The Raj at Table

by David Burton

While the British were in India they developed a curious cuisine all of their own. Anglo-Indian cooking was at its best when it achieved a kind of cultural balance; mulligatawny, kedgeree and Worcestershire sauce are all products of the Raj. David Burton draws on first-hand accounts to describe a valuable piece of social history: in addition to over 60 authentic recipes. He builds up a fascinating and often hilarious picture of the British -- at best endearingly naive, at worst ignorant and xenophobic -- seen through the kitchen door.

Genres: History, Food, India, Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, British Literature

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1993

Reviews

[Manray9 · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Raj at Table: A Culinary History of the British in India is a look at the impact of the British presence on what we in the West think of as Indian cuisine. Many of the dishes served in Indian restaurants throughout the U.S. and U.K. owe much to British influence, as well as the impact of the Portuguese in Goa. Burton's book is well written, but perhaps a little dated.

When I read of Indian food, I end up hungry. If you have the taste for Indian cuisine (or the Western interpretation of it), you’ll love this book. The original recipes are interesting too.

[GrabAsia · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Build up

David Burton writes about 2 of my favourite interests, the British Raj in India, and food. The Raj still exists in India in many ways – very evidently through buildings, clubs, the legal system, the civil service, the armed forces, the railways, and every day in millions of homes, the food.

When the British came to India, the desire to eat and drink what they liked at home, combined with the challenges of a very different environment and new food they encountered here, led to the creation of a unique cuisine. This thrives today in India, Britain and in many former British colonies (like Singapore where I live now).

Mr Burton has written a wonderful nugget of a book that takes us on a culinary journey through British India.

It starts with a brief history of British expansion into India (having just read a longer book on the East India Company by John Keay - another great read I will write on next), this seemed superfluous to me, but is a useful introduction to those who may not know.

Worcester sauce - The Indian influence into cuisine in Britain

Worcester sauce, today a very British thing, actually came from India and made Lea & Perkins (an ancient brand that still exists) a household name. Mr Burton tells us how Lord Sandys (ex-Governor of Bengal) upon his return from India, walked into the emporium of John Lea and William Perkins in Worcestor to ask for a batch of this sauce to be made. It was too fiery for Mr Lea & Mr Perkins, but when it was retried after some time, after mellowing, seemed great. The rest is history.

Vindaloo – neither British nor Indian, but yet the most famous British Indian dish!

Though British Indian cuisine is mainly about mingling Britain & India, there were other influences, mainly from Portugal. The Portugese were in fact the first European power to land in India in the 15th century. Their influence exists today in many ways, especially the spicy food of coastal western India. Mr Burton says they introduced chillies from South America.

Then there is “vindaloo”, one of the most famous British Indian dishes. It actually came through the Portugese presence in Goa. It is perhaps unknown in Portugal, a bit known in India, but very well known in Britain as an “Indian” dish.

Curry - British India, the Royal Family and Britain

Queen Victoria, who was hailed as the Empress of India in 1877 had a famous interest in her Indian subjects. She had a Muslim bearer who tended to her daily, strangely referred to as her “Munshi” which is a Hindu term, but I will leave that to another post.

Mr Burton tells us about the penchant her grandson George V had for Indian food. I knew he loved India, having visited it as Prince of Wales in 1905, and later as King-Emperor in the great Durbar of 1911, the only British sovereign to come to India. But I didn’t know he liked curry and had a milder version of it very often.

The only person I know who has met the Royal Family is my wife, when Prince Charles met her and other Indians at Cambridge University. He asked her how the curry was. It may seem a banal question, but for the British, curry is (almost) India, so asking how good it was in Britain was like saying “I hope we are taking good care of you”.

By the way, curry is essentially a spicy rendition of a sauce made with meat, fish or vegetables, best eaten with white rice. There are multiple recipes in the book. The sources of the term and the recipe range from South to North India, so lost in the midst of time. Needless to say, the end result is delicious.

Kedgeree – the breakfast dish with fish

The root of kedgeree is the Indian dish “khichri”, which is a combination of rice, dal & spices. Kedgeree starts with khichri, drops the dal & spices, adds fish & hard boiled eggs. You may ask – how can you take almost everything away, add very different new things & still call it something similar? I agree, but the practice and the name thrives today.

