For centuries Arab merchants sailed to the west coast of India to buy spices and luxury goods. In 664 CE an Arab general defeated the local Hindu king at Hyderabad in Sindh, and made it part of the Umayyad Empire, which was based in Damascus. In 738 an alliance of Hindu kings defeated the Arabs. In the eighth and ninth centuries Arab merchants, now converted to Islam, settled permanently on the west coast of India, where they married local women.
Founded in Saudi Arabia by the prophet Muhammad in the year 622 CE, Islam is a monotheistic religion whose central tenet is that there is one God, Allah, and that every Muslim must surrender himself to Allah’s will (‘Islam’ means ‘surrender’). This message was revealed to Allah’s prophet Muhammad through the archangel Gabriel and recorded in the sacred text, the Quran. All Muslims are considered equal and united in a brotherhood, called the ulama. The five basic tenets (called ‘pillars’) of Islam are to affirm the credo ‘There is but one God, Allah, and Muhammad is his prophet’; to give alms to the poor; to pray five times a day facing Mecca; to fast during the ninth lunar month (Ramadan); and to make a pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca.
Islam is a proselytizing religion that spread quickly under the caliphs of Medina and the Umayyad Empire. Within a century it had extended across North Africa, Spain, the Middle East, Central Asia, Persia, Kashmir and Afghanistan. One consequence of the Arab conquest of Persia in the mid-seventh century was the flight of Zoroastrians to western India, where they became known as Parsis. They were to play an important role in Indian trade and commerce, and created a distinctive food culture.
Islam has relatively few food restrictions, but they must be observed strictly. They are derived from both the Quran and the Sunna, the recorded words of Muhammad. Pork, carrion, blood, alcohol and other intoxicants, termed haram, are forbidden to believers. Animals must be slaughtered according to the Islamic method by a person appointed to the task. They must be handled with mercy and kindness and killed swiftly with a sharp cut across the neck, severing the windpipe and the jugular veins, while ‘Allah Akbar’ (‘God is great’) is said three times. All blood is drained, since it is considered unclean. Such meat is called halal.
Fasting, one of the five pillars of Islam, commemorates the revelation of the Quran to Muhammad, and is a way of purifying oneself physically and spiritually. A mandatory fast is the holy lunar month Ramadan (Ramazan in Urdu), during which Muslims refrain from eating, drinking, smoking and sex during daylight hours. (Exceptions are made for travellers, sick people and pregnant women, who have to make up the fast later.) The fast is broken at sunset with a small snack called iftar, which includes dates (because the Prophet ate them to break his fast), sweet and salty snacks, and fruit. It is followed by a large meal. The end of Ramadan, called Id-ul-Fitr or simply Id (also spelled Eid), is celebrated by communal feasts and the serving to guests of sweet dishes, especially sawaiyan, a dish of vermicelli, milk and sugar.1
The second major Muslim festival is Edi-ul-Zuha or Bakrid, which commemorates Abraham’s offering of his son to God, who at the last moment replaced him with a ram. On this day Muslims are expected to sacrifice a ram or goat if they can afford it and distribute one-third of the meat to friends, one-third to family and one-third to the poor. Every subsequent meal includes meat dishes until the animal is eaten up. All these festivals signify piety, hospitality and charity. Indian Muslims who belong to the Shia sect fast for one or more days during the month of Muharram, a period of mourning to remember the death of Husain, the Prophet’s grandson, who was murdered by Muhammad’s enemies. Mourners march barefoot in procession, beating their chests, crying out the name of Husain and even whipping themselves.
A Muslim wedding banquet is a lavish affair featuring as many meat dishes as the bride’s family can afford. It traditionally included at least one biryani (chicken was considered the most prestigious meat, because it was the most expensive); zarda, a sweet rice with candied fruit dyed bright yellow with saffron; mutton korma; lal roti (bread saturated with ghee); shami kebab; fish curry or fried fish (among Bengalis); and many desserts, including rice pudding (kheer) in clay pots, gulab jaman and sheer korma of vermicelli, milk, sugar, dates and sometimes nuts, saffron, raisins and rosewater.2 Separate vegetarian dishes are prepared for Hindu guests.
