Anglo-Indian cuisine is the

cuisine A cuisine is a style of cooking characterized by distinctive ingredients, List of cooking techniques, techniques and Dish (food), dishes, and usually associated with a specific culture or geographic region. Regional food preparation techniques, ...

that developed during the

British Raj The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

in India. The cuisine introduced dishes such as

curry Curry is a dish with a sauce or gravy seasoned with spices, mainly derived from the interchange of Indian cuisine with European taste in food, starting with the Portuguese, followed by the Dutch and British, and then thoroughly internatio ...

chutney A chutney () is a spread typically associated with cuisines of the Indian subcontinent. Chutneys are made in a wide variety of forms, such as a tomato relish, a ground peanut garnish, yogurt, or curd, cucumber, spicy coconut, spicy onion ...

kedgeree Kedgeree (or occasionally ) is a dish consisting of cooked, flaked fish (traditionally smoked haddock), boiled rice, parsley, hard-boiled eggs, curry powder, lemon juice, salt, butter or cream, and occasionally sultanas. The dish can be eat ...

, mulligatawny and pish pash to English palates. Anglo-Indian cuisine was documented in detail by the English colonel

Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert Brigadier-General Arthur Robert Kenney-Herbert (1840 – 5 March 1916) was a British soldier who served in the British Indian Army, and wrote on cooking. Career Kenney-Herbert entered Rugby School in 1855 as Arthur Robert Kenney. He served in t ...

, writing as "Wyvern" in 1885 to advise the

's memsahibs what to instruct their Indian cooks to make. Many of its usages are described in the "wonderful" 1886 Anglo-Indian dictionary, ''

Hobson-Jobson ''Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive'' is a historical dictionary of Anglo-Indian words and terms from Indian languages which came in ...

''. More recently, the cuisine has been analysed by Jennifer Brennan in 1990 and David Burton in 1993.

History

During the

British rule in India The British Raj ( ; from Hindustani language, Hindustani , 'reign', 'rule' or 'government') was the colonial rule of the British The Crown, Crown on the Indian subcontinent, * * lasting from 1858 to 1947. * * It is also called Crown rule ...

, cooks began adapting Indian dishes for British palates and creating Anglo-Indian cuisine, with dishes such as

(1790) and

mulligatawny soup Mulligatawny () is a soup which originated from Tamil cuisine. The name originates from the Tamil language, Tamil words ( 'black pepper'), and (, 'water'); literally, "pepper-water". It is related to the dish . Main ingredients commonly inclu ...

(1791). The first Indian restaurant in England, the

Hindoostane Coffee House The Hindoostane Coffee House, opened at 34 George Street, London in 1810, was an Indian restaurant, and the first of its kind in the British Isles. It was founded by Sake Dean Mahomed, a former captain in the British East India Company's Bengal ...

, opened in 1809 in London; as described in

The Epicure's Almanack ''The Epicure's Almanack; or, Calendar of Good Living'', was a guide to eating establishments in London, written by Ralph Rylance and published by Longman in 1815. Given the poor reception of the initial printing, there was no effort to pull toge ...

in 1815, "All the dishes were dressed with curry powder, rice, Cayenne, and the best spices of Arabia. A room was set apart for smoking hookahs with oriental herbs". Indian food was cooked at home from a similar date as cookbooks of the time, including the 1758 edition of

Hannah Glasse Hannah Glasse (; March 1708 – 1 September 1770) was an English cookery writer of the 18th century. Her first cookery book, ''The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy'', published in 1747, became the best-selling recipe book that century. It wa ...

's '' The Art of Cookery'', attest. The

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

arrived in India in 1600, developing into a large and established organisation. By 1760, men were returning home from India with money and a taste for Indian food. In 1784, a listing in the

Morning Herald The ''Morning Herald'' was an early daily newspaper in the United Kingdom. History The newspaper was founded in 1780 by the Reverend Sir Henry Bate Dudley, former editor of ''The Morning Post''. It was initially a liberal paper aligned with ...

and Daily Advertiser promoted ready-mix curry powder to be used in Indian-style dishes. While no dish called "curry" existed in India in the 18th and 19th centuries, Anglo-Indians likely coined the term, derived from the Tamil word "kari" meaning a spiced sauce poured over rice, to denote any Indian dish. Storytelling may have allowed family members at home to learn about Indian food. Hannah Glasse To make a Currey the Indian Way 1758 edition

Hannah Glasse To make a Currey the Indian Way 1758 edition

Many cookbooks including Indian-style dishes were written and published by British women in the late 18th century, such as

's 1758 book ''

The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy ''The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy'' is a cookbook by Hannah Glasse (1708–1770), first published in 1747. It was a bestseller for a century after its first publication, dominating the English-speaking market and making Glasse one of t ...

