should be as it struggles

to define its identity domestically and internationally.

77
 Building off her celebrity developed in the 1970s and 1980s through various

cookbooks and BBC television program, Madhur Jaffrey continued to publish cookbooks

in the 1990s and 2000s. Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick and Easy Indian Cooking published in

1996 provides readers with seventy recipes easily prepared in under half an hour, the

perfect solution for busy cooks.241 As with her previous works, she informs the reader

that her book discusses instant, marvelous Indian food that one could not find in

restaurants and reiterates that while Indian food is not necessarily hot, shying away from

spices is akin to asking an Indian to stop being an Indian. 242 Jaffrey suggests several time

saving measures to assist the busy cook of the modern day, such as buying naan readily

available at the grocery store, using French mustard rather than grinding mustard in

vinegar, and utilizing a pressure cooker that reduces cooking time and allows the cook to

read, sleep, or have a drink during meal preparation. 243 One surprising short-cut is her

advice to use “curry powder” in her recipe for “curried tuna.” More than twenty years

after her original publication, Jaffrey seems to accept curry, which she initially

considered degrading to Indian cuisine, as part of the Indian culinary lexicon. She

suggests using Bolst’s hot curry powder, but later states that the cook can use whichever

he or she likes, contradicting her assertion in 1973 that to use any curry power neglects

the distinctiveness of Indian cuisine, making everything taste the same. 244 Collen Taylor

Sen argues that another cookbook, Jaffrey’s publication of Ultimate Curry Bible in 2003,

represents the ubiquitous presence of “curry” not only as integral to Indian cuisine, but as

a global food.245 Jaffrey’s acknowledgement of “curry” as part of Indian food culture and

utilization of modern technology parallel the tension and trade-off between tradition and

modernity; while labeling an Indian dish “curry” does injustice to the cuisine according

78
to Jaffrey, perpetuating colonial misunderstandings of India, for expedience and

familiarity, curry and curry powder along with modern cooking methods prove useful.

As India initiated economic liberalization, it invited greater foreign investment,

expanding India’s contact with the rest of the world in an era defined by globalization.

Indian cookbooks display a growing sense of internationalism, best represented by Julie

Sahni’s Savoring Spices and Herbs (1996) and Madhur Jaffrey’s Step-by-Step Cookery

(2001). As with her previous works, Sahni begins with an anecdote from her travels,

describing the intoxicating aroma of cloves as her boat approached an oncoming island.

However, the island she describes is not Sri Lanka, or Indonesia, but Zanzibar, an

archipelago off the coast of Tanzania. Sahni explains that spices link Zanzibar, Canton,

Kashmir, and Trinidad though many miles separate these regions; though far apart they

are so similar in the practice of culinary art.246 Sahni describes various spices, noting

their origin and flavor pattern, along with providing recipes for spice mixtures.

Interestingly, she includes a recipe for curry powder, defining it as an old spice blend of

Indian origin, introduced and made famous by early English traders.247 A good curry

powder, Sahni explains, is a valuable seasoning to add to the flavor possibilities of a dish;

used creatively it can flavor condiments, salad dressings, vegetables, rice, and entrees.248

Aside from this spice recipe, the closest thing to a distinctly Indian dish is her recipe for

“tarragon scallops kedgeree,” an iteration that is more Anglo-Indian in nature.249 Rather

than defining India’s identity alone, Sahni presents India within a world system linked by

spices despite similarities and differences. Not just an insular nation-state focused on

self-sufficiency, India is part of a global system economically and gastronomically.

79
 Jaffrey’s Step-by-Step Cookery also places India within a global system, only her

focus is on India’s culinary links to the “Far East.” Rather than connected by spices,

though spices certainly do play a role throughout Asian cuisine, Jaffrey considers Asian

countries bound by grains, either wheat or rice. 250 Far Eastern cooking depends on the

magical mingling and balancing of flavors, a kaleidoscope of inventive permutations

based on ingredients used and taste combinations. 251 Though discussing the cuisine of

various Asian countries, Jaffrey classifies recipes by ingredient rather than country of

origin in an attempt to produce a balanced book. In fact, Indian recipes are least

represented in an attempt to celebrate the cuisine of Malaysia, Thailand, Korea, and

Vietnam among others. The Indian recipes Jaffrey includes are among the most popular

dishes, such as tandoori chicken, samosas, pulaos and biriyanis, and South Indian dosa.

Though her book includes recipes from throughout the Far East and discusses Chinese

influence on the regional and national cuisines of its neighbors, Jaffrey does not spend

any time on recipes that are specifically Chinese. This is certainly not due to a lack of

knowledge regarding Chinese cuisine, as Jaffrey explains Chinese presence in the history

and cuisine of the Far East in great detail. Just as India expanded economically and

militarily since the 1990s, China rose to become the second largest economy and military

in the world. Competition for resources to fuel industrialization and border disputes since

the 1960s make Sino-Indian relations tenuous at best despite attempts to improve

diplomatic and economic ties. Jaffrey’s inclusion of the Far East while excluding China

parallels food customs within India, as Thai food is becoming more popular while

Chinese cuisine is declining in popularity. 252 Just as Julie Sahni’s Savoring Spices and

Herbs links India to Africa, the Caribbean, and throughout Asia, Jaffrey’s Step-by-Step

80
Cookery acknowledges India’s links throughout Asia, while rendering the cuisine of

China silent due to economic and military tension.

Liberalization and globalization led to greater entry of Western products, most

notably Western fast food and soft drinks considered trendy and fashionable among

India’s population. 253 While the diet of India’s poor has not deviated from daily grains

and pulses, India’s middle and upper class have greater accessibility to a Western diet

and all of the health detriments it entails. 254 Indian cookbook authors recognized these

developments and produced health conscious cookbooks for those wishing to eat Indian

cuisine while managing their health. Both Shehzad Husain and Monisha Bharadwaj

produced cookbooks presenting healthier methods of preparing Indian food, but do so in

vastly different manners. Husain’s Healthy Indian Cooking assures the reader that “new

Indian cooking” is lighter, lower in fat and calories, and makes effective use of grains,

pulses, and vegetables.255 Traditional cooking, she argues, is healthy by its very nature,

using spices and aromatics such as ginger and turmeric for flavoring, both of which are

low in calories yet offer a boost in flavor. 256 Nevertheless, Husain insists that her recipes

represent the richness of a two thousand year old tradition adapted to modern trends,

replacing ghee with vegetable or olive oil, the latter not common Indian cuisine. 257 Each

recipe provides caloric measurements along with amount of fat, cholesterol, protein,

carbohydrates, and vitamins and minerals if present, abiding by modern norms of

nutrition. Husain’s attempts to adapt the tradition of India and filter it to her audience,

presenting dishes based on a modern view of health.