Attracted by stories of the fabulous wealth of India, which they called Hindustan, Central Asian and Afghan tribes regularly invaded the northwest of the country between the eighth and twelfth centuries, in search of booty and converts. In 962 CE Alptigin, a general in the Persian Empire, seized the Afghan fortress of Ghazni. His grandson Mahmud used it as a base from which to invade India and plunder its cities. Some Hindus converted to Islam, and thousands of Buddhists fled to Nepal and Tibet.
The Ghaznavid dynasty ruled much of Persia, Central Asia and northern parts of India from 975 to 1186. Although Turkish in origin, they were entirely Persianized in language, culture, literature and habits. They were succeeded by the Ghorids, who ruled over parts of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan until the early thirteenth century.
By 1225 all of northern India was under Islamic rule. Collectively called the Delhi sultanate (although the capital was not always in Delhi), various Turkish, Afghan and Central Asian dynasties held sway for more than 300 years. They included the Mamluks or Slave dynasty (1206–90), the Khiljis (1290–1320), the Tughlaqs (1321–98), the Sayyids (1414–51) and the Lodis (1451–1526).
To rule their empire, the sultans needed judges, scholars, administrators and military officers. They offered high salaries and lavish gifts, and their courts became a magnet for people from all over the Islamic world, including the Middle East, North Africa, Turkey and Central Asia. (According to some estimates, up to 60 per cent were of Turkish origin).3 One was the famous Moroccan traveller and chronicler Ibn Battuta (1304–c. 1368), who served Sultan Mohammad Tuqhlaq as a judge for seven years and left an account of his experiences in his Tahqiq-i-Hind (History of India). In the thirteenth century, a Mongol invasion of Central Asia and Persia drove many Islamic scholars and jurists into North India, where they were welcomed by the sultans. While the newcomers no doubt originally intended to make their fortunes and return to their home countries (like the eighteenth-century English nabobs), many stayed. The official language of the court and government was Persian, and many Arab scientific works were translated into that language. As the bureaucracy grew, Hindus were co-opted into the administration and became the North Indian kayastha caste. Hindu cooks entered the royal and aristocratic kitchens.
Entertaining on a grand scale was a mark of prestige, and in this the sultans sought to emulate the traditions of the shahs of Persia.4 They had their own private kitchens, called matbakhs, managed by an officer called the chashnigir. They usually dined in the company of their nobles and courtiers from a common dastarkhan – a Persian word that meant both an elaborate tablecloth and a lavish meal of many dishes – and often from the same plate. A royal banquet given by the pleasure-loving Delhi sultan Kaiqubad (ruled 1287–90) began with sharbat, a drink made from fruit juice or extracts of flowers or herbs, combined with sugar and water.5 Breads included nan-i-tanuri – a wheat bread filled with a sweet paste and dried fruit and baked in a tanur, a clay oven – and kak, a ring-shaped crispy bread of Arab origin. Rice dishes included plain rice and surkh biryani (the word comes from the Turkish biryan, meaning roasted, boiled, grilled or baked), rice fried in ghee and coloured red. There followed meat and cereal dishes: roast kid, goat’s tongue, leg of lamb, skinned and stuffed goat, the tail (dhumba) of a type of sheep bred specially for the purpose, chicken, partridge, quail and other birds.
A popular dish was sambusa or samosa, a triangular pastry filled with minced meat and nuts. Arab cookbooks dating back to the tenth and eleventh centuries call these pastries sambusak, a word still used in the Middle East. (It may come from the Arabic se, ‘three’, referring to the triangular shape, and ambos, a kind of bread.) A thirteenth-century Baghdadi cookbook, Kitab al-Tabikh (The Book of Dishes), has recipes for three versions.6 One is filled with meat flavoured with coriander, cumin, pepper, cinnamon, mint and pounded almonds; the second with halwa (halva); and a third with sugar and almonds. A characteristic feature of this and other medieval Arab recipes is the lavish use of spices, including pepper, ginger, saffron, cinnamon, galangal, cumin and coriander (but not garlic). This may be a product of thousands of years of trade reaching back as far as the Indus Valley civilization. In any case, the newcomers’ encounter with the highly spiced dishes of Indian cuisine would not have represented a dramatic break with their own culinary tradition and tastes.
Sweet dishes were served both during and at the end of a meal. They included sabuniya, a soft nut brittle; lauz (known today as firni), a pudding made of rice boiled in milk and mixed with almonds, pistachios, raisins and saffron; and different types of halwa, made by cooking carrots, squash and other vegetables with nuts, sugar, ghee and saffron. Carrot halwa was a popular winter dessert. A favourite of the sultan was tutmaj, a preparation of milk, rice, nuts and sugar, usually containing some small squares of cooked dough (tutmač in Turkic languages).7 The names of these dishes are Arabic, and they are probably of Middle Eastern origin.
