Category Archives: Culinary History

Curry Goes to War: Indian Army Field Rations in World War Two

By Pradeep Barua

The Indian Army participated in both  world wars in the twentieth century. During the First World War (1914-1918,) 1.3 million Indian soldiers fought for the British Empire. Another two million men joined the Indian Army and fought for the allies in World War Two (1939-1945).[i] In the latter case, feeding this massive army in various theatres of war, ranging from the jungles of Burma (Myanmar) to the deserts of North Africa to the frozen Apennines of Italy, proved to be a major challenge for the Army.

Alongside the challenges of the battlefield and terrain, the Indian Army was also a multi-faith army comprised of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. In addition to religious differences, Hindu and Sikh soldiers were subject to caste considerations. Food and rations had to be prepared along strict guidelines to adhere to caste and religious sensitivities. Two cooks or Langris were assigned to a company of soldiers (about 100 men). Depending on the company’s composition, the cooks would be Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, and of a particular caste as needed. The presence of the Langris ensured that food for the different religions and castes was provided for in the right way. The Indian Army also supplied stackable cooking pots, so soldiers could prepare their own meals in the field. This was especially important to high caste Brahmin Hindu soldiers who had to prepare and eat their own food in order to preserve their caste status.[ii]

Frontline British soldiers had access to 24-hour ration packs that included tinned bully beef, spam, steak, kidney pudding and sausages. These were not acceptable to Indian soldiers, and it was subsequently a challenge to keep them fed on the frontlines. To aid in this, dehydrated lentils, fish, vegetables, and fruit were provided to Indian soldiers engaged in combat.[iii] Indian soldiers, like their British counterparts, also foraged for fresh eggs, fish, and poultry as the situation allowed.

Whether it was lentils, fish, or meat, the favorite form of preparation was a curry. It was slow cooked in a pot and served on an enameled metal plate roughly 12 inches across.[iv] The slow cooking tenderized hard dehydrated lentils, dry fish, and even tough cuts of meat. Crucial to the curry was the addition of a blend of powdered spices that each Indian soldier carefully hoarded and carried into the frontlines. A base curry spice blend included turmeric, cumin, and coriander. To this, people added other spices such as chili, black pepper, cinnamon, or nutmeg depending on regional preferences. The curry was usually eaten with a flat wheat bread called the chapatti, which was made every day by the Langris. The curry and the chapattis became synonymous with Indian troops in various theatres of conflict. Many civilians in the combat zones, who were assisted by Indian troops, fondly recall the food that the Indian soldiers shared with them. In Italy, for example, villagers today remember with gratitude the curries and chapattis that Indian soldiers distributed among them to relieve starvation during the Italian campaign in World War Two.[v]

Food traditions of the Indian Army developed at the regimental level. The regimental messes evolved and enshrined curry recipes over periods of up to a century.[vi] This knowledge was passed on to the regiment’s battalion cooks. On festive occasions these dishes were cooked in the rear areas and transported to soldiers in forward positions.

What follows is a small representation of curry recipes unique to Indian Army Regiments:

Assam Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment fought mainly in Assam and Burma during the Second World War. An iconic dish is Machoor Tenga Jhool or Fish Sour Curry.

A bowl of red curry with seafood.
Fig. 1. Machoor Tenga Jhool or Fish Sour Curry. Image courtesy of author.

Jammu & Kashmir Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment also fought in Burma during the Second World War. Its iconic dish is Rogan Josh or Mutton Curry.

A bowl of brown curry with mutton.
Fig. 2. Rogan Josh or Mutton Curry. Image courtesy of the author.

Sikh Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment fought in all the major theatres of war that the Indian Army participated in during the Second World War. Its iconic dish is Sarson ki Saag aur Makki ka Roti or Mustard Greens Curry and corn flat bread.

A plate of green curry with a flatbread.
Fig. 3. Sarson ki Saag aur Makki ka Roti or mustard greens curry and corn flat bread. Image courtesy of the author.

Ultimately, the Indian Army regiments enshrined regional customs and traditions. Food served an essential purpose in maintaining these regional identities. The Indian soldiers’ curry rations played a vital role in ensuring that the Indian Army’s morale and well-being was in the best condition during the Second World War.

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[i] See Pradeep Barua, The Late Colonial Indian Army: From the Afghan Wars to the Second World War (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021).

