Born: 13 August 1933, India
Died: NA
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Madhur Bahadur
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women founder Allison Tyra’s book The View from the Hill: Women Who Made Their Mark After 40. For more on her story, check out Mayukh Sen’s Taste Makers: Seven Immigrant Women Who Revolutionized Food in America.
Born in 1933, Madhur Jaffrey was just a teenager when she witnessed the Partition of India in 1947, and the upheaval following the assassination of Gandhi the following year.
“India was in mourning. And that’s the India I left behind,” she would write decades later.
Arriving in the U.K. in the mid-1950s, she studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. “Of course the food was terrible in England then. I used to go to the RADA canteen and it was all grey roast beef and watery cabbage. I would literally dream about Indian food. That’s when I started writing to my mother, asking for recipes. She mailed them to me on onion skin airmail paper, and I would practise each dish over and over until it was right,” Jaffrey later recounted.
Migrating to the U.S. in 1958, she was successful as an actor but her true legacy began when she published the hugely popular and enduring Indian Cookery in 1973. “Jaffrey seamlessly transitioned into a cultural ambassador, expertly crafting and documenting Indian traditions and recipes for an intrigued American audience,” the BBC later wrote.
“Madhur did something else, which other Indian culinary luminaries did not do. In An Invitation to Indian Cooking, she introduced the reader to the food in its context,” Indian journalist Vikram Doctor has said. Jaffrey would go on to publish more than 30 cookbooks and feature on a variety of cooking shows, including recording her own “MasterClass” for the eponymous educational streaming platform when she was 90. An award-winning actress, she also continued taking roles throughout her life, into the 2020s. In 2022, she received the Padma Bhushan, one of India’s highest civilian honors.
In 2023, at age 90, she wrote for Vogue, “The years have gone very fast but I don’t regret anything. I have things still to do and so much to look forward to.”