Jennifer Brennan dies in house fire

This Cookbook Life

Jennifer Brennan, renowned cookbook author/illustrator, died this morning in a house fire, in the Normal Heights neighbourhood of San Diego, Calif. She was 76.

In 1935, Brennan was born into a family of the British Raj in India. Her mother and her maternal grandmother were born in Calcutta. Her father was posted on the Northwest frontier at the time of  her birth.  She was raised in the Punjab and Mysore.

As an adult, Brennan lived all over the world.

Creative in earning a living, she played “host to the Beatles during their trip to Hong Kong.”

She also taught Indian and Southeast Asian cuisine at her Los Angeles cooking school, The Asian Experience. Her weekly column on Asian food and cooking appeared in Los Angeles Herald Examiner for about five years. She also contributed to various food magazines and  co-owned Curries and Bugles, a British Raj restaurant, in San Diego.

Her cookbooks:

▪ The Original Thai Cookbook. 1981.

▪ The Cuisines of Asia. 1984.

▪ One-Dish Meals of Asia. 1985.

▪ Curries and Bugles: A Memoir & Cookbook of the British Raj. 1990.

▪ Tradewinds And Coconuts: A Reminiscence And Recipes From The Pacific                         Islands. 2000.

The IACP chose Brennan’s extraordinary cookbook-memoir, Curries and Bugles, as ‘Best Book in Literary Food Writing’ for 1990.’ In the book, Brennan superimposed her Indian childhood against the historical backdrop of the British Raj with photographs, drawings, recipes and memories; interjecting quotes from the literary British Raj, and excerpts/recipes from culinary texts of the period.

First published at This Cookbook Life, August 28 2011.

Update April 29 2024 by Tony Magee: Jennifer Brennan was the niece of British singer Gery Scott, of whom there are many articles on this forum. Jennifer visited Canberra in 1990 and painted the scene depicted in Manuka (below) whilst she, Gery, myself and others gathered for morning coffee. Jennifer's mother Lucette (Gery's elder sister) had visited a couple of years earlier. Jennifer's youngest son, Adam, visited in 1991 and we all went off to see Shirley Bassey at Canberra's Royal Theatre. Tragically, Adam died just a few years later aged in his early 30's, from liver failure due to alcohol abuse. Her eldest son Jonathan (born 1962), a couple of years older than Adam, had died a few years previously in a tragic motorbike accident in the US.

"Manuka" (1990) by Jennifer Brennan