A detailed account of royal banquets was left by Ibn Battuta. Meals started with thin, round breads (perhaps chapattis or parathas), followed by roast meat cut into large pieces, served with round dough cakes made with ghee, stuffed with sabuniya and topped with another sweet called khisht, made from flour, sugar and ghee. Meat cooked with onions, ghee and green ginger was served in large porcelain bowls, and followed by four or five sambusak for each person. Next came a dish of rice cooked in ghee with a roast chicken on top, and finally sweet items were served, such as halwa and al-qahirya, an almond pudding named after a tenth-century Baghdadi ruler.
A private dinner at the sultan’s palace was attended by twenty or so specially chosen relatives, nobles and distinguished foreign visitors. Each person had his own plate, instead of sharing dishes as was the Arab tradition. A public dinner was held every day for religious leaders, jurists, nobles and relatives of the sultan. It consisted of various kinds of bread, including round bread filled with a sweet paste (perhaps a stuffed paratha or naan), roast meat, chicken and rice dishes, both plain and cooked with meat and served with sambusak. Ibn Battuta notes that courtiers had adopted the Indian habit of eating khichri – rice and mung dal topped with ghee – for breakfast. This simple dish (the parent of the English kedgeree) was later a favourite of the Mughal emperors. Another breakfast dish was nihari (also nahari), a beef stew with a rich aromatic gravy that simmered overnight and was eaten with bread. It remains a popular breakfast dish in Hyderabad, Delhi and Lahore.
The sultan and his nobles had large kitchen staffs that included cooks, bakers and dishwashers. The officer in charge was the chashnigir, or taster, who had to make sure the food was properly cooked and free from poison. Rich people maintained public kitchens, langars, to feed the poor. Large public kitchens supported by such endowments were maintained by Sufis (Muslim holy men).
Chef making naan, a baked, slightly leavened bread.
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Shami kebabs are small patties of minced meat and ground chickpeas that are a popular snack. |
Although the success of a meal among the elite was determined by the number and variety of meat dishes, as their residence in India lengthened, they developed more of a taste for vegetarian food. At a banquet at the court of Sher Shah (ruled 1540–45), the Muslims dined on naan; meat kebabs; yakhni (a spiced meat broth); roast lamb and khasi, castrated goat; red and yellow mutton shorbas, or soups;8 chicken and partridge; and several kinds of halwa. Their Hindu guests enjoyed puris, various vegetable preparations, lentils, suhali (a round, crisp flatbread), gulguli (little cakes soaked in sugar syrup), yoghurt and baris and baras, little fried lentil dumplings. On another occasion, Hindus were served fragrantly spiced rice dishes, jhala (a ribbon-shaped bread), manda (a steamed ball of ground rice and coconut), sohari (a kind of puri described as ‘exceedingly soft’), baris and various achars (pickles).
Another very popular dish, shami kebab – light patties made of ground meat, split peas (chana dal) and spices – may have been introduced at this time, although its origin remains uncertain. The name comes from sham, the Arabic word for Syria or the Levant, and similar dishes exist in Afghanistan and Iran.
Meals always ended with the chewing of paan, a local custom that caught on like wildfire among the elite.9 Although betel nuts and leaves originated in Southeast Asia, the two were combined in India some time before 500 BCE. The consumption of paan was widespread among rich and poor alike. Its three basic ingredients are areca nut (betel nut), betel leaf and lime (calcium hydroxide), which can be made from limestone or by burning and crushing seashells and mixing the powder with water to make a paste. Another ingredient is kaththa, a sticky paste made from the astringent dark-brown extract of the core of the areca tree. Cardamom, cloves, camphor, nutmeg, black pepper, cinnamon, coriander seeds, ambergris, ginger, saffron, sugar syrup and in modern times tobacco (gutka) can be added to taste.10 The very rich added ground pearls and shells to the lime paste and commissioned elaborate bowls (called bargdan), boxes and trays made of silver and gold and inset with precious stones to hold the ingredients. The pastes are spread on the leaf, the spices added and the leaf folded into an elegant little triangle, sometimes held together with a clove. The eater carefully places it in his mouth and chews until it disappears or spits out what is left.
