Jo
I think Goodness Gracious Me is the funniest thing on Brit TV since Absolutely Fabulous. Mr 'Check Please' is one of my favourite characters.
Now back to 'tiffin'. I cannot give you a strict etymology or definition of the word, but I presume that Hobson-Jobson would do the job. My own understanding is as follows.
Tiffin, or a tiffin box, is certainly, as Bingley said, a series of stacked tins for food, with individual handles or otherwise, that can all be bundled together in one unit. If this sounds confusing, think of a cylinder composed of open-topped pans (with lips so one sits neatly on top of the other), and only one lid - for the one on the top. You have two long handles going down the side that, besides allowing you to lift and carry the contraption, also hold it together so none of the individual pans comes tumbling out. With me so far?
The advantage of a tiffin box is that you can carry an entire meal in it, keeping the various dishes separate from each other as you take them to work (or picnic, or school or whatever). The tiffin box, therefore, carries 'tiffin' - your food. Since this entire contraption is used primarily for workers/students, who leave home in the morning after mummy/'the little woman' has cooked and packed lunch, the word 'tiffin' usually refers to your luncheon. It is very Anglo-Indian and British Raj, though it is still used commonly in India today, and I am pretty sure that I have seen it in use amongst other English writers (though I could not, for the life of me, cite one).
Hope that helps.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
