Saving our kitchen heirlooms

In their first year at Punersquos FLAME University when classmates Ananya Pujary Muskaan Pal and Khushi Gupta were tasked with a project for their digital humanities course they decided to dip into Pujaryrsquos Mangalorean roots for inspiration ldquoInitially I thought of creating a repository of recipes from Mangalore specifically of the Tuluva people I realised that my community has strong oral traditions but not a lot of written documentation which is important to continue the transfer of knowledgerdquo Pujary shares adding that while growing up abroad food was a means to create a sense of belongingAn edition of the Bengali cookbook PakPranali 18831906However while researching the trio realised that proper documentation was lacking not just in the case of the Tuluva people but also several other communities in India ldquoWe found this strange since food constitutes a huge part of cultural identity and in a country as diverse as India culinary traditions are bound to vary across classes castes religions and regionsrdquo she adds Thatrsquos when the three students decided to adopt a panIndia approach and developed the online repository Indian Community Cookbook ProjectThe openaccess archive of communityspecific cookbooks recipes and culinary traditions was set up in 2019 but itrsquos only now that they have managed to build a sizable collection From handwritten notes on how to concoct fish Ranchod a Mangalorean dish to Naga recipes like dried axone pork and rosup that the trio acquired through Instagram exchanges with the cast of the film Axone mdash the website is a treasure trove of vibrant desi fare and the many influences it represents In an age where recipes are bottled into 15second videos making sense of the scribbled notes on Sindhi delicacies including dhingri a mushroompeaspotato gravy or scrolling through the Marathi cookbook Panchalichi Thali reminds us in a way of the days when wersquod race to jot down chef Sanjeev Kapoorrsquos recipes as hersquod smile away on the TV monitorThe Goan Cookrsquos Guide 1926The website is divided into three sections ldquoTherersquos the archives section where wersquove documented recipes passed down orally among families or communities It also includes handwritten recipes and excerpts from family cookbooksrdquo explains Pal The team has also worked on timelines of cuisines including Goan Bengali AngloIndian and Tamil chronologically mapping published cookbooks up till the 1990srsquo era of commercialisationThe archive comprises recipes collected from family cookbooks publications as well as those passed down orally Bagara baingan from the BangaloreMuslim cuisineldquoTherersquos also a modern cookbook story section where wersquove created a map of contemporary cookbooks across Indiardquo Pal adds This threepronged approach to documenting culinary traditions has helped them to critically engage with their collection ldquoWe looked at whether the collection reflects socioeconomic influences what role food plays in shaping identity the politics of inclusion and exclusion and so onrdquo Gupta tells us For example they point out that if one were to browse the Bengali cuisine timeline one can see that the first printed cookbook Pakrajeshwar 1831 had a lot of influences of the Mughal period ldquoLater there were colonial influences with diet patterns changing One can also see the role of gender around 1884 a lot of periodicals carried recipes aimed at homemakersrdquo Pal notesRosup from Nagaland Pics CourtesyIndian Community Cookbook ProjectThe students admit that what started off as coursework has now turned into a passion project ldquoLike a lot of humanities research this too has no ending point Itrsquos an evergrowing collectionrdquo Gupta signs offLog on to communitycookbookswixsitecomwebsite