The Mrs Beeton of British India, Flora Annie Steel and her companion Grace Gardiner`s book of household management for memsahibs offers a fascinating insight into the daily life of Anglo-Indians and their servants under the Raj.
The most thorough and entertaining guide to the duties of mistress and servant, including advice on the storeroom, accounts, meals, gardening, camp life, clothing, cookery and recipes.
Practical advice is tempered with personal anecdotes and glimpses into the lives of two remarkable memsahibs in the 1880s and 1890s.
Lively Introduction looks at Steel`s life and writings and other imperial manuals and books on cooking and empire, and illuminates the connections which the book makes explicit between running a domestic household in India and running the British Empire.
Notes provide an invaluable reading guide to the manual, detailing elements from the late nineteenth-century pharmacopeia, the kitchen, and the laundry cupboard alongside geographical, historical, and political facts peculiar to British India and the Empire.
Includes glossary of Indian terms.
First published in 1888, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook sought to provide practical advice to young memsahibs in India, `giving the duties of mistress and servants, the general management of the house and practical recipes for cooking in all its branches`. Ostensibly a manual of household management, it opens a fascinating window on to the day-to-day life of the British in India. Brisk, capable, humorous, highly opinionated and frequently ironic, the voice that emerges commands the reader`s attention; Steel and Gardiner`s mission to uphold British standards in Indian kitchens has illuminating parallels with the running of the British Empire, and their domestic guide reveals as much about British attitudes to India as any history book on the Raj. They explain how to `make a hold` over servants, how to establish and stock a storeroom, how to plan a menu, manage young children, treat bites from `mad, or even doubtful dogs`, and teach an Indian cook how to make fish quenelles. Whether living in camps or in the jungle, on the hills or in the plains, no British woman would be at a loss with The Complete Indian Housekeeper by her side.

The Mrs Beeton of British India, Steel and Gardiner`s classic work was hugely popular and many times reprinted. This new edition illuminates the fascinating details of imperial household economics as seen through the eyes of these two curious, intelligent, and widely travelled women.