Mulligatany – the vegetable soup known worldwide today
This started with a clear vegetable soup in south India to which the British added fish or meat. Mr Burton refers mainly to the fish/meat versions, but today I only encounter vegetarian versions.

Punch

Punch comes from the Sanskrit word for 5, the number of ingredients of this world famous cocktail. For the British in India it included alcohol (anything that survived the climate), embelishments (like fruit), and hydration (water, soda and the like).

Fact Checking is not easy

There are certain, I am sure inadvertent, inaccuracies like showing “Jeypore” south of Orissa in the map, and the source of the word “kaffir” which actually means “outside the faith” in Arabic, saying “banian” instead of bania when referring to moneylenders (in the Faber & Faber 1994 paperback edition that I read).

Overall a nice read, and it can serve also as a cook book as it has several recipes.

[Saski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I struggle with where to place this book. It contains recipes but it is clearly not a cookbook. It has wonderful descriptions of a particular time and place, but I doubt one would want to call it a history book. I would say best guess it is a type of cultural anthropology text, but I can't imagine any college having it on its reading list. However, it is an academic question at best. It reads well, it if full of information, that if not terribly applicable, is entertaining. Where I place it should be more of a question of 'findablity' than anything else, so I will return it to the kitchen where it has stood for many years.


On history
This 'factory', and others which followed, were in fact trading posts, collecting indigo dye from Agra and cotton cloth from Gujarat. Portugal continued to control the pepper-growing region inland from the Malabar coast, and only after harassing Portuguese shipping, culminating in the Treaty of Madrid in 1630, did the British receive access to Goa for the loading of spices. In 1640 some land was leased at Madras, while over on the west coast, Bombay was handed over the Company in 1668, in exchange for a substantial loan to King Charles II. His wife, Catherine of Braganza, had brought the ownership of the seaport six years earlier as part of her dowry.
Finally, there was Calcutta. After years of violent skirmishes, the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb agreed in 1690 to let the Company establish a settlement on the banks of the Hooghly River in Bengal, near a village the locals named Kalikata in deference to their fearsome goddess of death. The name was anglicized into Calcutta, and the settlement very soon gained a reputation as a haven for the unscrupulous and rapacious. In Mogul court circles, it was referred to as "hell well stocked with bread." (2)

The first generation of British officials studied Indian classics and Persian, the literary language. They were very much the visitors, too few in number, and too vulnerable to do anything about the aspects of Indian life of which theyere secretly critical. In the early nineteenth century, however, Indianized habits became yearly more rare in Calcutta. Clothes began to follow the London fashion, and Indian food, while it was still offered in punch houses and taverns as an alternative to plain English fare, was not longer the norm. True, curries were still being offered at dinner parties, but this was more to appease the old hands and eccentrics.
These changes of habit reflected a growing attitude of racial superiority among the British. In 1798, a new governor-general, Lord Wellesley, had nothing but contempt for Indians, and the social atmosphere changed accordingly. Indian mistresses were thrown out as more English women arrived in the British settlements and family life began – isolated islands of England in a sea of India. The arrival of missionaries in the early nineteenth century turned opinion against the 'barbarous' and 'pagan' religions of India, and as the numbers of British residents increased, so did their self-sufficiency as a community and their isolation from the Indians. Such adherence to 'home standards' continued right up until Independence, but was, of course, impossible to enforce completely. Inevitably there was much adapting to local conditions, particularly with regard to food.
It should by no means be assumed, however, that the first British settlers had considered the highly spiced cuisine of India so very outlandish or strange. In 1612, English cooking had itself barely emerged from the Middle Ages, and was still heavy with cumin, caraway, ginger, pepper, cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg. Indeed, spices had for the first time become affordable to all the but the poor in England, due to the breaking of the Arab monopoly of the spice trade by the Portuguese a century earlier. (3)

These early accounts of Indian food make no mention of it being hot. The reason is simple: chilies were still too new to the Indian subcontinent to have become widely accepted into the cuisine. Today it seems impossible to imagine Indian food cooked without chilies, yet there is little doubt that they originated in Latin America, and were unknown in India before the Portuguese arrived to establish trading posts in Cochin and Calicut in 1501. there is no Sanskrit name for the chilly pepper and it seems peppercorns were the only 'hot' ingredient in Indian cooking prior to the Portuguese, who are thought to have brought the chilli from the West Indies. By 1542, three separate varieties of chili were growing in India, mainly on the west coast and especially in Goa. Chilies first became well known in Bombay under the name of Gowai mirchi (Goan pepper). According to Clausius in his Exoticorum (1605), the chili pepper was also cultivated in India under the name of Pernambuco pepper.
Other sixteenth-century Portuguese introductions included pineapple, papaya, cashew nut, and tomato, all of which later had a huge impact on the Indian diet. (6)

