Wyvern

Culinary Jottings for Madras Wyvern

The Colonel's Jottings, which he published under the name 'Wyvern', is wonderful for many reasons, of which nostalgia is just one. Including anecdotes from his career which spanned from 1859, just after the Rising, to 1892, near the apogee of the Raj, the book was never meant to be a memoir. It really is, as he explained with full Victorian floridness: "A Treatise in Thirty Chapters on Reformed Cookery for Anglo-Indian Exiles Based Upon Modern English and Continental Principles with Thirty Menus For Little Dinners Worked Out in Detail." The chapters cover every aspect of the kitchen, from the cook and his management, the store-room, and the batterie de cuisine, to all dishes suitable for dainty dining, as well as excellent chapters on 'Our Curries', 'Camp Cookery 'and 'Our Kitchens in India'. There are extensive model menus for parties of six or eight people, or for 'Little Home Dinners'. Elizabeth David said of this book: 'I should recommend anyone with a taste for Victorian gastronomic literature to snap him up... His recipes are so meticulous and clear, that the absolute beginner could follow them, yet at the same time he has much to teach the experienced cook.'