Anglo-Indian cooking influences

In her book The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, Hannah Glasse details how to make a curry dish:

She also mentions the source of Piccalilli:
To make India pickle. TO a gallon of vinegar one pound of garlick, and three quarters of a pound of long pepper, a pint of mustard seed, one pound of ginger, and two ounces of tumerick; the garlick must be laid in salt three days, then wip'd clean and dry'd in the sun; the long pepper broke, and the mustard seed bruised; mix all together in the vinegar, then take two large hard cabbages, and two cauliflowers, cut them in quarters, and salt them well; let them lie three days, and dry them in the sun. N.B. The ginger must lie twenty four hours in salt and water, then cut small and laid in salt three days.
There is also a way to make paco lilla, or Indian pickle, the same the mangos come over in.


There is a dish for Indian boiled fowl:
To make a pellow the Indian way. TAKE three pounds of rice, pick and wash it very clean, put into a cullender, and let it drain very dry; take three quarters of a pound of butter, and put it into a pan over a slow fire till it melts, then put in the rice and cover it over very close, that it may keep the stream in; add to it a little salt, some whole pepper, half a dozen blades of mace, and a few cloves. You must put it in a little water to keep it from burning, then stir it up very often, and let it stew till the rice is soft. Boil two fowls, and a fine piece of bacon or about two pounds weight as common, cut the bacon in two pieces, lay it in the dish with the fowls, cover it over with the rice, and garnish it with about half a dozen hard eggs and a dozen of onions whole fried and very brown. NOTE, This is the true Indian way of dressing them.


Two other dishes seem to have found their way across the oceans to England.
Firstly khichri, a rice and bean or rice and lentil dish, which seems to have been adapted by Scottish colonists by the adding of smoked haddock which later became kedgeree, a staple of Victorian breakfast tables.
Secondly a pepper broth called milagu tanni, which in the West had tumeric and meat added to become mulligatawny.

Watier's Club

For the brief time of its existence (1809-19), Watier's at 81 Piccadilly burned brightly on the London club scene. The Prince Regent suggested the creation of a club using his French chef, Jean-Baptiste Watier – and after whom the club was named. Prinny also proposed his erstwhile friend Beau Brummell as president. According to one of the members, there is no doubt that the Beau reigned supreme: "Laying down the law in dress, in manners, and in those magnificent snuff boxes, for which there was a rage; he formented the excesses, ridiculed the scruples, patronised the novices, and exercised paramount dominion over all."
While the food was declared to be the best in London, it was the card tables which attracted the most attention. Many fortunes were lost to a "bank" that had been set up by a group of members. It was Lord Byron who coined the term "The Dandy Club" when he remarked that: "I like the dandies, they were always very civil to me."


There is no plaque marking the site and 81 Piccadilly, on the corner with Bond Street, has been substantially re-modelled. Nearest tubes Green Park or Piccadilly Circus.

Duels

While in earlier times duels were fought with swords, by the Regency pistols were most commonly used. Duels had developed from mediaeval challenges, and became a respectable way for gentlemen to resolve disputes. They would happen after an offense when, whether real or imagined, one party would demand satisfaction from the offender. This was signalled with an insulting gesture, such as throwing down a glove or the striking of the cheek – the origin of the phrase throwing down the gauntlet (again a mediaeval allusion to suits of armour). Each party would name a trusted representative (a second) who would, between them, determine a suitable "field of honour".
In 1777 in the town of Clonmel, County Tipperary a code of practice was drawn up for the regulation of duels. The Code Duello, known generally as "The twenty-six commandments", was to be kept in a gentleman's pistol case for reference should a dispute arise regarding procedure. The authorities were generally opposed to duelling but were rarely active in suppressing it, and turned a blind eye to injuries and deaths caused on the field of honour. While the reasons for the disappearance of the duel are many, they include the emergence of a new middle class in the Victorian era which was hostile to the "honour" culture, which was seen as un-Christian.
Four British Prime Ministers engaged in duels: the Earl of Shelburne (1780), William Pitt the Younger (1798), George Canning (1809) and the Duke of Wellington (1829).

Cochrane's patented Indian Vapour Bath

The Hon. Basil Cochrane claimed to have developed a form of vapour cure while in India and he determined to improve the health of London's lower classes by establishing a vapour bath at his home in Portman Square. Above is his patented example, where a person sits within a muslin tent while water vapour is fed in. In 1809 he published An Improvement on the Mode of Administering the Vapour Bath. yet despite Cochrane's assertions, vapour bathing in London was not original to him, and Hamams, or Turkish steam baths, had been established in London since the 1630s.
Shampooing (champi) and the related art, malish, were widely practiced in India, and one would chuppy the limbs to induce sleep. This was method of handling, from the feet upwards, all the limbs successively, opening the palm of the hand as if going to grip hard a handful of flesh, and yet grasping it so gently, as hardly to make any impression. Within a household a wife or servant might regularly shampoo the elders of the family or a child to induce relaxation and sleep.
After Sake Dean Mahomet began to shampoo in Cochrane's vapour bath, the idea of shampooing for health quickly seemed tobecome part of the medical jargon of London, and commercial bathhouses would include shampooing among their advertised therapies. Mahomet, however, gained little credit from Cochrane or the London public for his shampooing at the time.

Joseph Bramah's Royal Flush

Joseph Bramah was born at Stainborough Lane Farm, Wentworth in Yorkshire, in 1748, and was an inventor and locksmith. He is best known for having invented the hydraulic press, yet it was for a more domestic invention which had Georgian and Regency society had reason to thank him. He married and moved to London in 1783, where he worked for a Mr. Allen, installing water closets (toilets) which were designed to a patent obtained by one Alexander Cumming in 1775. He discovered that this model had a tendency to freeze in cold weather, and therefore improved the design by replacing the usual slide valve with a hinged flap that sealed the bottom of the bowl. Bramah obtained the patent for it in 1778, and began making toilets at a workshop in Denmark Street, St Giles. By 1797 he had sold over 6,000 of his water closets. The design was so successful that production continued well into the 19th century, and his original water closets are still working in Osborne House, Queen Victoria's home on the Isle of Wight.

Hannah Glasse's cookbook

Hannah Glasse was christened on 28th March 1708 at St Andrews church in Holborn. Yet while her father, Isaac Allgood, was a landowner from Northumberland who had recently married one Hannah Clark, her mother is said to have been the widow Hannah Reynolds. Scandal! Young Hannah was removed to Hexham in the north-east of England and brought up by the Allgoods with their legitimate children. In 1724 she married an Irish soldier, John Glasse, and returned to London. Her identity as the author of one of the most popular of 18th-century cookery books was not finally confirmed until 1938. The book, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy was published by subscription in 1747. It did not reveal its authorship, except generally with the signature By a Lady, which permitted an erroneous claim that it had been written by a man! Yet is was highly popular, and a second edition was soon printed. The same year as the book was written, John Glasse died, and Hannah set herself up as as a dressmaker in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden, in partnership with her eldest daughter Margaret. Unfortunately in 1754 she became bankrupt, though her stock was not auctioned as it was all held in Margaret’s name who continued to trade. She was, however, forced to auction her most prized asset, the copyright for The Art of Cookery. Plagiarized editions of her book became popular in the American colonies, and she unsuccessfully tried to repeat her success with The Servants Directory and The Compleat Confectioner. She died on 1st September 1770, aged 62.