When steam saved time in kitchen: Cooking with Icmic Cooker in twentieth century Bengal

The Icmic Cooker, invented by Bengali doctor and educationist Indumadhab Mullick in 1910, appeared as a new revolutionary technology to the Bengali kitchens of the early twentieth century. It saved time and effort by cooking several preparations at the same time. Icmic Cooker was a portable steam cooker fuelled by coal; the compartment where the fuel was placed had a small door with vents. This Cooker contained a double-walled cylindrical metal unit where several dishes could be cooked in separate containers, placing one on the other. The present article is a long-awaited empirical and analytical research on Icmic Cooker and its popularity among Bengali consumers, and therefore, serves the purpose of filling an academic gap in the existing scholarship on cooking methods of twentieth century Bengal. The paper intends to investigate how Icmic Cooker got integrally connected with understanding the scientific discourse of nutrition in colonial Bengal. It explores how the Icmic Cooker was represented in early twentieth century Bengal's health guides, advice manuals, and cookbooks. The paper will further examine the extent to which this cooking device found its place in the school curriculum, especially in the Home Science syllabus of the post-Independence era. It also investigates how science was invoked in the marketing strategies devised to popularize the Icmic Cooker through printed advertisements in newspapers and periodicals.