Mango Fool with 'Indian' Gingerbread
When reflecting on Britain’s colonial past there is little to wave a flag about. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the distinct branch of cookery that emerged from the days of the British Raj which produced a raft of Anglo-Indian recipes.
Let us be clear, these are not authentic Indian recipes but rather a curious imagining of Indian food by English cooks. Some of these recipes are bloody awful and deserve to be buried. Others, like some of those found in The Indian Cookery Book by a Thirty Five Years Resident (1880) or Anglo-Indian Cookery at Home: A Short Treatise for Returned Exiles by Henrietta Hervey are rather good, even if they are a million miles from whatever dish originally inspired them.
Hervey, the wife of a retired Indian Officer, published her book in 1895. Having spent twenty-three years living in India she felt compelled to write a recipe book for women who ‘having quitted the East, may still hanker, now and again, after the fleshpots of the land of their exile’ claiming that even ‘raw country Essex girls’ employed as servants could be taught to cook this food as well as an Indian ‘cook-boy’. (While the recipes may be palatable the language and overt racism in these books is not to modern tastes. They are sadly a product of their time.)
Some of Hervey’s recipes do rely on curry powder for their spicing (Crosse & Blackwell’s was her go-to brand although she also provides her own formula for curry powder and a curry paste) but others use fresh ginger, tamarind, chillies and whole spices. She even gives a recipe for making ghee which she ‘strongly advises [adopting] when making up anything from this little book.’ Her recipes for Tamarind Fish and Ding Dong (slices of beef marinated in a paste of chillies, garlic, saffron and sugar) with fresh mint chutney are among my favourite Anglo-Indian dishes.
This Mango Fool recipe shows that England was never far from the ‘exiles’ thoughts particularly when it came to the subject of puddings. It is virtually identical to one found in The Indian Cookery Book which was written as ‘a practical handbook to the kitchen in India.’ Rather than custard or thick cream combined with fruit in contemporary fool recipes both books insist on using fresh or pure milk (I found this surprising in itself as my immediate assumption was that tinned milk would have been used in India for this sort of recipe due to the climate and lack of refrigeration in the day). The result is more akin to a thick custard than a moussey fool but it makes for a refreshing, light summer dessert.
The Indian Cookery Book by an unknown author is probably my favourite Anglo-Indian cookbook. It contains a fantastic combination of Anglo-Indian curries (the Fowl Quorema and Vindaloo recipes were hits at my Repast Supper Club) and home comforts, like cakes and steamed puddings. There are a number of gingerbread recipes in the book including one which uses a sugar syrup in place of treacle and another which includes cayenne pepper as one of the spices. I have picked elements from several of these variations to create the recipe below, taken from my first book First Catch Your Gingerbread, which is not dissimilar to a ginger nut biscuit in appearance with a more cookie like texture.
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