Spreading the Word: Using cookbooks and colonial memoirs to examine the foodways of British colonials in Asia, 1850-1900

The first passage from a cookbook, written by an anonymous author, is based on his or her culinary knowledge of thirty-five years of living in India. The cookbook is one of hundreds of cookbooks and household guides written for the Anglo-Indian mistress or her cook and was one of the ways in which the colonial hybrid cuisine spread. The second passage, authored by the editor of The Straits Times in Singapore (1861-81), was typical of colonial memoirs written by administrators, hunters, explorers, adventurers, scientists and missionaries who traversed the colonies. These two passages, depicting similar foods being consumed by colonials in India and Singapore, show that colonial culture in the form of food practices was transplanted to, or replicated in, other colonies of Asia. One of the ways in which this colonial culture was transmitted was through the medium of cookbooks.3