The Landour Cookbook

Ruskin Bond's first novel, The Room on the Roof, written when he was seventeen, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. Since then he has written several novels (including Vagrants in the Valley, A Flight of Pigeons and Delhi Is Not Far), essays, poems and children's books, many of which have been published by Penguin India. He has also written over 500 short stories and articles that have appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies. He received the Sahitya Akademi Award in 1993 and the Padma Shri in 1999.In the 1920s Mrs. Lucas, wife of the pastor of Kellogg Church in Landour joined Irene Parker, the wife of Allen Parker, principal of Woodstock School to form a reading club. They would meet every week at the new Community Centre (built in 1928) and soon created a cook book, sharing favourite recipes from the homes of the others living in the hillside. First published in 1930, the book was not only an invaluable collection of tried and tested recipes but also an infallible guide to homemaking and entertaining, with household hints, nutrition information and cooking methods at high altitudes. This was the age of no refrigerators and makeshift ovens on stove tops so a lot of practical information about substitutes and methods was also included. For example, cream of tartar was available only in a chemist shop help on these matters was also provided in The Landour Cook Book. The book was a labour of love as the ladies volunteered their time and efforts to jointly work on the project, the sales from the book went back to the reading club. Most of the recipes had the name (sometimes just the initials) of the contributor, so if you always loved Mrs. Rice's coffee cake you now had her recipe. Nearly a century later The Landour Cookbook remains a useful and charming cookbook that holds the secret recipes of so many families that made the quaint Landour their home.