Feeding the Imperial Appetite: Imperial Knowledge and Anglo-Indian Discourse

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, a spate of cookbooks and household management guides appeared that were intended to assist British women in running their households in India. In this article, the author argues that these texts constructed a new approach to imperial domesticity. Rather than mimicking the labor-intensive approach to household management common in the metropole, British women in India adopted a "hands-off" approach to housekeeping that allowed them to devote their attentions to other pursuits, including the work of empire.