'', which included the recipe "To make a Currey the Indian Way". As Indian cuisine grew in popularity in Britain, the desire for authentic Indian delicacies grew. In March 1811, the

opened in

Portman Square Portman Square is a garden square in Marylebone, central London, surrounded by townhouses. It was specifically for private housing let on long leases having a ground rent by the Portman Estate, which owns the private communal gardens. It mar ...

offering Indian ambience and curries as well as

hookah A hookah (also see #Names and etymology, other names), shisha, or waterpipe is a single- or multi-stemmed instrument for heating or vaporizing and then smoking either tobacco, flavored tobacco (often ''muʽassel''), or sometimes Cannabis (drug ...

smoking rooms. The founder, Sake Dean Mohomed, stated that the ingredients for the curries as well as the herbs for smoking were authentically Indian.

Dishes

Well-known Anglo-Indian dishes include chutneys, salted

beef tongue Beef tongue (also known as neat's tongue or ox tongue) is a cut of beef made of the tongue of a cow. It can be boiled, pickled, roasted or braised in sauce. It is found in many national cuisines, and is used for taco fillings in Mexico and for o ...

, ball curry, fish

rissole A rissole (from Latin , meaning ''reddish'', via French , meaning "to redden") is "a ball or flattened cake of chopped meat, fish, or vegetables mixed with herbs or spices, then coated in breadcrumbs and fried." Variations Europe France In ...

s, and

Chutney A chutney () is a spread typically associated with cuisines of the Indian subcontinent. Chutneys are made in a wide variety of forms, such as a tomato relish, a ground peanut garnish, yogurt, or curd, cucumber, spicy coconut, spicy onion ...

, one of the few Indian dishes that has had a lasting influence on

English cuisine English cuisine encompasses the cooking styles, traditions and recipes associated with England. It has distinctive attributes of its own, but is also very similar to wider British cuisine, partly historically and partly due to the import of i ...

according to the

Oxford Companion to Food ''The Oxford Companion to Food'' is an encyclopedia about food. It was edited by Alan Davidson and published by Oxford University Press in 1999. It was also issued in softcover under the name ''The Penguin Companion to Food''. The second and t ...

, is a cooked and sweetened condiment of fruit, nuts or vegetables. It borrows from a tradition of jam making where an equal amount of sour fruit and refined sugar reacts with the

pectin Pectin ( ': "congealed" and "curdled") is a heteropolysaccharide, a structural polymer contained in the primary lamella, in the middle lamella, and in the cell walls of terrestrial plants. The principal chemical component of pectin is galact ...

in the fruit such as sour apples or rhubarb, the sour note being provided by vinegar. Major Grey's Chutney is typical. Pish pash was defined by ''Hobson-Jobson'' as "a slop of rice-soup with small pieces of meat in it, much used in the Anglo-Indian nursery". The term was first recorded by

Augustus Prinsep Augustus Prinsep (31 March 1803 – 10 October 1830) was an English artist, writer, and civil servant. He is best known for his posthumous book, ''The Journal of a Voyage from Calcutta to Van Diemen's Land''. Life Prinsep, born in London, was ...

in the mid 19th century. The name comes from the Persian ''pash-pash'', from ''pashidan'', to break. A version of the dish is given in '' The Cookery Book of Lady Clark of Tillypronie'' of 1909.

Restaurants

Some early restaurants in England, such as the Hindoostane Coffee House on George Street,

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, which opened in 1810, served Anglo-Indian food. Many Indian restaurants, however, have reverted to the standard mix-and-match Indian dishes that are better known to the British public.

References

Sources

* *

External links

"Food Stories"
— Explore a century of revolutionary change in UK food culture on the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...