author
Mary Kennedy Core
1863–1951
An American missionary in India, she turned everyday experience into lively, practical cookbooks that introduced many readers to Indian food. Her best-known books mix curiosity, thrift, and a clear desire to make unfamiliar ingredients and flavors feel approachable.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in 1863 and dying in 1951, Mary Kennedy Core is remembered as an American missionary with the Methodist Episcopal Church in India and as the author of several early 20th-century cookbooks.
Her best-known work, The Khaki Kook Book (1917), was published from Bareilly, India and gathered inexpensive, practical recipes, many drawn from Hindustan. Another book, Indian Cook Book, frames its recipes around the questions she was often asked about food, cooking, and daily life in India, suggesting that she wrote for readers back home who were curious about the place where she lived and worked.
What makes her writing interesting now is its blend of usefulness and cultural encounter. Rather than presenting cooking as something grand, she wrote in a direct, everyday way, offering a small window into missionary life and Anglo-Indian domestic cooking in her time.