Monisha Bharadwaj’s Healthy Indian Cooking (2003) also offers readers healthy

interpretations of Indian cuisine. She dispels the belief that Indian cuisine is unhealthy

81
and fattening due to conceptions of rich and ostentatious “curries,” explaining that Indian

food is a high-energy cuisine that if prepared correctly will lead to a fit, healthy, and

vibrant life.258 Ill health, stress, anger and burnout are exacerbated by unhealthy eating in

a fast-paced age according to Bharadwaj, problems lessened by both healthy eating and

peaceful surroundings.259 Though focusing on health and providing some nutritional

information, Bharadwaj’s cookbook does not provide calorie values or fat content for

recipes. Instead, she relates the dishes back to Ayurvedic medicine, believing it enhances

health, a general sense of well-being, and longevity. 260 Rather than relying on modern

nutritional information, Bharadwaj claims that the cure to the ills of modern life lies in

India’s tradition. She provides a glossary of Ayurvedic terms along with common

ingredients, and color codes every recipe based on its corresponding chakra energy.

Ayurvedic wisdom is both practical and accessible, and coupled with common sense, it

allows readers to progress toward a lifestyle of good health and vitality. 261 Though many

cookbooks since the 1990s stress modern, fashionable cooking, using technology in

concert with trendy ingredients, Indian tradition does not disappear entirely from the

pages of food texts. Neither tradition nor modernity completely eclipses the other, they

constantly define and redefine the other, resulting in something new. Though not dealing

with colonialism, Bharadwaj’s cookbook exemplifies Homi Bhabha’s concept of

hybridity; the traced of the disavowed opposite is not repressed but repeated as a

mutation, a hybrid between tradition and modernity. 262 Though increasingly becoming a

“modern” nation state due to economic growth, India’s tradition plays a pivotal role in

identity construction in both cookbooks and politics. Bharadwaj’s cookbook represents a

82
benign attempt to improve well-being, yet tradition serves as a powerful weapon based on

political agendas.

Just as Bharadwaj’s work utilizes tradition to solve problems of everyday life,

Maithily Jagannathan’s South Indian Hindu Festivals and Tradition, published in 2005,

attempts to guide readers on a demarcated path for practicing life in a way that nourishes

physical, psychological, and spiritual needs. 263 The book acts as a handbook for Hindu

customs, traditions, and festivals, written specifically for the younger generation,

particularly those outside of India feeling distance from their family and traditional

roots.264 Jagannathan’s book is not only a cookbook, providing vegetarian recipes served

on Hindu holidays, but includes a calendar of major festivals and a section describing

“the journey of the spiritual self,” a central tenet to Hindu philosophical thought. 265 In

similar fashion to Bharadwaj’s discussion of Ayurvedic wisdom, Jagannathan cites Hindu

tradition as a solution for the ills of modern life as well as a cure for those feeling

homesick or nostalgic for their childhood. She explains that consumption of food along

with fasting and vrathams, oaths to God, represents an exercise of control of mind and

spirit; one must ignore their animalistic needs in order to reach a higher plane, a better

life closer to God.266 Jagannathan’s recipes are completely vegetarian based on orthodox

Hindu dietary restrictions based on religious purity, recipes avoid fish, eggs, and even

garlic and onions. Hindu Festivals and Traditions not only speaks to nostalgia for

childhood in India, but parallels religious revival in India due to the political ascendency

of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The India National Congress Party (INC),

represented by nationalist heroes Gandhi and Nehru, dominated Indian politics

immediately after Indian Independence; all of India’s Prime Ministers were members of

83
the INC apart from a BJP interlude in the late 1970s. The BJP, a political party built on

Hindu nationalism rather than secularism267 of the INC, gained political clout since the

late 1990s and currently enjoys power in Indian government. The BJP considers India a

Hindu nation needing to defend itself from alien threats, threats constituted by Muslims

and Christians. Political conflict between the INC and BJP is specifically a contest over

India’s identity, a debate to determine whether India is a multicultural nation state, the

melting pot of the East, celebrated by Jaffrey and Sahni, or a Hindu nation needing to

defend itself from alien threats both internal and external. With India further enmeshed

in a global system coupled with rising economic and military power, India’s identity not

only matters for the population of India, but for the entire world.

Bharadwaj’s Indian Vegetarian Cooking, published in 2006, continues the theme

of adapting tradition to the present day. As with her earlier work, Indian Spice Kitchen,

Bharadwaj’s vegetarian cookbook highlights regional cuisines and differences, a united

India through the linking of vegetarian cooking. Bharadwaj deems “the ability to absorb

all influences, turn them around, and take ownership of new styles that make Indian

cooking so fascinating and vibrant and a constantly evolving melee.”268 She groups her

book into chapters based on India’s regions, discussing vegetarian entrees, breads, sides,

desserts, and beverages representative of states in the North, South, East, and West. Her

section on East India is the smallest in the book and only discusses Bengali cooking,

signifying the continued preference for meat and fish (the vegetables of the sea) in

Bengal. As with Yamuna Devi, Bharadwaj incorrectly states the number of vegetarians

in India, claiming that eighty-five percent of Indians are vegetarian due to religion, effort

to accentuate vegetarianism in the subcontinent and legitimize vegetarian cooking on the

84
world stage.269 Though dal, rice, and vegetables constitute the majority of calories

consumed, Indian society consists more of de facto vegetarians rather than those that

identify as not eating meat. Vegetarian food, according to Bharadwaj, results in feeling

happier, healthier, and more energetic after a meal, with an array of dishes to excite the

palate.270

Bharadwaj insists that eating a vegetarian diet results in improved health and

mood, while simultaneously fulfilling spiritual obligations and benefitting the

environment. With animals becoming extinct, heightened air and water pollution, and

inefficient use of land for breeding livestock animals, Bharadwaj calls for people to adopt

a vegetarian diet to save the planet.271 She refers to the ecological benefits of

vegetarianism throughout the book, such as the need to consume carotene to protect

against air pollution and using banana leaves as biodegradable dining ware, touching on