To this day, paan serves many purposes. At the end of a meal it stimulates saliva and gastric flow and freshens the mouth. Paan has a mild stimulant effect, so it is used to stay awake. Exchanging paans was sometimes regarded as equivalent to a contract or oath of loyalty, and done to seal a marriage engagement. It became a symbol of hospitality and the focal point of elaborate aristocratic rituals. How one served and ate paan was a marker of sophistication and affluence. A fourteenth-century visitor wrote:
A chew of betel bound into a hundred leaves,
came to hand like a hundred-petaled flower.
Rare leaf, like a flower in a garden,
Hindustan’s most beautiful delicacy,
sharp as a rearing stallion’s ear,
sharp in both shape and taste,
in sharpness a tool to cut roots,
as the Prophet’s words tell us.
Full of veins with no trace of blood,
yet from its veins blood races out,
wondrous plant, for placed in the mouth,
Blood comes from its body like a living thing.11
The Indians think the most respectable way to entertain the guest is with betel leaf. If a person entertains his guests with various kinds of eatables, sharbats, sweetmeats, perfumes and flowers and does not offer betel leaf to them, it means he has not been a good host and guests have not had honour done to them. Similarly, when an important man has to oblige some acquaintance, he offers him a betel leaf.12
The custom never became popular in Central Asia or Persia, however. The poet Amir Khusro (1253–1325), who was born in India and wrote in Persian and Hindustani, noted: ‘The Persians are so sluggish as not to be able to distinguish between paan and grass. It requires taste to do so.’13
Caterers, bakers and butchers set up shop in urban areas, along roads where caravans passed, and in places where a Sufi holy man lived or where a Sufi’s tomb was located. Some sold snacks – street food – while others offered more expensive dishes, such as whole roast kids or chickens, which could be eaten on the spot or bought to take away. Urban centres had a flourishing catering profession that served all classes of society. According to Ibn Battuta, the common people ate a porridge of pounded millet and water or buffalo’s milk. Domestic animals and birds were plentiful and cheap, and food in general was much less expensive than in Egypt or Syria.14
Central Asians and Persians, who longed for the fruit, plants and flowers of their homelands, grew grapes, pomegranates, dates and melons. Ibn Battuta noted the availability of delicious melons grown in or around Delhi (although a century later the first Mughal emperor, Babur, complained about the lack of good melons in India). Khusro wrote that in Delhi you could find not only all the fruit grown in India and in Khusrasan/Khorasan (a region that covered parts of modern-day Afghanistan, Iran and Central Asia), but also fruit from even further afield. Since the fruit could not be delivered fresh to India because of the distance, it was cut into strips and dried in the sun, and sold to the wealthy at a very high price. Merchants in Iran, Bukhara (part of Uzbekistan) and Afghanistan sold yellow plums, fresh melons, grapes, almonds, pistachios and raisins in India. Until the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, Afghan traders peddling nuts and dried fruit were common sights in large cities. Today the same goods are brought in by air.
Many of the herbs used under the Islamic system of medicine were introduced to India, including aniseed, which also entered the cooks’ spice boxes. As early as the late fourteenth century the court used ice, which was carried from the Himalayas in winter and buried underground where it could be preserved for years. In summer the merchants dug it up and sold it at the market to cool sharbats.
An elegant preparation of paan wrapped in silver foil.
Aristocrats owned elaborate sets for the preparation of paan, often made of precious metals and jewels.
In 1398 Timur (known in the West as Tamerlane), a Turkic leader who was a descendant of Genghis Khan of Mongolia, invaded India and sacked Delhi, with great bloodshed. He had already conquered much of Central Asia, Iran and Afghanistan, and later he extended his empire as far east as Turkey. His reign of terror lasted sixteen years and accelerated the fragmentation of the central power of the sultans. But Timur was also a patron of artisans and artists, and he transformed his capital city, Samarkand, into the most magnificent city in Central Asia. His entourage included many Iranian artisans, artists and cooks, some of whom stayed in India after he left.15
By the beginning of the fifteenth century the Delhi sultanate had broken into separate kingdoms. For a period, northern and western India was divided into several powerful kingdoms, but they too broke up into smaller political units. The Rajputs founded kingdoms in Rajasthan, ranging in size from small principalities to large states such as Mewar, Jaipur and Marwar. By the middle of the fifteenth century they were a major political force in northern India. In the south a great Hindu kingdom arose, with its capital at Vijaynagar. As the control of Delhi weakened, some of the sultans’ generals and governors established their own independent kingdoms, the most famous of which – from a culinary point of view – is Malwa.
