Recipe Keepers

Cookbooks in India and elsewhere have always been something of an answer to the culinary anxieties produced by sweeping, destabilising social changes

- Deepa S. Reddy

Do you have family so fastidious about ensuring the exact taste of favourite foods that they buy ingredients only from preferred sources, and carry essentials on travels? If so, you're not alone. It is almost an Indian custom, a signature culinary method, to insist on such specificities—that local shop's regular supply of dhania-jeera-chilli for those precise measures of heat and flavour; tender tamarind leaves picked at the right seasonal moment, painstakingly transported, and flash-frozen in some far-off freezer to recreate Andhra specialities; rice, of course, and even water for the exact taste of a beloved khichdi. Indian families and communities have always taken great pride in their gastronomical traditions as marks of collective cultural distinction. "Specialities" and "delicacies" unique to different regions are everywhere sought after. Common elements are many, but Lonavala in Maharashtra and Kovilpatti in Tamil Nadu each have unique claims to the classic chikki.

For all this hyperlocal culinary devotion, however, Indian cookbooks appear to have awoken very late to the need to document all the regional insights we've known all along, and are now busy playing catchup. In the past quarter century, over 50 regional cuisine books on virtually all parts of India have been published, buoyed by a swelling social media interest which shows no signs of subsiding. Why did this need emerge so late? What sort of new national culinary culture is this new tranche of cookbooks trying to produce?