India’s role in international environmental policy. The need to reduce the effects of

climate change is one of the most important international questions of the twenty-first

century, and India plays a crucial part in the success or failure of greenhouse gas

reduction limits. Along with China, India is hesitant to embrace reduced emissions

standards as an industrial leader and potential global superpower. Reducing greenhouse

gas emissions, in the minds of Indian politicians, could cripple India’s destiny as a world

leader. Moreover, there is resentment by both China and India regarding the fact that it is

the Western world, beneficiaries of industrialization in the nineteenth century largely

through economic exploitation of colonies in Africa and Asia, instructing Asian powers

to risk their economic promise, their ability to surpass Western power. Bharadwaj’s

cookbook seeks to unify tradition and modernity, but also views vegetarianism as an

85
ecological salvation, her interpretation India as a leader in environmental policy. This

ideal does not match Indian policy and its stances on climate change regulation,

underscoring disconnect between nation and society as well as the anxieties of world

power.

Tradition, modernity, and globalization converge in Sanjeev Kapoor’s How to

Cook Indian, published in 2011. Dubbed “the Rachel Ray of India,” Kapoor achieved

fame as a television chef, his cooking show “Khana Khazana” remaining a fixture on

Indian television since 1993 instructing Indian housewives as well as Indians abroad in

the art of Indian cookery. By watching his program on Sunday mornings, one could learn

to make food “just like mom used to make” along with Western muffins and chocolate

mousse with ease.272 Due to his father’s constant travel for work, Kapoor experienced

India’s different regional cuisines throughout his childhood, and he strives to include

these regional differences throughout his cookbook. Kapoor deems Indian cuisine one of

the richest and most diverse; it is healthy and complex, but also easier to prepare than one

might expect.273 As with Sahni, Batra, and Bharadwaj, Kapoor considers Indian cuisine

the best guide to vegetarian cooking, with India possessing an advanced repertoire of

vegetarian dishes.274 Though Kapoor aims to celebrate traditional Indian cooking, he

recognizes the impact of modern technology and globalization and references these

developments. In his recipe for palak paneer (spinach with paneer cheese), he states that

modern technology has made seasonal items like spinach (a winter green in India)

available year-round.275 His inclusion of Indo-Mexican and Indo-Italian recipes signify

acculturation of food customs and the interconnectedness of globalization. "The new

India is changing so fast that I have trouble keeping up with what today’s audiences want

86
to eat," Kapoor states; "I know that they want to cook much more than what their families

cooked. They want to try international cuisines, at restaurants and also at home." 276

Dishes such as “Masala Fried Squid” demonstrate an attempt to embrace modern food

trends and create food others want to make. However, Kapoor’s text ultimately views

globalization with reservation, as he notes that he is not sure whether batata vada (fried

potato dumplings) or McDonald’s hamburgers sell more in Mumbai; while he would

choose the Indian snack, he fears a loss of Indian tradition to Western fast food and

globalization.277 Moreover, he prefers samosas to French fries and khakra (Gujrati

flatbread) to potato chips, a personal preference but also a defense of Indian food as

compared to its Western counterpart. Though presenting hybridized dishes and

acknowledging the effects of globalization, Kapoor remains small-town India’s domestic

god, his show and recipes targeted at domestic housewives still responsible for most

household cooking throughout the Indian subcontinent.278 Tradition, modernity, and

globalization are not mutually exclusive concepts, they interact and define one another,

resulting in new interpretations and attitudes toward Indian cuisine and nation.

Rising economic and military power led to increased clout within the international

community, and India remains an important voice for international policy. Thus, India’s

articulation of its own identity, influenced by globalization and the attempt to balance

tradition and modernity, is a crucial issue not only within the subcontinent, but abroad.

Cookbook authors since 1990 have sought to define Indian identity based on the

interaction between these concepts, offering differing interpretations as varied as

contemporary political opinions in the subcontinent of what India was and what India

should be. Cookbooks parallel the tension and tribulations of maintaining traditional

87
values while simultaneously adjusting to industrialization and globalization. The

anxieties produced by India’s rising power status domestically and internationally make

India’s definition of identity one of the most pressing concerns of the twenty first

century. Conflict with Pakistan, distribution of wealth among a huge population, and

international climate change policy hinge on India’s articulation of its own identity.

88
 CHAPTER VI

CONCLUSION

In “How to Make a National Cuisine,” Arjun Appadurai argued that India lacked

a national cuisine and stated that cookbooks produced by Indian authors would rectify

this, codifying a national cuisine and therefore a national identity (1988). This paper

demonstrates that identity construction through cookbooks occurred long before

Appadurai’s article, revealing individual articulations of Indian identity based on

ideologies of colonialism, nationalism, and postcolonialism while attempting to balance

tradition and modernity. Anglo-Indian authors used their cookbooks to represent India as

a colony of the British Empire, needing to be ordered and improved to suit British

standards of civility and modernity. Cookbooks produced by Victorian women do not

exclude Indian cuisine despite the rhetoric and practice of racial exclusion; their food

texts include Indian dishes as a distinct aspect of British identity. In their political

agitation against the injustices of imperial rule, Indian nationalists used cookbooks and

food culture to define a distinctly Indian identity. This process continued even after

Indian independence in 1947, as Indians throughout the Indian diaspora used recipes as a

“maneuver of self-defense,” demonstrating “real Indian food” and legitimizing their

presence in a postcolonial world. Finally, the period of economic liberalization

beginning in the 1990s saw an explosion of Indian cookbooks and engagement with

89
media, offering various interpretations of India and its cuisine as it related to modern

trends in healthy cuisine and “quick and easy meals,” while simultaneously attempting to

maintain Indian tradition and define Indian identity into the twenty-first century.

A parable prominent in Buddhist tradition but dating back to Rig Veda describes a

group of blind men touch an elephant for the first time, describing the elephant based on

their partial experience. The man touching the leg remarks that the object is a tree, while

the man feeling the tusks claims that it is a sword, partial interpretations of the elephant’s

identity based on individual preconceptions and experiences. Indian cookbooks follow

the same pattern, describing Indian identity based on upbringing, lived experience, and

agendas for writing. Some experienced India as the foreign other, others as the

motherland, and others still attempting the recreate Indian culture in a new setting abroad.