While the British may have had only a minimal influence on Indian cookery directly, the impact of the vegetables they introduced to India has been enormous. Nowadays, potatoes, cabbages, tomatoes, lettuces, runner beans, avocados and corn are well integrated into the Indian diet and countless ‘traditional’ recipes exist for them, yet the cultivation of them all dates only from the arrival of the British and the Portuguese. (160)

The gardeners they [British] employed were generally Hindus, whose skill in irrigation was considerable. The beds were enclosed by raised walks, so that they could be flooded at various times with water, which was soon absorbed into the sun-baked soil. The flow was controlled by tiny sluice-gates made of clay, from a reservoir fed laboriously by buffaloes carrying leather bags of water. Generally, however, the Indians’ knowledge of horticulture was limited, and from the eighteenth century onwards, the most esteemed vegetable gardeners in British India were the Chinese, who filled the gaps in the local knowledge. (161)

In the early settlements the source of drinking water was often as not badly polluted. In Calcutta, for instance, residents were content to drink from the vast tank of putrid green water still to be seen today near BBD Bag (formerly Dalhousie Square). Both humans and mange-ridden dogs bathed in it, and during the monsoon, from July to September, it would be further contaminated by sewage and seepage from the Portuguese cemetery in the centre of the city.
In Benares an engineer reports in 1790 that one of the main drinking tanks was the receptacle of all the drains and filth of adjacent high grounds, and that people would crowd its banks all day long, ‘and the stench occasioned by it is hardly to be described.’ Water from the nearby River Ganges, which for thousands of years has been the cremation place for orthodox Hindus, was equally suspect, as was that of the River Hooghly in Calcutta. A ship’s captain reported in 1802 that every morning while his ship was at anchor he had to detail a man to free the bodies which had accumulated among the ship’s cables overnight.
Rather than purify their water, the early European settlers preferred to disguise its rank flavour with alcohol. The totally erroneous notion that alcohol could somehow counteract the ill-effects of polluted water was being perpetuated as late as the 1840s, by writers such as Mrs Major Clemons, who advised soldiers to drink a mixture of brandy and water while on a march through areas where well water was doubtful.
Eventually the high mortality rate in the larger towns from cholera, typhoid and other waterborne diseases forced the abandonment of public supplies in favour of rain water. Huge earthenware jars were used to collect the rain water as it drained off the roof, and the filled jars where they stored in a godown (storeroom). Captain Williamson states in his East India Vade Mecum (1810) that the average family of Calcutta used to set aside sixty or seventy hogsheads (over 3000 gallons) of rain water during the year.
Even rain water had to be purified, a process which in the early days involved plunging in a red-hot iron and then adding a solution of alum to the water. Some people also had a small quantity of very fine sand sprinkled over the surface of the water in the belief that this would precipitate any impurities that remained. Only in Victorian times did people begin boiling the water for 10 to 15 minutes, the only sure way of killing all harmful bacteria. The water then had to be filtered, first through a bowl of sand and then through another of charcoal. By the early part of the twentieth century some residents of Calcutta considered the municipal water sufficiently pure as to drink straight from the tap, although they were careful to draw it off at a point of high pressure, where it was thought less likely to harbour germs.
The other great problem was keeping their drinking water cool, for when, about May, the hot weather reached its peak, cracking lamps and wine glasses and warping furniture at the jo8ints, nobody found the heat more intolerable than the British – whatever Noel Coward might have sung. (213-14)

Women
A generation later came Flora Annie Steel. Arriving in 1867, she proceeded to carve out a career as an architect, educationist and a writer, on top of being a wife and mother. At the age of twenty-nine, she had designed the town hall for a small place in the Punjab, and when she and her husband moved, she was presented with a brooch inlaid with jewels, every one of which had been taken from brooches belonging to local Punjabi wives. Everywhere she went, she opened schools for bazaar children, totally secular even though she herself was a devout Christian. Her efforts were eventually recognized by the Government, who appointed her Inspector for Female Schools for the whole region of modern Pakistan between Peshawar and the Punjab.
Her books included novels, an autobiography and an ambitious history of India, but the work for which she is best remembered is The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, which earned her the reputation of the Mrs Beeton of British India. Written after twenty-two years of running households in India, it was enormously successful, running to ten editions. (10-11)

