The Landour Cookbook : Over hundred years of Hillside Cooking – Ruskin Bond and Ganesh Saili

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.