Indian Delights: Re-reading Cookbooks and Recipes among South African Indian Women

Abstract

ABSTRACT Food and food writing are demonstrative and evocative of culture. The iconic South African Indian cookbook Indian Delights, for example, has been studied numerous times as an example of a cookbook as a cultural repository. This article provides a fresh lens through which to view the cookbook’s cultural and historical significance. An examination of Indian Delights allows for an investigation into the distinct manner in which food literature has been created by and circulated among specific groups of marginalised women, particularly in their embellishment of the text. The continued curation of personal recipe books in diverse formats, and the interplay between memory and documented knowledge, is explored through engaging with personal memories associated with Indian Delights. Infused with autoethnographic reflections, food literature is discussed as a realm of personal and communal cultural creation and recollection, as is how the communal sometimes gives way to the individual. Beyond considering food writing as a vernacular literary practice, this article highlights the role of women as glossators, recognising their ability to claim the margins as a productive domain.