[ii] “An Army Marches on its Stomach,” National Army Museum, UK, https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/army-marches-its-stomach

[iii] Kristen Ann Ehrenberger, “Dehydrated Rations for Indian Soldiers in the Second World War,” H-Nutrition, 22 June 2017, https://networks.h-net.org/node/134048/discussions/182894/dehydrated-rations-indian-soldiers-second-world-war

[iv] “Tales From the Supply Depot: Indian Army Enameled Plate,” 18 May 2015, https://hatchfive.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/indian-army-enamelled-plate/

[v] War and Chapati: The Role of Indian Soldiers in Italy during WWII, documentary produced by Assocoiazione Universarte and directed by Harvinder Singh, https://globalhistorydialogues.org/projects/war-and-chapati/

[vi] Regimental Zaikas: Indian Army Regimental Dishes (Bangalore: ASC Centre and College, 2019).


Pradeep Barua is Professor of History at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He is the author of several books on South Asia and military history including Gentlemen of the Raj, The State at War in South Asia, The Military Effectiveness of Post-Colonial States, and The Late Colonial Indian Army.

Remembering Francisco Solano López’s Foodways in Paraguay

By Bridget María Chesterton   

Map highlighting the territorial disputes of the War of the Triple Alliance
Map highlighting the territorial disputes of the War of the Triple Alliance. By Hoodinski, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The defeat of Paraguay by its powerful neighbors, Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, during the War of the Triple Alliance (1864-1870) left the country in ruins. The complex causes of the war can be boiled down to the fact that Paraguayans sought to limit the growing power and influence of Brazil in Uruguay’s politics and economics. As Paraguayans held off their enemies over a number of years, the Paraguayan military and population was forced to feed itself on nothing more than oranges, manioca (yucca), and the occasional emaciated cow. It was a military and a country on a forced starvation diet.

The President and dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano López (popularly known by his military title “el Mariscal”), had led his country into this disastrous conflagration that left more than 90% of the male population dead from battlefield injuries and disease, but mostly from starvation. Struggling to understand Paraguay’s defeat in war, post-war intellectuals were quick to blame Solano López. However, by the 1930s, narratives about the war were changing. A new Liberal elite born after the war began to remember Solano López as a “hero” who saved the country from being totally dismembered by the allies. This stemmed from the logic that, while the country was certainly defeated in the war, it—and its people—remained.    

These new national narratives took many forms, including recipes. In 1931, Raquel Livieres de Artecona published the first Paraguayan cookbook. She stated in the introduction that it was written in the new “nationalist orientation [for] public education.” [i] For Livieres, the primary purpose of her book was to educate Paraguayan students about their glorious culinary past.

Newspaper article featuring picture of Raquel Liveres de Artecona.
Fig. 2. Image of Raquel Liveres de Artecona, in the public domain.

These recollections and recipes—based on the oral testimonies of women who remembered the war—proved to be powerful reminders of the importance of culinary survival after a devastating defeat.[ii] As an oral historian, Livieres recorded the memories of female survivors and their recipes. Not only did she collect the recipes, but she also named each individual woman who contributed to her collection. While it is impossible to tell where in Paraguay many of these women lived, it is most likely that the majority of the women lived in and around Asunción and were both white and elite, like Livieres. Even though not all Paraguayan women were included in this tome, some of the war’s survivors are remembered and also acknowledged and given a place in the broader history of Paraguay. By preserving these voices, not only had the country and its women survived the war, but its food traditions had also made survival possible. It was fundamental, then, to honor the past with foods that were beloved by the nation’s most important war hero, el Mariscal.

Livieres’ book, one of the few works written by a woman in the Liberal era (1904-1936), highlights the “heroic” food choices of el Mariscal.[iii] Written at the height of Liberal era politics in Paraguay and immediately following the broad educational reform in 1925 that refocused education in Paraguay along nationalistic lines, the text aligns with the new educational plan developed in the country.[iv] The cookbook was designed to be used in public schools in home economics courses throughout the nation and as a result found a wide audience among female Paraguayan students. As noted by the famed Paraguayan Liberal-era writer and intellectual Manuel Domínguez in the prologue of the cookbook, the book highlights “how our forefathers fed themselves” and thus “was one of the reasons, tested in war, behind their nutritive strength.”[v] During the Liberal era, Paraguayan food memory thus became a place where Paraguayans could take pride in their nation. 

Exploiting ideas of historical revisionism surrounding Solano Lopez, certain recipes in the cookbook were highlighted as “preferences” of the newly minted hero of the war and of Paraguay more generally. Writing that “a cream cake” and a “tomato jelly” were favorites of el Mariscal, Livieres taps into a clearly patriotic national narrative and a shared food recollection that honors the memory of Solano López.

A Spanish version of Livieres de Artecona's recipe for Tomato Jelly with Wedges
Fig. 3. Image used with permission of the owner, Carlos Vera Abed.

