Anglo-Indian Cuisine is More Than Colonial Food
For decades, it was dismissed as a relic of empire. Now, it’s getting a second life.
Karen Martin was a child when she first tasted her grandmother’s steamed Anglo-Indian bread pudding. She remembered her grandma carefully breaking up bread and adding milk, eggs, and a dollop of butter, before waiting another 20 minutes for the concotion to set in a water bath. But when the young Karen took a bite, she wrinkled her nose. “I simply said ‘yuck’…and did not eat it,” she recalled. Undeterred, her grandma tried again, this time adding brandied cherries and precious nutmeg. That second taste sparked something: curiosity about her family’s culinary traditions.
After India’s independence, Anglo-Indian cuisine, a somewhat controversial bridge between British colonial tastes and Indian ingredients, faded from public life. Dishes like pepper water, country captain chicken, and ball curry slipped out of the mainstream as anti-British sentiment grew and thousands of Anglo-Indians left.
But now, something unexpected is happening. In cities like Kolkata, Chennai, and Kochi, Anglo-Indian food is making a comeback — the Empire be damned.