History is the study of human beings; it is individual articulations of Indian identity

analyzed together that defines the Indian subcontinent. Thus, cookbooks are a vital tool to

understand the history of India as interpreted by Indians as well as outsiders, noting how

they represent India’s food and landscape, what is included, and excluded. Identity

politics represented in cookbooks parallel historical and contemporary developments in

India, as the contest over India’s identity affects India’s minority groups just as much as

the international community. How cookbook authors interpret India in future works

parallel developments in the Indian subcontinent. The process of “making a national

cuisine” is unending, determined by the ideologies of cookbook authors past, present, and

future.

90
1
Jopi Nyman, “Cultural Contact and the Contemporary Culinary Memoir: Home, Memory, and Identity in

Madhur Jaffrey and Diana Abu-Jaber,” Auto/Biography Studies, Volume 24, Number 2 (Winter 2009): 282,

Accessed March 26, 2016, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/abs/summary/v024/24.2.nyman.html.

2
Robin Cook, “Robin Cook’s Chicken Tikka Masala Speech Excerpts,” The Guardian, April 19, 2001,

Accessed April 4, 2016, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/apr/19/race.britishidentity

3
Though the British developed tea plantations in India during the colonial period, tea remained a drink

consumed by the British and Anglicized Indians rather than the entire population. Tea did not “become

Indian” until 1950s, when the India Tea Board created a massive advertising campaign to popularize tea in

North India. Combined with milk, previously the most popular drink in North India, and spices, tea in this

form is called chai. See Colleen Taylor Sen, Food Culture in India, (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood

Press, 2004), 26.

4
Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food, (New York: The Free Press,

2002), 140.
5
Arjun Appadurai, “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary India,” Comparative

Studies in Society and History, Volume 30, Number 1 (January 1998): 11, Accessed January 7 2015,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/179020.
6
Wyvern, Culinary Jottings for Madras, Facsimile of 1885 fifth edition published by Higginbotham of

Madras, (Devon, Great Britain: Prospect Books, 1994), 286.

7
Janet Theophano, Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They Wrote, (New

York: Palgrave Publishing, 2002), 8.

8
Eliza Acton, “Modern Cookery in All its Branches (1845),” in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, edited by

Elizabeth Langland, (Toronto: Broadview Editions, 2010), 282.

9
Robert Riddell, Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book, 5th Ed., (Madras: The Press of the Society

for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1860), v.

10
Ibid.
11
Mary A. Procinda, “Feeding the Imperial Appetite: Imperial Knowledge and Anglo-Indian Discourse,”

Journal of Women’s History, Volume 15, Number 2 (Summer 2003), 123, Accessed March 24, 2016,

91
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_womens_history/v015/15.2pr

ocida.html.
12
Riddell, Domestic Economy, 7.
13
Alan R. Beals, Gopalpur: A South Indian Village, (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1962), 35.
14
Riddell, Domestic Economy, 13.
15
Ibid, 373.
16
Colleen Taylor Sen, Curry: A Global History, (London: Reaktion Books, 2009), 9.
17
Ibid.
18
Edward Said, Orientalism, (New York: Vintage Books, 1978); Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and its Forms

of Knowledge: The British in India, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

19
Sen, Food Culture in India, 24.
20
Wyvern, Culinary Jottings, 17.
21
Ibid, 15.
22
Ibid, 27.
23
Ibid, 89.
24
Ibid, 171.
25
K.T. Achaya, A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 130.
26
Jayanta Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter: The Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in Colonial

Bengal,” in Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia, eds. Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi

Srinivas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 75.

27
Wyvern, Culinary Jottings, 287.
28
Ibid¸ 496.
29
Antoinette M. Burton, “White Woman’s Burden British Feminists and the Indian Woman, 1865–1915."

Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 13, no. 4, (1990), Accessed March 12, 2016,

https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(90)90027-U.
30
Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, 7th Ed., (London:

William Heinemann, 1909), 7.

31
Ibid, 9.

92
32
Anonymous, Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables, 2nd Ed., (Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 1881), iii.
33
Ibid, iv.
34
Lizzie Collingham, Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors,” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006),

112.
35
Jennifer Brennan, Curries and Bugles: A Memoir and a Cookbook of the British Raj, (New York:

HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), 250.

36
Anon., Dainty Dishes, i.
37
Steel, Indian Housekeeper, vii.
38
Ibid, 3.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid, 6.
41
Ibid, 37.
42
Ibid, 105.
43
Ibid, 240.
44
Ibid, 244.
45
Ibid, 245. For a discussion on purity and ritual in Indian cooking, see Charles Malamoud, Cooking the

World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient India, trans. David White, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996).
46
Steel, Indian Housekeeper, 280.
47
Ibid, 369.
48
Carrie Cutcrewe, The Memsahibs Book of Cookery, 3rd Ed., (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co, 1903), x.
49
Ibid, 49.
50
Ibid, 359.
51
Ibid, 554.
52
Eliza Action, Modern Cookery in all its Branches, 2nd Ed., (Philadelphia: Blanchard and Lea, 1858), xxii.
53
I.R. Dey, Indian Cooking and Confectionery, (Calcutta, Naba Gouranga Press, 1942), 3.
54
Isabella Beeton, “Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861),” in Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell,

edited by Elizabeth Langland, (Toronto: Broadview Editions, 2010), 283.

55
Acton, “Modern Cookery,” in Cranford, 281.

93
56
Susan Zlotnick, “Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England,” Frontiers: A

Journal of Women’s Studies, Volume 16, Number 2/3, Gender, Nations, and Nationalisms (1996),

Accessed March 25, 2016,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/3346803.
57
Daria Wingreen Mason, “Smithson’s Cookbook: English Curry,” Smithsonian Libraries Unbound (blog),

May 22, 2012, Accessed April 5, 2016, https://blog.library.si.edu/2012/05/smithsons-cookbook-english-

curry/#.VwWohfkrLIU
58
Acton, “Modern Cookery,” in Cranford, 281.
59
Eliza Action, Modern Cookery, xix.
60
Acton, “Modern Cookery,” in “Domesticating Imperialism,” 60.
61
Acton, Modern Cookery, 221.
62
Ibid.
63
Brennan, Curries and Bugles, 24.
64
Acton, Modern Cookery, 222.
65
Isabella Beeton, “Book of Household Management (1861),” Project Gutenburg eBook, November 19,

2003, Accessed May 29, 2017, http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10136/pg10136.html

66
Beeton, “Book of Household Management (1861),” in Curry: A Global History, 41.
67
Beeton, “Book of Household Management,” in The Raj at Table by David Burton, (London: Faber and

Faber, 1993), 118.