An English translation of Livieres de Artecona's recipe for Tomato Jelly with WedgesThrough this text, teaching women about the recipes from their nation’s history was a way to build the country’s heroic past for new generations born after the war. Thus, the text serves as a foundational intellectual work for the new Liberal era in Paraguay. Acknowledging Liveres as an intellectual in her own right gives women a place in the making of a new Paraguay.

 


 

[i] Raquel Livieres de Artecona, La Cocinera Paraguay (Asunción: La Colmena S.A. 1931), np.

[ii] Livieres de Artecona, La Cocinera Paraguay, 10.

[iii] For more on the remaking of Solano López as a national hero, see Bridget Maria Chesterton, The Grandchildren of Solano López: Frontier and Nation in Paraguay (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2013).

[iv] David Velázquez Seiferheld, “’Desratizar la enseñanza es una tarea auténticamente nacionalista…’: La polémica sobre el nacionalismo y la Escuela Nueva. (1925-1941),” Historia de la educación – anuario 16 no. 2 (December 2015).

[v] Manuel Domínguez, “Prolog,” in Raquel Livieres de Artecona, La Cocinera Paraguay (Asunción: La Colmena S.A., 1931), np.

 


Bridget María Chesterton is Professor of History at Buffalo State University where she teaches Latin American History and Commodities Histories. Her current book project is entitled Hotel Guaraní: The Brazilianization of the Paraguayan Middle Class during the Stroessner Era and is currently under contract with the University of Pittsburgh Press. She has also published in Food and Global History, Journal of Women’s History, Hispanic American Historical Review, and Journal of Social History among others. Her email is chestebm@buffalostate.edu.

Recipe Sharing Across the Channel: French Recipe for Plum Pudding

By Lauren Owens

Plum pudding is a classic dish in English cuisine. Indeed, the boiled sweet is one of those cultural markers associated with England, and yet it features ingredients that are not native to England: currants, raisins, nutmeg, and ginger. These ingredients make tangible (and edible)the reach of the British Empire.1 By the eighteenth century, boiling was a cooking trend that had largely died out in continental Europe, yet printed French texts from the nineteenth century show that plum pudding had made its way to France.2 How did knowledge of this dish spread to Europe? I found this document while doing archival research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France Arsenal location in Paris.3 This recipe for plum pudding was in a folder of random culinary recipes. I was looking for medical recipes and remedies, but this folder caught my eye with its contents: recipes for cheese, strawberry syrups, almond cake, and how to conserve vegetables. Finding this folder was a treat while working in the archive. It provided another area of recipe production that I was not actively looking for. 

“Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2#

This recipe shows that knowledge about popular cultural dishes was shared across the pond much earlier than the published texts indicate. This recipe was titled, “recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” and follows popular English recipes for the dish.4 However, this record is distinct in two ways. It features two sets of handwriting, showing that someone added to this recipe and altered the ingredients to their tastes. Second, this new author added two spoonfuls of brandy and two spoonfuls of powdered sugar to the recipe while the English recipe uses the natural sweetness of the dried fruit for the sugar content. This source is significant for showing the process of recipe alteration and adaptation. 

I decided to make the pudding at home. My sources often lack specific voices and explanations behind the recipe. This opportunity allowed me to think like the people I study.

“Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2#

I began by cutting a pound of softened butter; the recipe called for suet, lard, tallow, or butter. Butter was the cost-effective choice. I folded the currents and raisins into the butter with my hands so they would fuse. Next, I grated a loaf of white bread into fine pieces and then folded that into the butter. The butter, dried fruits, and bread mixed gave off a strong smell of apple cider vinegar. I added nutmeg, ginger, and a dash of salt.

Image taken by the author.

I separated eight egg yolks from their whites and saved four whites to add to a pint of milk. After adding the liquids, I created powdered sugar in a mortar and pestle and added two spoonsful to the mix with the liqueur; this added richness and sweetness to the batter. The recipe called for the batter to be thick enough for a wooden spoon to stand on its own.

Image taken by the author.

The next step was prepping my cheesecloth for boiling. I soaked the cloth in hot water and added the filling.5 Now, it was time to boil: though it was not large (about the size of a grapefruit), this pudding took five hours. To keep the pudding submerged, I had to keep adding water as it was cooking on the highest heat of my stove. By the end, the water resembled that of a beef tea. Got Bovril? 

Image taken by the author.

