The Anglo-Indian kitchen — at its best — leaned towards the robust.
Some weeks ago, I took a pucca brown sahib — one of the last of a dying breed—to Brown Sahib, an Anglo-Indian/ Bengali restaurant in the teddibly posh MGF Metropolitan mall at Saket, New Delhi. It’s a mistake taking a Bengali man to a Bengali restaurant: no matter how good the meal is, the conversation will be haunted by the ghosts of Mashimas and Didimas past, who made the fish curry or green mango dal so much better than any restaurant could.
But while Brown Sahib doesn’t offer a full Anglo-Indian menu, it does have a few options from that community’s hospitable kitchen, and Uncle’s favourite lamb chops did the trick. My friend paused; recalled in hushed reverence the Christmas cake at the O’Neills, the Bad Word curry at the Tuckers, and grudgingly agreed that the lamb chops were good enough to have been served at the Lillywhites. It struck me as we left that we might be the last generation who remembers the full glory of the Anglo-Indian table.
As David Housego, researcher of Raj cuisine writes, the Raj at table was often a sorry sight. “The British had arrived in India with no great tradition of food in their own country,” he comments, adding acutely that for those fond of Raj recipes, memory and nostalgia play as great a part as the palate. The sins he lists are mortal, not venal: a partiality to heavy, cloying sauces, an indiscriminate use of raisins, apples and pineapples in curries, and the use of that abomination known as curry powder.
But years ago, as a young wife learning her way around the kitchen, it was Patricia Brown’s now-classic Anglo-Indian Cookbook that made our table bearable. Brown drew from the stock of Calcutta’s Anglo-Indian recipes, where East had met West with admirable results. Mulligatawny — a basic meat or chicken stock — had been jazzed up with assorted spices and lemon juice; pepper water and beef dry fry remain a classic combination, set to rival any of the South Indian beef dishes; coconut yellow rice is a rich, pleasant alternative to biryani at family meals; and Bad Word curry is a less fussy, more robust version of kofta curry.
In restaurants where Anglo-Indian dishes survive, the same dishes tend to recur —railway cutlets, rissoles, jhal-frezi, and an assortment of satisfying rather than fancy cakes. Kul-kuls, plum cake and rosa cookies have migrated into bakeries that have almost no links with the shrinking Anglo-Indian community, but the tradition of making their own flavoured wines is almost dead.
At its best, the Anglo-Indian kitchen leaned towards the robust rather than grand cuisine. Bridget Kumar, another Anglo-Indian cookbook writer and expert, recalls recipes such as ox-tongue vindaloo and several kinds of buffaths (a curry distinguished by the addition of vegetables to the meat and the use of vinegar to blend the spices). This was food that reflected the values of the community — hospitality, conviviality, generosity — where there was always room for unexpected guests.
At places as widely separated as Simpsons-on-the-Strand and the Oh! Calcutta chain of restaurants in India, some classics endure, though the trend’s been strongly in favour of lighter, more fashionable cuisines. Kedgeree is the classic way to describe the difference between Raj cuisine, Indian cuisine and Anglo-Indian cuisine. The Indian version is khichdi, which can be a party meal, or a delicate invalid’s dish, or an incredibly complex blend of lentils, rice and spices. The Raj version often featured tinned fish mixed with rice and curry powder. The classic Anglo-Indian version will use turmeric and a cunning blend of spices—and smoked haddock, or firm, flaky white fish, topped with slivered hard-boiled eggs.
As Housego becomes the latest in a long line of tradition-keepers, I hope that some of the old recipes will survive.
[Nilanjana Roy is a Delhi-based writer and editor]
