"I have prepared and tasted the 70 recipes in my book A grandmother’s legacy at least six or seven times each,” says 57-year-old British writer Jenny Mallin about her first publication. Mallin was delivering a presentation titled "A grandmother’s legacy — a memoir of five generations who lived through the days of the Raj” at the K. R. Cama Oriental Institute (KRCOI) on December 7, 2015.
Stating that her book is a tribute to five generations of women starting with her great-great-great-grandmother Wilhelmina ("a memsaab at 15”) who lived through the days of the Raj and the subsequent decade, Mallin recounted how the handwritten recipes that had come down over the generations captured her imagination as a child. Narrating that the 12” by 16” ledger crammed with recipes, which is now almost falling apart, was treated with deep veneration in her mother’s kitchen, Mallin revealed that it was always kept in the topmost shelf of the cabinet. Containing over 500 recipes collected from various parts of the country where her ancestors had lived — Bangalore and Madras in particular — between 1845 and the immediate post-Independence era, Mallin talked about her dilemma: should she have gone public with the family heirloom or should she not have? "Maybe a part of me wanted to keep the recipes secret and not ‘betray’ my grandmothers’ secrets,” she smiles.
The precious volume; grandmas Wilhelmina, Ophelia, Maud, Irene, Cynthia and author Jenny Mallin
The erstwhile BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) researcher began writing the book to distract her grieving mother Cynthia after her father suddenly died of a heart attack. Jenny was trekking in the Himalayas at the time of his unexpected death. The book, which was published in June 2015, has what Mallin considers "a mix of the well-known and the unusual” from the tome her female ancestors maintained and preserved. She has interspersed her recipe book with personal anecdotes, pictures and images of her ancestors’ handwriting (and its analyses!). It was a tough job, she says, to convert sometimes unheard of measures like seer (approximately 2 lbs) to the metric system and to harmonize spellings. Calling the book a time capsule, Mallin says it provides "us with many clues to my family’s life style.”
Mallin’s presentation included images of certain recipes annotated by her ancestors, even marked, in one instance, by an "Om” (Hindu symbol of the absolute) and a "swastika” (symbol of auspiciousness) prompting her to remark, "one of my grandmothers definitely had a Hindu cook.”
In a foreword to the book Cyrus Todiwala, UK based celebrity chef, calls it a "charming, funny and moving memoir accompanied by some great dishes,” and hopes he can feature many of these on his menus in times to come.
In her welcome address, Dr Nawaz Mody joint honorary secretary of the KRCOI mentioned that the culinary arts was a relatively unusual topic for a talk at the Institute and called the book important from the point of view of "diasporic studies and the colonial legacy.”
The book, which was three-and-a-half years in the making, is available on Amazon (India) for Rs 3,500. F. J.