Finally, the taste: what does an eighteenth-century plum pudding taste like? Well…it tastes like wet bread and raisins. The smell resembled that of eggy bread, which makes sense considering the main ingredients were a loaf of bread, eight yolks, and milk. It was not bad, but it lacked significant flavor, and my pudding did not conform fully during the boiling process. My expectations were low in terms of taste, but the experience was certainly rewarding. This experiment has helped me find creative methods for conducting my dissertation research when I find myself lacking creativity and struggling to find the words to write about my recipes. This research has helped me with how I think about recipe production. The lack of diagrams or sketches to follow made me focus on the directions. I found myself having to work and think more slowly than I usually do in the kitchen. I relied more on my sense of smell and touch with this recipe. The lack of images with this recipe was freeing for this attempt—I was not worried about looks. I wanted the demonstration to work. I would argue that in modern-day recipes, there are almost too many images; this can inhibit the adaptable nature of cooking and recipe development. The images provided with a recipe signify that the experiment has worked; these ingredients cooked at this temperature will make this product–great—but too many images could lead to feelings of failure if the final product does not match the source. I have learned from this experiment (quite literally) that the proof is in the pudding, to understand the individuals who made these recipes we must be willing to try it their way, but we must also be willing to modify and change the recipes for our liking. I would have added dates, cinnamon, and more sugar to this pudding for a stronger flavor and sweetness.

Boiling the pudding. Image taken by the author.

These sources are evidence that popular recipes passed back and forth between countries earlier than the printed texts show. This French recipe shows how these individuals altered the English plum pudding to their tastes after experimenting with the original source. By continuing to use recipes to unpack the development of cultural cuisines and national dishes, we can understand how people made sense of their class status and cooking knowledge and developed their tastes during the eighteenth century with the influx of new ingredients, foods, and tastes.

The finished pudding. Image taken by the author.

Lauren Owens is a PhD candidate at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida. Lauren is working on her dissertation on recipe and remedy production and cultures of health and wellness in eighteenth-century France. Follow @lowenshistory on X for sporadic tweets and the occasional meme.

 

  1. Kaori O’Connor. “The King’s Christmas Pudding: Globalization, Recipes, and the Commodities of Empire,” Journal of Global History 4, no. 1, (2009): 127-55. ↩︎
  2. The French recipes are featured in Antoine Beauvillier’s L’art du cuisiner published in 1814, and Émile Littrés dictionnaire de la langue française (Littré) Tome 3, in 1843, respectively. These texts do not elaborate much on the recipes for plum pudding, in fact, in L’art du cuisiner, the dish is listed under the salad category, as “plombpoutinge, sauce au vin de Malaga.” A.B, Beauvilliers, A. B, Katherine Golden Bitting Collection on Gastronomy, and Elizabeth Robins Pennell Collection. L’art Du Cuisinier. A Paris: Chez Pilet, Imprimeur-Libraire, 1814. Pdf. https://www.loc.gov/item/07023590/ 
    Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la Langue Française (Littré) Tome 3, Hachette, Paris, 1873. Dictionnaire D’autrefois Public Access Collection. https://artflsrv04.uchicago.edu/philologic4.7/publicdicos/navigate/16/18643?byte=25827192. 2024 ↩︎
  3. “Recette pour faire les puddings à l’anglaise: le plum pudding,” Supplément 4: Ms-12728 to à la fin. Ms-15701. Mélanges XVIIe-XVIIIe. Bibliothéque National de France Arsenal, Paris, France. https://archivesetmanuscrits.bnf.fr/pageCollections.html?col=2#  ↩︎
  4. Hannah Glasse, The art of cookery made plain and easy/ by a Lady (Hannah Glasse). 1747. Book. London: Prospect Books, 1983. The Wellcome Collection. 2024. ↩︎
  5. Glasse, The art of cookery made plain and easy/ by a Lady. ↩︎

Stovetop Solidarity: “Recipes for Semi-Starvation” and Antipoverty Organizing in American Cities

By Kimba Stahler

Flipping through recipe cards or a cookbook is not the apolitical exercise some might think. Whether picked by workers earning a fair wage in a safe environment or transported by truck drivers fighting for a better union contract, ingredients politicize meals.

Historically and recently, American consumer boycotts have moved the picket line to the checkout counter. Refusing to buy meat in 1935, Delano grapes in 1969, or Starbucks coffee in 2024 meant standing against high prices, labor rights violations, and corporations’ political machinations.

Ingredients contain another critical political dimension. Given food’s ability to gather, meal preparation and consumption are central to grassroots movements. One progressive student organization in the 1960s, the Students for a Democratic Society, devised a meal-time strategy in their “interracial movement of the poor.” From 1964 to 1966, that community organizing campaign established projects in fourteen Northern, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern cities. Full-time staff and summer volunteers organized locals while living in the same derelict housing as their constituents. But they didn’t just live locally: they ate locally too, serving similar dishes to the families who lived in these neighborhoods full-time. Over 500 white middle-class young people circulated and followed what they called “recipes for semi-starvation.” By adhering to welfare recipients’ budgets, they cooked up community and solidarity.

