Anglo-Indian cookery a product of British rule in India or, more precisely, a result of the interface between Indian cooks and British wives of British officers and officials stationed in India, could be viewed as an example, on a grand scale, of creole food; or, more simply, as the most interesting ‘colonial kitchen’ which resulted from the imperial era of British history.
There is a rich literature. One outstanding item is the wonderful dictionary known as Hobson-Jobson (‘A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive’). Others are provided by those 19th-century English authors (notably Colonel Kenney-Herbert, on whom see english cookery books of the 19th and 20th centuries) who produced manuals intended for use by the English memsahibs in dealing with their cooks. Recently, serious contributions of a historical and gastronomic nature have been made by Jennifer Brennan (1990) and Burton (1993).