68
Cynthia Bertelsen, “Mrs. Beeton Goes to India,” Gherkins and Tomatoes (blog), August 25, 2009,

Accessed February 13, 2016, http://gherkinstomatoes.com/2009/08/25/12528/.

69
Zlotnick, “Domesticating Imperialism,” 52.
70
Ibid, 60.
71
David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 2001), xix.

72
Burton, Raj at Table, 7.
73
Steel, Indian Housekeeper, 369.
74
A Lady Resident, The Englishwoman in India, (London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1864), viii.

94
75
Collingham, Curry, 162.
76
Lady Resident, Englishwoman in India, 45.
77
Ibid, 57.
78
Ibid, 115.
79
Ibid, 199.
80
Brennan, Curries and Bugles, 287.
81
Ibid.
82
Collingham, Curry, 153.
83
E.P. Veerasawmy, Indian Cookery for use in All Countries, 5th Ed. (London: Arco Publishers Limited,

1955), 2.
84
Collingham, Curry, 153.
85
Veerasawmy, Indian Cookery, 2.
86
Ibid, 16.
87
Ibid, 34.
88
Ibid, 21.
89
Ibid, 123.
90
Ibid, 3.
91
Angma Jhala, “Cosmopolitan Kitchens: Cooking for Princely Zenanas in Late Colonial India,” in

Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia, eds. Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 51.

92
Nicholas B. Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India, (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2001); David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire, (Oxford:

Oxford University Press, 2001).

93
Jhala, “Cosmopolitan Kitchens,” 67.
94
Ibid, 54.
95
Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter,” 78.

95
96
Rachel Berger, “Between Digestion and Desire: Genealogies of Food in Nationalist North India,”

Modern Asian Studies, FirstView Article (February 2013), Accessed June 24, 2016,

http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0026749X11000850, 4.
97
Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter,” 80.
98
Ibid, 81.
99
Berger, “Digestion and Desire,” 7.
100
Sengupta, “Nation on a Platter,” 81.
101
Berger, “Digestion and Desire,” 10.
102
Dey, Cooking and Confectionery, 1.
103
Ibid.
104
Ibid, 3.
105
Ibid, 6.
106
Sen, Food Culture in India, 81.
107
Dey, Cooking and Confectionery, 20.
108
Sen, Food Culture in India, 70.
109
Julie Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking, (New York: William and Morrow Company, 1980), 2
110
Gyanendra Pandey, Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories, (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford

University Press, 2006), 17.

111
Srimathi S. Meenakshi Ammal, Cook and See (Samaithu Par): Part One, trans. A.V. Padma, (Madras: S.

Meenakshi Ammal Publications, 1968), iii.

112
Ibid, iv.
113
Ibid, iii.
114
Theophano, Eat my Words, 2.
115
Uma Narayan, “Eating Cultures: Incorporation, Identity, and Indian Food,” in Dislocating Cultures:

Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, (New York: Routledge, 1997), 175.
116
Shakun Banfield, “A Memory of my Mother Savitri Devi Chowdhary, 1919-1996,” Landon and District

Community Archive, August 7, 2012, Accessed May 8, 2016,

http://www.laindonhistory.org.uk/page_id__528.aspx.

96
117
Savitri Chowdhary, Indian Cooking, (London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1954), 1.
118
Ibid, 11.
119
Ibid, 13.
120
Indian Cuisine, Issued on behalf of the Department of Tourism, Ministry of Transport and

Communications, (New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1960), 5.

121
Ibid, 12.
122
Swaran Pasricha and L.M. Rebello, Some Common Indian Recipes and their Nutritive Value,

(Hyderabad: Nutritional Research Laboratories, 1964), ix.

123
Sen, Food Culture in India, xviii.
124
Achaya, Dictionary of Indian Food, 108.
125
Antoinette Burton, The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau, (Durham: Duke University Press,

2007), 4.
126
Santha Rama Rau, Recipes: The Cooking of India, (New York: Time-Life Books, 1969), 2.
127
Ibid, 4.
128
Burton, Postcolonial Careers, 18.
129
Ibid, 5.
130
Ibid, 120.
131
Ibid, 112.
132
Santha Rama Rau to Bill Goolrick, October 29, 1968, in Antoinette Burton, The Postcolonial Careers of

Santha Rama Rau, (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 134.

133
Rama Rau, Cooking of India, 5.
134
Madhur Jaffrey, An Invitation to Indian Cooking, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publishing, 1973), 3.
135
Ibid.
136
Ibid, 5.
137
Ibid, 6.
138
Ibid, 2.
139
Ibid, 13.
140
Ibid, 79.

97
141
Ibid, 104.
142
Sonia Faleiro, “Saving the Cows, Starving the Children,” New York Times, June 26, 2015, Accessed

March 29, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/opinion/sunday/saving-the-cows-starving-the-

children.html?_r=0.
143
Jaffrey, Invitation to Indian Cooking, 265.
144
Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, (New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 2007).

145
Madhur Jaffrey, Indian Cookery, (London: BBC Books, 1982), 8.
146
Pranati Sengupta, The Art of Indian Cuisine, (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1974), x.
147
Ibid, 6.
148
Ibid, 7.
149
Pandey, Routine Violence, 18.
150
Sita Patel, Sita Patel’s Easy Indian Cook-Book, (Hong Kong: Business Communications, 1976), 1.
151
Ibid, 3.
152
Ibid.
153
Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking, xv.
154
Ibid, xviii.
155
Ibid, 324.
156
Ibid.
157
Ibid, xvi.
158
Ibid, 52.
159
Colleen Taylor Sen, Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India, (London: Reaktion Books, 2015),

211.
160
Sahni, Classic Indian Cooking, 233.
161
Rhitu Chatterjee, "Egg War: Why India's Vegetarian Elite Are Accused of Keeping Kids Hungry," NPR,

July 14, 2015, Accessed April 28, 2016, http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/14/422592127/egg-

wars-india-s-vegetarian-elite-are-accused-of-keeping-kids-hungry.

