Arthur Kenney's childhood; a pupil at Rugby School; nomination for the Madras Cavalry; posted to India; the Fishing Fleet; marries Agnes Cleveland; invalided home; Kenney family change their name to Kenney-Herbert; returns to England on furlough; writes articles for a Madras newspaper from England; adopts the pen-name of Wyvern; writes Culinary Jottings for Madras.

Review of Culinary Jottings for Madras - a reformed system of dinner-giving; the menu; the cook and his management; certain kitchen requisites; in the store room; our kitchens in India - "the foulest in our premises"; our vegetables; the savoury omelette; réchauffés; pastry making; roasting and braising; thirty menus worked out in detail.

Wyvern's happy holiday in England - the journey home; dressing an English gentleman; house hunting; trouble with servants; meeting relatives; visiting his old school; clothes shopping with Agnes; at the boat race with a Bohemian party; spiritualism; the Upper Ten; picnics of the upper and lower classes; English dinners; being photographed; back into exile.

The Madras presidency; a port with no harbour; The Marina; the buildings of Madras; the Ice King and the ice house; the famous Madras Club, visit of the Prince of Wales; Wyvern's racehorse; amateur theatricals; Wilson's Circus, Dave Carson's "Bengalee Babu" show.

The calamity of 1876-78 - the monsoon fails; foreboding news from Mysore; crops fail and cattle die; hoarding rice in a famine; journalist William Digby records the death toll; Wyvern's articles from London; the Viceroy obstructs famine relief; deadly work camps; relief strikes; rain at last.

Steel and Gardiner's The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook; the English girls; filthy kitchens; treating servants like children; going to the hills; back on the plains; simple cooking; dak bungalows; Wyvern learns to make a traveller's supper; invitation from a colonel's wife; making bread in camp; take your own cow; the Acme stove.

Nilgiri Mountain Railway; the Madras government takes to the hills; a missionary's diary; Wyvern grows English vegetables; Ootacamund Botanical Garden; snooty Ooty and vulgar Coonoor; army tents for "licensed harlots"; Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills; sending children back to school in England; race, class and segregation.

Wyvern and the elders of Madras; Dr Riddell's recipes; molten curries and florid oriental compositions of the olden time; Indian cooks and British curries; Wyvern inherits the recipe for curry powder; disappearing spices; making 21 pounds of curry powder; curry stuff; Wyvern's recipe for Madras chicken curry; Ceylon curry, quoorma and mulligatunny.

A new book - Sweet Dishes; more dirty, smoky kitchens; locking away expensive foodstuffs; rebuked by a chatelaine; in the days of John Company; Wyvern appointed Military Secretary to the Governor of Madras; Mountstuart Grant Duff's fancy ball; promotion to colonel; Wyvern retires from the army; John Moir's food catalogue; farewell to India.

A new career; service à la Russe replaces service la Française in London's fine dining; Antonin Carême; three controversial articles; a self-satisfied ignoramus; Common-Sense Cookery becomes Wyvern's brand name; a familiar new book; Wyvern founds a cookery school; fifty breakfasts; cooking demonstrations; take-away curries.

A shortage of servants; an experienced mistress outlines the problem; employment agencies; drunken cooks; recruitment scams; skills shortage; Queen Victoria visits a cookery exhibition; The National Training School for Cookery; Agnes Marshall and her high-class school; Wyvern's Common-Sense Cookery Association.

Interviewed for a prestigious magazine; public speaking engagements; Wyvern acts as a catering consultant for Agnes Garrett, sister of Millicent Fawcett; the business of pleasure; more and grander consultancy appointments; a new business venture - distributing kitchens; the resident manager at St. James' Court; a first-class hotel flotation; crusty old colonel or wise military campaigner?

The greatest modern authority on curry making (1932); Elizabeth David's "officer of the kitchen"; Simon Hopkinson's homage in a recipe; Wyvern's gravestone; Wyvern's descendants; H.R.C. Carr, his grandson, pays tribute to "the man who taught the Raj to cook"; more than just a military man - Wyvern's immortal books and recipes.

David Smith's modern versions of Wyvern's famous recipes: Madras chicken curry, Ceylon prawn curry, lamb quoorma and perfect boiled rice plus tamarind chicken from Quick Meals from The Curry House.