Culture Clashes
Oh! That dinner; shall I ever forget it? A table that had once been varnished, – teak wood I should think as far as I could judge through the encrusted dirt of ages that coated it, – three or four odd plates (two of them soup-plates) of the violent blue, yellow and red pattern sometimes seen in kitchens, a yellow greasy mass – or mess – of curry in a slop bowl, and a gritty heap of half-husked rice in a dish, sundry very brassy spoons and forks floating around and penetrating all through other flavours, the (to me)disgusting odour of the huka which the mem-sahib (who sat at table with us) had indulged in a few final whiffs of just before dinner, to give her an appetite. The plate placed in front of me had apparently not been washed since it was made. The memories of a past decade of breakfasts and dinners hung solidly to it sides. In a weak moment I ventured to remark, --'Mr Ribiera, would you mind asking your servant just to wipe this plate a little'. He laughed, – a great oily, jovial laugh: I must admit he is genial sort, according to his lights. 'Ar-reh! man,' said he, 'you're very particular. You soon get used to this kind of khannah when you stop longer in Tezbrusaugar.' Then he turned to his khansamah – a Bengali coolie apparently – promoted from the lines I have since heard, on account of a family ; looked at it sideways in the light of the oil-lamp to find out what I objected to; and finally, picking up a corner of this nether garment – dhoti I have heard it called – gave the plate a dry rub with that fearful weap0on, and clumped it down before me with a grunt, as much as to say 'I hope you are satisfied now'. (14-15)

In preparing for large dinner parties it was a long-standing custom in British India for the servants to make up any shortfalls in silver and crockery by borrowing from neighbouring houses, usually without bothering to ask permission of the master or mistress beforehand. A former memsahib recounted to me that once, when she was quite new to India, she was a dinner party where there were some green Wedgwood plates.
'They're just like your Wedgwood plates,' she said innocently to her sister.
'Shut up you fool, they are!' her sister replied out of the corner of her mouth.
'Actually,' she recalls, 'we entertained in a very tight circle. You met your dinner plates at every party and didn't bat an eyelid.' (26)

In the eighteenth century a gentleman could go to a formal dinner comfortably dressed in jacket, waistcoat and trousers made of white or buff-coloured cotton. In the early nineteenth century, however, he was expected to arrive for dinner in a formal black coat. Then a faintly ridiculous ritual would be enacted, where the host or hostess would invite him to swap his heavy black coat for a lighter one. This he would politely accept, and he would then go out to the verandah where his bearer would be waiting with the lighter jacket, having been instructed to bring it along in anticipation of this very invitation. (28)


Bashir was in his glory whenever we had a tea party and his variety of cakes, scones, buns, puffs and sweets were a revelation. His oven was a kerosene tin placed on an open wood fire, with a few of the burning embers on top of the tin to produce an even heat. One had to be a past master to keep the fire at just the tight temperature. His kitchen, on party days, had to be seen to be believed. Dough, slowly rising, swelling and spilling over one corner of the rough table, fudge cooling on another, a mountainous pile of newspaper quills under the table and a blot of pink icing decorating the celling. But a beautifully iced and decorated layer cake always serenely reposed on the kitchen stool. Crushed egg shells lay, like the May petals, on the mud floor and it was a gymnastic feat to avoid the mixing bowls, the plates of washed, dried fruit, and the large hookah in the centre of the floor. At first I was appalled by the confusion, but I realized I could do no better with an open wood fire, a kitchen table and a stool. Indeed I could have done nothing at all, except mop my eyes and cough, for the wood was always new and damp. (198)

On Travel
There came a day when my khidmutgar, rather than cross the gorge of the Tom River dangling in a loop under a very ancient rope, bolted back with all our very modest supplies except a bag of onions, and we had to live on those and the fifth-class rice used by the coolies who carried for us for ten days – the only exception being when, one happy day, we found an old man catching small fish in a stream with a casting-net. We bought all he caught – about a dozen, weighing about three pounds – and I can remember nearly every mouthful of the two meals they provided, the menu being boiled, thin, bony fish, boiled rice, boiled onions, without ever pepper and salt. I think that must be the worst menu that I have thoroughly enjoyed. (40-41)