In 1401 the governor of Malwa, Dilawar Khan, declared himself sultan and set up his capital at Mandu. His grandson Ghiyath Shahi ascended the throne in 1469 and ruled for 30 years. In 1500 he deputized the the ruling of the kingdom to his son Nasir Shah (ruled 1500–11) in order to devote the rest of his life to the pursuit of pleasure. He filled his palace with musicians, cooks, painters and thousands of women, many of whom were taught an art or a skill, such as wrestling and cooking. Five hundred female Abyssinian slaves, clad in armour, formed his personal bodyguard. During his reign, Mandu became known as Shadiyabad, or ‘city of joy’.
To document his luxurious lifestyle, Ghiyath Shahi commissioned the Ni’matnama, or Book of Delights. Composed between 1495 and 1505, it consists of several hundred recipes written in a mixture of Urdu and Persian and illustrated by 50 paintings depicting the preparation of various dishes. Ghiyath Shahi himself, recognizable by his splendid moustache, is usually present, watching and supervising the operations, enjoying his food, or hunting and fishing. The book was completed by Nasir Shah.
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Food prepared for the Sultan Ghiyath al-Din: a scene from the Ni’matnama (1495–1505). |
The Ni’matnama opens with a charming invocation: ‘King of cockroaches! Please do not eat this, my offering to the culinary world – recipes of cooking food, sweetmeats, fish and the manufacture of rosewater perfumes.’ The recipes are for the shah’s favourite dishes, and many be accompanied by such comments as ‘This is delicious’ or ‘This is a favourite of Ghiyath Shahi.’ They are not arranged in any particular order, and there is a lot of repetition. Recipes for sharbat, for example, are suddenly interspersed with those for soup, as if the thought of a liquid had jogged the compiler’s memory, while a recipe for fish may be followed by one for an aphrodisiac. Most of the recipes are simply lists of ingredients; quantities and cooking methods are missing. There are also recipes for perfumes, salves and pastes, medicines and aphrodisiacs. As in earlier texts, there are warnings about the dangers of eating certain foods and food combinations, including milk with fish, radishes, mung dal, green vegetables, sour fruit, salt or meat.
The Ni’matnama may owe its inspiration to the recipe collections of the Persian court, which focused on refined, luxurious and special-occasion dishes; and the shah’s court did include Persian artists and cooks. However, while the earliest paintings in the manuscript are Persian in style, the illustrations become increasingly Indianized towards the end. This mingling of Persian and Indian styles is apparent in the recipes as well, although it is difficult to chart a progression.
Many of the dishes have Persian or, in a few cases, Turkic names: shorba (soup), paliv (broth or soup), qima (minced meat, from the Turkic verb kiymak, meaning to finely chop), baghra (a stew to which pieces of baked dough are added), dugh (a yoghurt drink), naan (baked bread), yakhni (meat stew), kebabs or seekh (skewered meat), burani (a vegetable dish with yoghurt, often made with aubergine), halwa (a generic word for sweetmeats), sakba (a dish of meat, wheat flour and vinegar), harisya (harissa, a mixture of grains, usually wheat and barley, with meat), kash (a very thick porridge of milk and flour), ashsham (supper food: from the Persian ash, ‘food’, and sham, ‘evening’), baranj (rice), kofta (meat balls), sambusa (samosas), biryan (a general term for baked food), khashka (plain boiled rice), mahicha (slices of lentil dough added to a stew), paluda (a drink made of water thickened with flour and honey; also a noodle), pihiya (meat gruel), tutmač (small squares of dough), thuli (a dish of spiced cracked wheat), qaliya (a stew) and sharbat (a cold drink made from various ingredients).
Saffron Meat
Wash the meat (goat or lamb) well and, having put sweet-smelling ghee into a cooking pot, put the meat into it. When the ghee is hot, flavour it with saffron, rosewater and camphor. Mix the meat with the saffron to flavour it, and when it has become well marinated, add a quantity of water. Chop cardamoms, cloves, coriander, fennel, cinnamon, cassia, cumin and fenugreek, tie them up in muslin and put them with the meat. Cook almonds, pine nuts, pistachios and raisins in tamarind syrup and add them to the meat. Put in rosewater, camphor, musk and ambergris, and serve it. By the same method cook partridge, quail, chicken and pigeon.
