vintageindianclothing:Though cookbooks often refer to Indian food, it is a bit of a misnomer. The c
vintageindianclothing:Though cookbooks often refer to Indian food, it is a bit of a misnomer. The country has a number of culinary traditions of which a few now constitute Indian cuisine in restaurants. Many cuisines remain local, it’s probably easier to spot a Thai eatery than an Assamese one in many major cities. So I intended to do a post on early/mid 20th century culinary books from as many Indian states as possible but this turned out to be difficult. While the education of women in the early 20th century and the rise of periodicals meant that there were books on food, perhaps quite often recipes were orally transmitted and not written down. Or maybe books are not online. Listed here are a few, chosen because of the covers.Pic 1 is a 1915 Parsi cookbook, Vividh Vani. The cook’s long lacy blouse and the hair net make it both Parsi and early 20th century. Pic 2 is a 1954 “expat” cookbook, Savitri Chowdhury’s Indian Cooking. The style of wearing the sari and the blouse makes it very United Provinces. Pic 3 is the English version of the Saraswat cookbook Rasachandrika. This book was first published in 1943 in Marathi, in 1958 in Hindi and in 1988 in English. The cover painting by P.G. Sirur is of a 1940s Saraswat kitchen (the standing lady’s blouse and sari is very characteristic of the decade, you can also see a scalloped petticoat). Pic 4 is Vanttalu - Pindi Vanttalu by Malathi Chunder, a Telugu cookbook probably written around the 1950s. Its cover is like representations of Indian women in the 1960s and 1970s. Other examples are the Bengali Amish o niramish ahar by Prajnasundari Devi, Samaithu Paar by Meenakshiammal, Ruchira by Kamlabai Ogle and Mrs KM Mathews cookbooks. By the 1970s middle class women were more likely to read English periodicals and books but I won’t go into these books here. See also X, X (Bengal), X (Punjab), X (UP), X (Indian Jewish cooking), X (South Africa) This! -- source link
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