Cookbooks by women as a prism into the past

These recipe books by women feature dishes from undivided India, act as guides for new brides and more

- Sadaf Hussain

With social media platforms providing a ready resource for recipes, have cookbooks lost their significance? A few weeks ago, I was on a panel at the Kala Ghoda Festival in Mumbai discussing this. I believe we need books because they set the context better than recipe videos. Take for example books published between the 1940s and 1990s by women writers in India. They feature cooking traditions and dishes from undivided India; act as kitchen guides for new brides; and were often written for the diaspora community in the UK and US.

In 1938, Amina Nazli, writer and feminist activist from undivided Pakistan published her book Ismati Dastarkhwan (loosely translated as 'pure dining') in Urdu. It was a collection of recipes from affluent families and riyasats (princely states). Rana Safvi, a historian and author, speaks highly of this book. It is one of her prized possessions, which she keeps in a secret closet. She is fond of cooking, and her father gifted her this book when she was 18. Dishes like korma have multiple recipes because they come from different families in India and Pakistan. She talks about the recipe for Korma Khasgheer, which was contributed by Nawabzadi Razia Sultan Zaman Beghum of Pethari State (now in Madhya Pradesh). This recipe calls for sieving and straining the gravy before serving it to guests for a velvety mouth feel; a technique used in Michelin-starred restaurants too.