98
162
Julie Sahni, Classic Vegetarian and Grain Cooking, (New York: William and Morrow Company, 1985),

19.
163
Ibid, 24.
164
Ibid, 119.
165
Ibid, 187.
166
Ibid, 304.
167
Ibid, 18.
168
Sudha Koul, Curries Without Worries: An Introduction to Indian Cuisine, (Pennington, NJ: Cashmir,

1989), ix.
169
Ibid, 6.
170
Ibid, 17.
171
Ibid, 7.
172
Ibid, 20.
173
Ibid, 14.
174
Sen, Food Culture in India, 72.
175
Ibid, 136.
176
Collingham, Curry, 218.
177
Ibid, 223.
178
Narayan, Eating Cultures, 184; Elizabeth Buettner, “Going for an Indian: South Asian Restaurants and

the Limits of Multiculturalism in Britain,”

The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 80, No. 4, A Special Issue on Metropole and Colony (December

2008), Accessed February 4, 2016, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/591113, 901

179
Stendahl, The Bombay Palace Cookbook: A Treasury of Indian Delights Adapted for the American

Kitchen, (New York: Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1985), 3.

180
Ibid, 5.
181
Ibid, 8.
182
Ibid, 192.
183
Ibid, 204.

99
184
Ibid, 109.
185
Vijay Madavan, Cooking the Indian Way, (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company, 1985), 7.
186
Ibid.
187
H. H. Risley, "The Study of Ethnology in India." The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great

Britain and Ireland 20 (1891), Accessed June 29, 2017. doi:10.2307/2842267.

188
For a more extensive discussion of this, see Edwin Bryant and Laurie Patton, eds., The Indo-Aryan

Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian History, (Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2004).
189
Madavan, Cooking the Indian Way, 9.
190
Ismail Merchant, Ismail Merchant’s Indian Cuisine, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 5.
191
Ibid, 4.
192
Ibid, vii.
193
Ibid, 105.
194
Craig Claiborne, “Food; Currying Flavor,” New York Times, August 31, 1986, Accessed June 29, 2017,

http://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/31/magazine/food-currying-flavor.html?pagewanted=all.
195
Yamuna Devi, Lord Krishna’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking, (New York: Bala Books,

1987), 171.
196
Ibid, 353.
197
Ibid, 103.
198
Ibid, 137.
199
Ibid, xii
200
K.T. Achaya, Indian Food: A Historical Companion, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 57.
201
Devi, Lord Krishna’s Cuisine, 259.
202
Ibid, 378.
203
Diane Seed, Favorite Indian Food, (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1990), 9.
204
“World Domestic Outlook Database, October 2015,” International Monetary Fund, October 2015,

Accessed May 6, 2016,

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/02/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=71&pr.y=10&sy=2014&ey=

100
2016&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=534&s=NGDPD%2CNGDPDPC%2CPPPGDP%2C

PPPPC&grp=0&a=
205
“The Military Balance: The Annual Assessment of Global Military Capabilities and Defense

Economics,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, February 9, 2016, Accessed May 6, 2016,

https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/military%20balance/issues/the-military-balance-2016-d6c9
206
Tyler Cowen, “The Cookbook Theory of Economics,” Foreign Policy, June 24, 2013, Accessed March

25, 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/24/the-cookbook-theory-of-economics/.

207
Brennan, Curries and Bugles, 1.
208
Ibid, 235.
209
Ibid, 159.
210
Seed, Favorite Indian Food, 6.
211
Ibid, 62.
212
Ibid, 17.
213
Ibid, 70.
214
Ibid, 9.
215
Dhershini Govin Winodan, Indian Food Today, (Singapore: Landmark Books, 1990), i.
216
Ibid, ii.
217
Ibid, i.
218
Ibid.
219
Ibid, xi.
220
Julie Sahni, Mogul Microwave: Cooking Indian Food the Modern Way, (New York: William Morrow

and Company, 1990), vii.

221
Ibid, ix.
222
Ibid, xvi.
223
Ibid, xiii.
224
Ibid, 2.
225
Ibid, 279.
226
Neelam Batra, The Indian Vegetarian, (New York: Macmillin Publishing Company, 1994). 5.

101
227
Ibid, 4.
228
Ibid, 3.
229
Ibid, 1.
230
Ibid, 161.
231
Ibid, 12.
232
Ibid, 32.
233
Ibid, 41.
234
Sandra Sherman, Invention of the Modern Cookbook, (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press, 2010),

196.
235
Padmini Mehta, Step by Step Indian Recipes: Tandoori, (New Delhi: Lustre Press, 1995), back cover.
236
Monisha Bharadwaj, The Indian Spice Kitchen: Essential Ingredients and Over 200 Authentic Recipes,

(New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 14.

237
Ibid.
238
Ibid, 15.
239
Ibid.
240
Ibid, 230.
241
Madhur Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick and Easy Indian Cooking, (Vancouver: Raincoast Books,

1996), 1.
242
Ibid, 6.
243
Ibid, 33.
244
Ibid, 63.
245
Sen, Curry, 10.
246
Julie Sahni, Savoring Spices and Herbs: Recipe Secrets of Flavor, Aroma, and Color, (New York:

William Morrow and Company, 1996), xi.

247
Ibid, 56.
248
Ibid.
249
Ibid, 201.

102
250
Madhur Jaffrey, Madhur Jaffrey’s Step-by Step Cooking: Over 150 Dishes from India and the Far East,

including Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 8.
251
Ibid, 9.
252
Sen, Food Culture in India, 133.
253
Narayan, “Eating Cultures,” 169.
254
Sen, Feasts and Fasts, 274.
255
Shehzad Husain, Healthy Indian Cooking, (New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1997), i.
256
Ibid, 6.
257
Ibid, 6.
258
Monisha Bharadwaj, Healthy Indian Cooking: Over 100 Recipes for Vitality and Wellness¸ (London:

Carlton Books, 2003), 6.

259
Ibid.
260
Ibid.
261
Ibid, 12.
262
Homi Bhabha, Location of Culture, (New York: Routledge, 1991), 111.
263
Maithily Jagannathan, South Indian Hindu Festivals and Traditions, (New Delhi: Abhinav Publications,

2005), 11.
264
Ibid, 14.
265
Ibid, 13.
266
Ibid, 51.
267
Secularism referring to greater tolerance of religion, not an absence of religion entirely.
268
Monisha Bharadwaj, India’s Vegetarian Cooking, (London: Kyle Books, 2006), 8.
269
Ibid.
270
Ibid, 6.
271
Ibid, 14.
272
Miranda Kennedy, “The Top Chef for Indian Housewives,” Foreign Policy, March 29, 2010, Accessed

July 3, 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/03/29/the-top-chef-for-indias-real-housewives/

103
273
Sanjeev Kapoor, How to Cook Indian: More than 5000 Classic Recipes for the Modern Kitchen, (New

York: Stewart, Tarbori & Chang, 2001), 7.

