Thursday, 20 January 2011
Culinary Jottings, cookery for Anglo-Indian Exiles, 1885
A fascinating cookery book by "Wyvern", published Madras, Calcutta, and Bombay, fifth edition 1885, first published Madras 1878.
The book covers a gamut of menus - (Thirty, 'Worked out in Detail'), also sauces, entrees, pastry, vegetables, curries, mulligatunny, chutneys, camp cookery, dinner parties, etc etc. bound with a treatise on Sweet Dishes, (1884).
"Wyvern", the pseudonymous author writes in his introduction how he 'yearns for reform in the study of cookery for English people in India', rather than the cookery of 'our Anglo-Indian forefathers'. He mentions the 'Brillat Savarin at Madras' and their talented coterie, feeling modest in their company, he speaks of 'cosy sociable little dinners from one to ten people rather than the elaborate banquets of the great'.
Above - three 19th century Indian figures.
Labels:
Cookery,
Indian Culture
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sounds a fantastic book!
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