The_Complete_Indian_Housekeeper_and_Cook
The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook is a book on housekeeping during the British Raj. Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiner, each the wife of a British civil servant in India, published the first edition of the book in 1888 after having lived in India for some years. They revised and reprinted the book several times.
The book is significant in modern times as a historical record of daily home living among the British in India. Though it focuses on domestic tasks, it reveals much about British attitudes to India in the late nineteenth century. Steel and Gardiner's mission was to uphold Victorian standards in Indian kitchens, and in their advice for memsahibs explain how to "make hold" over their Indian servants.[1]