274
Ibid, 228.
275
Ibid, 299.
276
Kennedy, “Top Chef for Indian Housewives,” n.p.
277
Kapoor, How to Cook Indian, 100.
278
Kennedy, ‘Top Chef for Indian Housewives,” n.p.

104
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

“The Military Balance: The Annual Assessment of Global Military Capabilities and
Defense Economics.” International Institute for Strategic Studies, February 9, 2016.
Accessed May 6, 2016.
https://www.iiss.org/en/publications/military%20balance/issues/the-military-balance-
2016-d6c9

“World Domestic Outlook Database, October 2015.” International Monetary Fund,

October 2015. Accessed May 6, 2016.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2015/02/weodata/weorept.aspx?pr.x=71&pr.y=
10&sy=2014&ey=2016&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=534&s=NGDPD
%2CNGDPDPC%2CPPPGDP%2CPPPPC&grp=0&a=.

Achaya, K.T. A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998.

Achaya, K.T. Indian Food: A Historical Companion. Delhi: Oxford University Press,
1994.

Action, Eliza. Modern Cookery in all its Branches. 2nd Ed. Philadelphia: Blanchard and
Lea, 1858.

Ammal, Srimathi S. Meenakshi. Cook and See (Samaithu Par): Part One. Translated by.
A.V. Padma. Madras: S. Meenakshi Ammal Publications, 1968.

Appadurai, Arjun. “How to Make a National Cuisine: Cookbooks in Contemporary

India.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Volume 30, Number 1 (January
1998): 3-24. Accessed January 7 2015. http://www.jstor.org/stable/179020.

Banfield, Shakun. “A Memory of my Mother Savitri Devi Chowdhary, 1919-1996.”

Landon and District Community Archive, August 7, 2012. Accessed May 8, 2016.
http://www.laindonhistory.org.uk/page_id__528.aspx.

Batra, Neelam. The Indian Vegetarian. New York: Macmillin Publishing Company,
1994.

105
Beals, Alan R. Gopalpur: A South Indian Village. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and
Winston, 1962.

Beeton, Isabella. “Book of Household Management (1861).” Project Gutenburg eBook,

November 19, 2003. Accessed May 29, 2017.
http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/10136/pg10136.html.

Berger, Rachel. “Between Digestion and Desire: Genealogies of Food in Nationalist

North India.” Modern Asian Studies, FirstView Article (February 2013): 1622-1643.
Accessed June 24, 2016. http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0026749X11000850.

Bertelsen, Cynthia. “Mrs. Beeton Goes to India.” Gherkins and Tomatoes (blog),
August 25, 2009. Accessed February 13, 2016.
http://gherkinstomatoes.com/2009/08/25/12528/.

Bhabha, Homi. Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Bharadwaj, Monisha. Healthy Indian Cooking: Over 100 Recipes for Vitality and
Wellness¸ London: Carlton Books, 2003.

Bharadwaj, Monisha. India’s Vegetarian Cooking. London: Kyle Books, 2006.

Bharadwaj, Monisha. The Indian Spice Kitchen: Essential Ingredients and Over 200
Authentic Recipes. New York: Penguin Books, 1996.

Brennan, Jennifer. Curries and Bugles: A Memoir and a Cookbook of the British Raj.
New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990.

Bryant, Edwin and Laurie Patton, Eds. The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and
Inference in Indian History. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2004.

Buettner, Elizabeth. “Going for an Indian: South Asian Restaurants and the Limits of
Multiculturalism in Britain.” The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 80, No. 4, A Special
Issue on Metropole and Colony (December 2008): 865-901. Accessed February 4, 2016.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/591113.

Burton, Antoinette M. “White Woman’s Burden British Feminists and the Indian
Woman, 1865–1915." Women's Studies International Forum, vol. 13, no. 4, (1990): 295-
308. Accessed March 12, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1016/0277-5395(90)90027-U.

Burton, Antoinette. The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2007.

Burton, David. The Raj at Table. London: Faber and Faber, 1993.

106
Cannadine, David. Ornamentalism: How the British Saw Their Empire. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2001.

Chatterjee, Rhitu. "Egg War: Why India's Vegetarian Elite Are Accused of Keeping Kids
Hungry." NPR, July 14, 2015. Accessed April 28, 2016.
http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/07/14/422592127/egg-wars-india-s-vegetarian-
elite-are-accused-of-keeping-kids-hungry.

Chowdhary, Savitri. Indian Cooking. London: Andre Deutsch Limited, 1954.

Claiborne, Craig. “Food; Currying Flavor.” New York Times, August 31, 1986.
Accessed June 29, 2017. http://www.nytimes.com/1986/08/31/magazine/food-currying-
flavor.html?pagewanted=all.

Cohn, Bernard. Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985.

Collingham, Lizzie. Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2006.

Cook, Robin. “Robin Cook’s Chicken Tikka Masala Speech Excerpts.” The Guardian,
April 19, 2001. Accessed April 4, 2016.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/apr/19/race.britishidentity.

Cowen, Tyler. “The Cookbook Theory of Economics,” Foreign Policy, June 24, 2013.
Accessed March 25, 2016, http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/06/24/the-cookbook-theory-of-
economics/.

Cutcrewe, Carrie. The Memsahibs Book of Cookery. 3rd Ed. Calcutta: Thacker, Spink
and Co, 1903.

Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables. 2nd Ed. Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 1881.

Devi, Yamuna. Lord Krishna’s Cuisine: The Art of Indian Vegetarian Cooking. New
York: Bala Books, 1987.

Dey, I.R. Indian Cooking and Confectionery. Calcutta, Naba Gouranga Press, 1942.

Dirks, Nicholas B. Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Faleiro, Sonia. “Saving the Cows, Starving the Children.” New York Times, June 26,
2015. Accessed March 29, 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/opinion/sunday/saving-the-cows-starving-the-
children.html?_r=0.

107
Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. New York:
The Free Press, 2002.