A Spice Mixture That Can Be Added to Any Dish
4 parts rosewater, 10 parts white hibiscus, 20 parts cardamom, 1 part cloves and 4 parts mace.
A characteristic Persian feature (although it is also found in earlier Indian writings on food) is the flavouring of stews with sour fruit, fruit juice and green herbs, including sweet and sacred basil, orange, citron and lime leaves, and mint. For example, in one recipe parboiled rice is cooked with the leaves of sour orange, limes, citrons and basil; the leaves are then removed and cardamom and cloves added, imparting an Indian flavour. In another, rice is boiled with an orange stuffed with cloves, cardamoms, musk, camphor, saffron and rosewater. Green vegetables are fried with asafoetida, salt and ghee and then topped with sweet and holy basil, mango leaves, fresh lime leaves, sour orange leaves and mint, each tied in a separate bunch. The vegetables are steamed briefly with the leaves, which are then thrown away.
Although there are several dozen recipes for rice, oddly there is no mention of pulao, which The Oxford Companion to Food defines as ‘a Middle Eastern method of cooking rice so that every grain remains separate’. Pulao or pilaf is usually flavoured with meat or vegetables and cooked in ghee. Its origin is uncertain. Descriptions of the basic technique appear in thirteenth-century Arab cookbooks, although the name pulao is not used. The word itself is medieval Farsi, and the dish may have been created in the early sixteenth century at the Safavid court in Persia. The earliest reference to pulao in English is in the writings of Edward Terry (the chaplain to Sir Thomas Roe, English ambassador to the Mughal court) in 1616: ‘Sometimes they boil pieces of flesh or hens, or other fowl, cut in pieces in their rice, which they call pillaw.’16 Although dishes combining rice, meat and spices were prepared in ancient times, the technique of first sautéing the rice in ghee and then cooking it slowly to keep the grains separate probably came later with the Mughals.
From linguistic evidence, other dishes in the Ni’matnama are of indigenous origin, and many are vegetarian. They include bara or bari (also spelled vada or vadi), deep-fried balls made from ground grain or lentils; bhat (plain boiled rice); bhuji (fried vegetables); dal (lentils, both raw and cooked); ghee; khichri (rice and lentils); khandvi (swollen parched grain); lassi (a yoghurt drink); laddu (a round sweet); karhi or kadi (a stew of yoghurt and lentils); lapsi (a bulgar-wheat porridge) and raita (yoghurt with vegetables or fruit). Both puri (deep-fried puffy bread) and chapatti (an unleavened flatbread) are mentioned, although not parathas, which may have been a later invention.
A few dishes are called ganvari or gharib, which means rustic or poor man’s food.17 These are very simple dishes – even kings sometimes want a break from elaborate dining. An example is green vegetables boiled in water or dal, flavoured with vegetable oil, asafoetida (a spice associated with Hindu cuisine), ginger, onions and black pepper, and served with millet bread. Millet, a locally grown grain, features in a dozen or so recipes, boiled as rice, parched or made into bread. Another gharib recipe calls for cooked meat to be covered with dough, wrapped in a leaf and baked on hot coals.
Ambergris
One of the world’s rarest and most expensive substances, ambergris is a waxy secretion produced in the intestine of the sperm whale. Lumps that are excreted by the whale may wash up on beaches. Aged by oxidation and seawater, it develops a sweet, earthy, animal-like marine aroma. Ambergris was highly valued by the ancient Chinese, who referred to it as ‘the flavour of dragon’s saliva’, and it was used in the Middle East and Persia as an aphrodisiac, medicine and flavouring for coffee and confectionery. Ambergris has been a crucial ingredient in perfume. However, today many countries prohibit its sale and trade as part of a ban on the hunting of sperm whales.
Preparing halwa for Sultan Ghiyath al-Din. Illustration from the Ni’matnama (1495–1505). |
Techniques in the shah’s kitchens include shallow-frying in ghee or oil, deep-frying, steaming, boiling, grilling, roasting on hot stones, baking on or in hot coals, and roasting in a pit. Sometimes meat is marinated before cooking. Many recipes call for venison, partridge and other game. Some dishes are prepared with as many as 50 spices and flavourings, which are added at different stages of the cooking process.