Community organizing and the “recipes for semi-starvation” brought together Americans who lived in two different societies. Many Students for a Democratic Society members grew up in the suburbs with access to pocket money and went on to college classes after finishing high school. Antioch College freshman Christopher Overs felt confident that summer organizing in Cleveland, twenty-five miles from his suburban home, would not jeopardize his fall tuition. Similarly, Elaine Lipshutz, a sophomore at Radcliffe College, could dedicate her school breaks to the Boston project, headquartered a twenty-five-minute walk from campus, rather than waged labor. Relocating these relatively short distances, Overs, Lipshutz, and hundreds of others entered another social world.

A summer organizing in inner cities introduced undergraduates to the estimated forty million impoverished Americans, a demographic hidden from their childhood neighborhoods. Living in derelict housing in Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, Boston, and other cities, they talked with their new neighbors, white and Black families that postwar affluence had left behind. Many were un- or underemployed men and single mothers receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a program referred to as welfare. In discussions of daily struggles, the white students offered possible political solutions and invitations to tenant councils, unemployment unions, and welfare rights meetings.

Charlotte Brooks, “Image from LOOK – Job 65-2559 titled Divorced mother,” 18 Oct. 1965. Photograph shows divorced single mother Vi Erker eating dinner with her son Gary, Saint Louis, Missouri. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress. https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/ds.08295

Voluntarily enduring poverty, progressives built community bonds and signaled their commitment to ending economic injustice partly through food. Both short-term volunteers like Harpur College student Judith Bernstein and full-time staff such as University of Michigan alumnus Carol McEldowney reckoned with the disparity between middle-class and low-income plates. Breakfast sometimes consisted of a single egg or an ounce of corn flakes topped with reconstituted milk. Between community meetings, they stuffed day-old bread with liverwurst and lettuce. After a long day of door-knocking, they often sat down to a dinner of liver and onions, creamed chicken over biscuits, or split pea soup with a salad dressed simply with a mayonnaise and ketchup mixture.[1] Their menus and their tireless efforts persuaded some locals that they were sincere and reliable social justice activists.

Eating what their neighbors could afford, the students came face-to-face with the political implications of welfare. Poor families could rely on the social safety net established by the New Deal and the War on Poverty. As countless learned firsthand, however, financial and material assistance programs afforded a bare minimum, placing countless commodities out of reach. The Cleveland project whittled their daily food allowance to forty-three cents per person, replicating the budget welfare programs provided.[2] Features of middle-class tables, like orange juice, were far too costly. “Don’t buy it unless the group shows signs of scurvy,” project leaders instructed.[3]

Through the Students for a Democratic Society’s organizational and culinary efforts, they established and revived grassroots antipoverty organizations that helped a national movement for economic justice to flourish. Their efforts most fruitful efforts were with single mothers who received welfare. They assisted the Citizens United for Adequate Welfare in Cleveland and Mothers for Adequate Welfare in Boston, organizations that channeled numerous welfare recipient activists into the National Welfare Rights Organization. While organizing at the grassroots, Students for a Democratic Society leaders used cuisine to establish interpersonal and political relationships between the sons and daughters of postwar affluence and less fortunate Americans.

[1] Recipes for Semi-Starvation, n.d., box 29, folder 2, Students for a Democratic Society records, 1958-1970, Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections, Madison, Wisconsin (hereafter SDS records).

[2] Hugh to O and C, July 29, 1964, box 24, folder 5, SDS records.

[3] Recipes for Semi-Starvation, n.d., box 29, folder 1, SDS records.

 

Kimba Stahler is a Humanities Without Walls Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities Institute at Penn State University. She is a historian of US women’s and gender history and social justice movements. She specializes in twentieth century antipoverty and feminist movements. Her research interests include participatory democracy, alliance formation among grassroots activists and organizations, and identity politics. 

For Kimba’s dissertation research, she conducted oral histories to uncover how members of the Students for a Democratic Society living in Cleveland constructed that organization’s most successful grassroots organizing campaign during the 1960s. Using those oral histories, she produced a story-telling podcast entitled “Visions of Democracy” that encourages listeners to think about the various forms that democratic participation takes. Her current book project, tentatively titled Rats in Common: The Untold History of Cleveland’s Interracial Welfare Rights Movement, explores how white middle-class political organizers and poor white and Black single mothers forged productive political relationships out of their shared commitment to radical forms of American democracy.