How Madhur Jaffrey Introduced Indian Cooking to the World

The Actress Who Could Cook

In 1966, when New York Times food critic Craig Claiborne arrived at a borrowed Manhattan apartment for an interview, the woman cooking in the kitchen was, on paper, a stage and film actress. Producer Ismail Merchant had persuaded Claiborne to profile her as "the actress who could cook," hoping the piece would help publicize one of his films.

That single profile set in motion the book deal that would turn Madhur Jaffrey into one of the most influential figures in bringing Indian cooking to Western kitchens — a career that began, almost by accident, with a stage performer who happened to know how to cook.

A Childhood Shaped by Partition

Born on 13 August 1933 in the Civil Lines area of Delhi, then British India, Jaffrey grew up in a Kayastha Hindu family and witnessed the 1947 partition of India firsthand, watching the transfer of power at India Gate and, a year later, attending one of Mahatma Gandhi's prayer meetings shortly before his assassination.

She studied English literature at Delhi University's Miranda House and joined the Unity Theatre, a repertory company founded by actor Saeed Jaffrey, whom she would later marry.

London: RADA and Recipes by Airmail

A scholarship took Jaffrey to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London in 1955, where her classmates included Diana Rigg, Siân Phillips and Glenda Jackson. What she struggled with was food: London had only a handful of Indian restaurants, and the RADA canteen, she later told NPR, served "a sort of slice of roast beef, which was gray," with cabbage and potatoes cooked for hours.

Unable to cook the dishes she missed, she wrote to her mother in Delhi, who mailed back recipes handwritten on onionskin paper — the correspondence that would later form the core of her first cookbook.

New York, Merchant Ivory and a Silver Bear

In New York, dinners hosted by Jaffrey and her then-husband Saeed brought together producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory, the founders of Merchant Ivory Productions. Jaffrey starred in the partnership's early film Shakespeare Wallah (1965), winning the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival.

From Profile to Cookbook Deal

Claiborne's 1966 profile led to a book contract. After early rejections, the manuscript reached Knopf editor Judith Jones — the same editor who had championed Julia Child — who acquired it immediately. An Invitation to Indian Cooking was published in 1973 and was inducted into the James Beard Foundation's Cookbook Hall of Fame in 2006.

A Parallel Life on Screen

Jaffrey never left acting behind. She married violinist Sanford Allen in 1969 and raised three daughters, including Sakina Jaffrey, later known for playing Linda Vasquez in House of Cards. Madhur Jaffrey herself kept working on screen through the 1990s and 2000s, appearing in Six Degrees of Separation, Vanya on 42nd Street, Flawless and A Late Quartet.

Television, Dawat and Lasting Honors

The BBC series Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery (1982) made her a pioneer of Indian cooking on Western television, followed by the Manhattan restaurant Dawat (1986), for which she consulted on recipes. She continued acting throughout, including a lead role and co-directing credit on Cotton Mary (1999).

She was appointed CBE in 2004 and received India's Padma Bhushan in 2022. Her cookbooks have won a total of six James Beard Foundation awards, capped by a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023. She continues to live between Manhattan and upstate New York.