To avoid the heat of the day, the march [regimental marches were a feature of army life before the advent of the railway]would take place at night, with the officers on horseback and their wives in palanquins. A shepherd would drive a flock of sheep before him, and hens would cluck from their cages which were strapped, along with cooking pots and frying pans, to light wooden bedsteads known as charpoys, which would be carried by four bearers. The crockery would be carried on the heads of bearers but as they were prove to falls, so much might be smashed that by the end of a march a family of five might be reduced to one tumbler and a cup and saucer between them. (41)

Just as dinner was taking up lo! A sudden and most tremendous hurricane swept over the plain, burying fires, pots, pans, and eatables in one wide waste of sand. (42)

the food itself
When the British arrived in India they found the countryside literally teeming with game, which in their inimitable fashion they proceeded to annihilate. (120)

The musk deer...was hunted both for its meat and for its musk bag, found at the end of the penis, which was used to treat wounds and venereal disease. Surprisingly, the strong musk odour of the male deer did not seem to taint its flesh. (124)

Snipe were equally prized, and very abundant. They were best eaten fresh and cooked very briefly, or 'walked through the over', as the saying went. It was suggested that all the cooking a snipe needed was to be carried twice around the kitchen table! (126)

‘Sir, to-day is Saturday.’
‘Yes.’
‘They have killed an ox.’
‘Where?’
‘Outside the office.’
‘What a pity. You shall keep the flies out of the office yourself. Well?’
‘The master would like some meat?’
‘Yes, please, some meat.’

‘Cook.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Has the meat come?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Cook, I have eaten 12, 39, or 364 chickens since we last had meat.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I do not wish this meat to be finished or go bad in one day or two, for I have no wish to eat another chicken until I must.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I will eat the liver for lunch.
‘I will eat the brains for dinner followed by the gilled fillet or tournedos.
‘I will have kidneys and bacon for breakfast.
‘I will have steak and kidney pudding or pie for lunch tomorrow, and roast meat (sirloin or fillet) for dinner tomorrow which I will eat cold the next day.
‘In the meantime you will be preparing the oxtail and the tongue and this piece of silverside or brisket we will put into salt and I shall eat them next week. Tomorrow we must roast a bit of the meat which is not cooked, or it will go bad. Out of it we will make a ccasserole, mince, curry, and Headless Sparrows. These bones are for soup. By Friday I shall be able to face tinned fish again, but not before.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘In fact I shall even be glad to see a chicken on Saturday next.’
‘No, sir.’
‘Perhaps you are right.’ (131-32)

While the wild boars of the jungle were considered fine eating, there was a great deal of prejudice against the long-legged, bristly-maned domestic breed. This was not without foundation, for the keepers of these animals – the low castes and the Christians of Goa – fed them a foul diet consisting largely of human excrement, a custom which survives to this day in Goa. (140)

[The Master · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another amazing historical cookbook from David Burton, who also authored French Colonial Cookery.

Looking forward to trying many of the recipes here. I've already knocked back several of the gimlets!

[Robert Grace]

Excellent account of food in Anglo-India, and India. Interesting recipes, including one that sounds like it might taste like the incomparable Mulligtawny served on the lawn of the Carlton Hotel, Lucknow, UP - I had it five nights running and have never tasted its like since. The Madras Club Mulligatawny is a clear version and delicious, but the Carlton version was exceptional

[Mary Storm · Rating 3 out of 5]

Could have been a deeper assessment, but nonetheless, a fascinating look at food and identity.

[Saju Pillai · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good description of social history of the British in India, watching from a seat at the dinner table. At times funny, at times historical, but always tasty. I found the initial chapters more interesting than the later ones - the density of recipes increasing towards the end of the book. As someone who can do more justice to the end of the culinary process rather than the beginning, I tend to find recipes less useful.

Some Indian readers may object to the narrative descriptions of household servants, but note that David is quoting verbatim from Raj-era writing. Such readers should not confuse the historical Subject with intention from the Author.

Overall a good, but quaint read. I personally would love a version of this book with the Mughals - now that would be totally capital.

[Deniz Çıkış · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well researched, insightful at times, but it can feel repetitive with all the recipes.