Review: Culinary Culture in Colonial India

Rituparna Patgiri

doi:10.21428/92775833.64bd313f

Abstract

Review: Culinary Culture in Colonial India

Highlights

Utsa Ray’s Culinary Culture in Colonial India is an attempt to understand the relationship between the urban middle class in colonial Bengal and its cuisine
Throughout the book, Ray demonstrates how cuisine became central to a Bengali middle class/upper caste consciousness during the period of British colonial rule from 1757 to 1947
Ray’s book illustrates that economic status cannot be the only criterion used to define the middle class. The rise of this distinct Bengali cuisine was embedded in the material culture of the region, that is, it grew in the climate of interaction with colonial culture and modernity

Summary

Introduction

Utsa Ray’s Culinary Culture in Colonial India is an attempt to understand the relationship between the urban middle class in colonial Bengal and its cuisine. Throughout the book, Ray demonstrates how cuisine became central to a Bengali middle class/upper caste consciousness during the period of British colonial rule from 1757 to 1947. It was inherently domestic and spiritual in its nature, though this is not to say that Bengali cuisine in the Indian colonial period did not have flavors of cosmopolitanism.

Results

Conclusion