Cecilia Leong-Salobir’s book, Food Culture in Colonial Asia: A Taste of Empire (Routledge, 2011), looks at the gastronomic side of things in Britain’s tropical, Asiatic Empire -India, Malaya and Singapore. It looks at the things administrators, soldiers and commercial workers ate on various occasions- in the dak bungalow, on camping tours, at grand dinner parties – and how they went about preparing their victuals- mostly with the help of domestic staff, Muslim, Goan, Malay and Chinese, cooks of whom they had criticisms aplenty to make, yet in the end trusted with the task of cooking for their families. And they made sure to write down all they gleaned about rustling up pastries and souffles in lands where rice and chappatis were the staple dishes. Cecilia researched the cookbooks, colonial archives, correspondence, and prepared questionnaires for old Empire hands to come up with a comprehensive report on what the Empire builders ate- and the result is a deliciously detailed work, which explores how the socio-cultural structure of Empire dictated and determined what would be cooked and eaten at specific times and places.

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