Important Notice

a) Mrs. Grace Johnson, Anglo-Indian and Oriental Cookery, London: W.H. Allen & Co., Ltd., 13 Waterloo Place, S.W., Circa 1890s

viii, 208 pp.; original publishers cloth binding
7.25 x 5 in (18.5 x 13 cm)

b) A Thirty-Five Years’ Resident, The Indian Cookery Book: A Practical Handbook to the Kitchen in India, adapted to the Three Presidencies; Containing Original and Approved Recipes in Every Department of Indian Cookery; Recipes for Summer Beverages and Home-Made Liqueurs, Medicinal and Other Recipes; Together with a Variety of Things Worth Knowing, Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co.; Bombay: Thacker & Co., Ld.; Madras: Higginbotham & Co., reprinted 1901

123 pp., original publishers’ cloth binding
7.25 x 5 in (18.5 x 13 cm)

c) Carrie Thompson, Mem Saheb’s Cookery, Bangalore: Good Shepherd Convent Press, 1922. Third Edition.

iv, 106 pp., 16 advertisements pages; rebound in half leather bound, retaining the original cover and back pages inside
21 x 13.5 cm

With printed advertisements for local firms like G. Baccala & Co. (confectioners to the Maharaja of Mysore), this Bangalore-published volume captures regional tastes and British domestic expectations.

d) Wyvern, Sweet Dishes: A Little Treatise on Confectionery and Entremets Sucrés, Madras: Higginbotham and Co., 1892. Third Edition, Revised.

viii, 242 pp.; rebound leather spine retaining the original cloth board
18.5 x 13 cm

e) [Anon], Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables, Calcutta: W. Newman & Co., 4 Dalhousie Square, 1893, Fifth Edition—Revised.

viii, 447 pp.; original publisher's cloth bound with gilt text to the front board and spine
19 x 13.5 cm

KITCHENS OF EMPIRE: FIVE RARE MANUALS OF ANGLO-INDIAN CULINARY PRACTICE

This exceptional group of five Anglo-Indian cookery books presents a rare and illuminating cross-section of domestic life, culinary practice, and social aspiration in colonial India from the late 19th to early 20th century. Compiled and published in key colonial centres—Calcutta, Madras, Bangalore, and London—these manuals were created for British households attempting to reconcile European tastes with tropical climates and local ingredients. Their pragmatic tone and emphasis on adaptation make them invaluable sources for historians of empire, food studies, and gendered labour in the colonial household.

Among the highlights is The Indian Cookery Book by an anonymous “Thirty-Five Years’ Resident,” a Calcutta-published standard first issued in the 1870s and continuously reprinted for its blend of Indian and English recipes, home remedies, and domestic advice across presidencies. Similarly, Dainty Dishes for Indian Tables (Calcutta, 1893) speaks directly to Anglo-Indian culinary hybridity, opening with a literary flourish from Owen Meredith and offering hundreds of recipes for all courses, including cooling summer drinks, pickles, and preserved fruits.

Sweet Dishes (Madras, 1892) by “Wyvern” (Col. A.R. Kenney-Herbert), a leading authority on Anglo-Indian cuisine, expands the genre to include refined desserts and confections, while Mem Saheb’s Cookery (Bangalore, 1922) captures regional tastes and commercial modernity through printed advertisements for local purveyors such as G. Baccala & Co., confectioners to the Maharaja of Mysore. The London-printed Anglo-Indian and Oriental Cookery by Mrs. Grace Johnson (c.1890s), awarded diplomas at the 1890 and 1891 cookery exhibitions, underscores the reach of colonial gastronomy into British metropolitan culture.

More than instructional guides, these volumes represent a critical archive of cultural negotiation and culinary identity at the intersection of empire, domesticity, and print. Together, they form a richly layered documentary record of the colonial kitchen as both a space of authority and adaptation—where British ideals met Indian realities. Their rarity, regional diversity, and textual hybridity render them indispensable to collectors of Anglo-Indian history, gastronomy, and gendered labour, as well as institutions building collections around the sensory and material histories of empire.

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