Gaskell, Elizabeth. Cranford. Edited by Elizabeth Langland. Toronto: Broadview

Editions, 2010.

Husain, Shehzad. Healthy Indian Cooking. New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang,
1997.

Indian Cuisine. Issued on behalf of the Department of Tourism, Ministry of Transport

and Communications. New Delhi: Government of India Press, 1960.

Jaffrey, Madhur. An Invitation to Indian Cooking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf

Publishing, 1973.

Jaffrey, Madhur. Indian Cookery. London: BBC Books, 1982.

Jaffrey, Madhur. Madhur Jaffrey’s Quick and Easy Indian Cooking. Vancouver:
Raincoast Books, 1996.

Jaffrey, Madhur. Madhur Jaffrey’s Step-by Step Cooking: Over 150 Dishes from India
and the Far East, including Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. New York:
HarperCollins, 2001.

Jagannathan, Maithily. South Indian Hindu Festivals and Traditions. New Delhi:
Abhinav Publications, 2005.

Jhala, Angma. “Cosmopolitan Kitchens: Cooking for Princely Zenanas in Late Colonial
India.” In Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia, edited by Krishnendu
Ray and Tulasi Srinivas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Kapoor, Sanjeev. How to Cook Indian: More than 5000 Classic Recipes for the Modern
Kitchen. New York: Stewart, Tarbori & Chang, 2001.

Kennedy, Miranda. “The Top Chef for Indian Housewives.” Foreign Policy, March 29,
2010. Accessed July 3, 2017. https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/03/29/the-top-chef-for-
indias-real-housewives/

Khan, Yasmin. The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2007.

Koul, Sudha. Curries Without Worries: An Introduction to Indian Cuisine. Pennington,

NJ: Cashmir, 1989.

Madavan, Vijay. Cooking the Indian Way. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company,
1985.

108
Malamoud, Charles Cooking the World: Ritual and Thought in Ancient India. Translated
by David White. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Mason, Daria Wingreen. “Smithson’s Cookbook: English Curry.” Smithsonian Libraries

Unbound (blog), May 22, 2012. Accessed April 5, 2016.
https://blog.library.si.edu/2012/05/smithsons-cookbook-english-curry/#.VwWohfkrLIU.

Mehta, Padmini. Step by Step Indian Recipes: Tandoori. New Delhi: Lustre Press, 1995.

Merchant, Ismail. Ismail Merchant’s Indian Cuisine. New York: St. Martin’s Press,
1986.

Narayan, Uma. “Eating Cultures: Incorporation, Identity, and Indian Food.” In

Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism. New York:
Routledge, 1997.

Nyman, Jopi. “Cultural Contact and the Contemporary Culinary Memoir: Home,
Memory, and Identity in Madhur Jaffrey and Diana Abu-Jaber.” Auto/Biography Studies,
Volume 24, Number 2 (Winter 2009): 282-298. Accessed March 26, 2016.
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/abs/summary/v024/24.2.nyman.html.

Pandey, Gyanendra. Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories. Palo Alto, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2006.

Pasricha, Swaran and L.M. Rebello. Some Common Indian Recipes and their Nutritive
Value. Hyderabad: Nutritional Research Laboratories, 1964.

Patel, Sita. Sita Patel’s Easy Indian Cook-Book. Hong Kong: Business
Communications, 1976.

Procinda, Mary A. “Feeding the Imperial Appetite: Imperial Knowledge and Anglo-
Indian Discourse.” Journal of Women’s History, Volume 15, Number 2 (Summer 2003):
123-149. Accessed March 24, 2016.
http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/journal_of_womens_his
tory/v015/15.2procida.html.

Rau, Santha Rama. Recipes: The Cooking of India. New York: Time-Life Books, 1969.

Ray, Krishnendu and Tulasi Srinivas, Eds. Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and
South Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Riddell, Robert. Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book. 5th Ed. Madras: The
Press of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1860.

109
Risley, H. H. "The Study of Ethnology in India." The Journal of the Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 20 (1891): 235-263. Accessed June 29, 2017.
doi:10.2307/2842267.

Sahni, Julie. Classic Indian Cooking. New York: William and Morrow Company, 1980.

Sahni, Julie. Classic Vegetarian and Grain Cooking. New York: William and Morrow
Company, 1985.

Sahni, Julie. Mogul Microwave: Cooking Indian Food the Modern Way. New York:
William Morrow and Company, 1990.

Sahni, Julie. Savoring Spices and Herbs: Recipe Secrets of Flavor, Aroma, and Color.
New York: William Morrow and Company, 1996.

Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.

Seed, Diane. Favorite Indian Food. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1990.

Sen, Colleen Taylor. Curry: A Global History. London: Reaktion Books, 2009.

Sen, Colleen Taylor. Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India. London: Reaktion
Books, 2015.

Sen, Colleen Taylor. Food Culture in India. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
2004.

Sengupta, Jayanta. “Nation on a Platter: The Culture and Politics of Food and Cuisine in
Colonial Bengal.” In Curried Cultures: Globalization, Food, and South Asia, edited by
Krishnendu Ray and Tulasi Srinivas. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Sengupta, Pranati. The Art of Indian Cuisine. New York: Hawthorn Books, 1974.

Sherman, Sandra. Invention of the Modern Cookbook. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood
Press, 2010.

Steel, Flora Annie and Grace Gardiner. The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook. 7th
Ed. (London: William Heinemann, 1909.

Stendahl. The Bombay Palace Cookbook: A Treasury of Indian Delights Adapted for the
American Kitchen. New York: Dodd, Mead, & Company, 1985.

The Englishwoman in India. London: Smith, Elder, and Co., 1864.

Theophano, Janet. Eat My Words: Reading Women’s Lives through the Cookbooks They
Wrote. New York: Palgrave Publishing, 2002.

110
Veerasawmy, E.P. Indian Cookery for use in All Countries. 5th Ed. London: Arco
Publishers Limited, 1955.
Winodan, Dhershini Govin. Indian Food Today. Singapore: Landmark Books, 1990.

Wyvern. Culinary Jottings for Madras. Facsimile of 1885 fifth edition published by
Higginbotham of Madras. Devon, Great Britain: Prospect Books, 1994.

Zlotnick, Susan. “Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian

England.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies, Volume 16, Number 2/3, Gender,
Nations, and Nationalisms (1996): 51-68. Accessed March 25, 2016.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3346803.

111