Nowhere is the lavishness of the shah’s cuisine more apparent than in the extensive use of three flavourings: camphor, ambergris and musk, valued not only because of their powerful, complex scents, but also because they were rare and expensive.
Camphor is a crystalline white or transparent solid that comes from the wood of the camphor laurel, a large evergreen tree that grows throughout Asia. (Dried rosemary leaves contain as much as 20 per cent camphor.) The word is derived from the Sanskrit karpura, which may have come from the name of a port in Sumatra. Camphor was one of the spices originally brought by traders from the Spice Islands to India and the Middle East, and it was used as an ingredient as long ago as ancient Egypt. In India, it was one of the five ingredients (together with cardamom, clove, nutmeg and mace) of pancha-sugandha, a paan filling enjoyed by the wealthy. Today camphor is an ingredient in a few sweet dishes. It is also used in Hindu ceremonies, especially in South India, where people burn it to make a flame and a rich aroma that is used in certain rites. (Today camphor is sold in some Indian grocers, but it is important to make sure that it is labelled ‘edible’ before cooking with it.)
Musk, a wax made in the glands of the musk deer, is another rare ingredient, and is used both as a flavouring for food and as a deodorant. (‘Rub musk into smelly armpits’, says an instruction in the Ni’matnama.) First mentioned in India as a remedy in Ayurvedic medicine, it later came to Europe and the Middle East where the Arabs valued it as a fixative in perfumes and as an aphrodisiac. Like ambergris, its sale is now illegal.
In common with other Indian culinary collections, the Ni’matnama contains recipes and prescriptions for many ailments and conditions. Impotence and low sperm production were a priority for the shah. Almost all spices are considered to have aphrodisiac properties. For example, the following ingredients when mixed together and rubbed on the penis ‘produce lustful feelings and increase the flow of semen’: long pepper, cardamoms, chironji nuts, fresh cow’s butter, ghee, sheep’s milk, poppy seeds, cloves, date sugar, pine nuts, dried ginger, dates, roasted chickpeas, almonds, figs, myrobalan, raisins and honey. The following foods, fried in ghee, are said to produce the same effect: veal, mutton, sparrow brains, pigeon, ghee, cow’s milk, mace, cinnamon and cardamoms. Combinations of spices and other ingredients are recommended for such ailments as excessive thinness, broken bones, weak eyesight, itchiness and tuberculosis. Many medical benefits are attributed to paan.
Preparing qima for Sultan Ghiyath al-Din. Illustration from the Ni’matnama (1495–1505). |
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In 1562 Malwa was conquered by Akbar and became part of the Mughal Empire. We can only speculate as to whether some of the shah’s cooks migrated to the court in Delhi and influenced the development of Indian cuisine.
A work written or commissioned at about the same time as the Ni’matnama is the Supa Shastra (The Science of Cooking, c. 1508). Its author, Mangarasa III, was the Jain ruler of Kallhalli, a tiny state in Mysore District, Karnataka, that was part of the Vijayanagar Empire. The book was written in verse on palm-leaf manucripts in an old version of Kannada, and contains six chapters consisting of a total of 450 poems. In the introduction, the author emphasizes its roots in Hindu tradition by thanking the mythical figures Bhima, Nala and Gouri (an incarnation of Durga famed for her cooking skills).
The intended readers of the Supa Shastra were housewives, albeit affluent ones.18 Mangarasa does not specify the exact amounts of ingredients, leaving it up to the cook’s judgement, but he does provide fairly precise descriptions of cooking techniques, which include roasting, frying, tempering with spices, baking, boiling in a thin or thick gravy, steaming, distilling, grilling and heating in hot sand. While all the recipes are vegetarian, a few use onions and garlic in violation of the usual Jain proscriptions. The flavouring is both basic – coriander, cumin, mustard seeds and fenugreek, still staples of the South Indian spice box – and more aromatic: cardamom, camphor, nutmeg, screwpine, even musk. Often grated coconut is called for.
The first chapter describes 50 snacks, breads and sweet dishes, including nine kinds of roti, ten vatakas (vadas) and stuffed dishes made from wheat, rice or lentil flour. One technique is to make cups out of wheat dough, fill them with a sweet or salty mixture and fry or bake them – a medieval Indian version of a French tart. An unusual recipe calls for mixing bananas, dates, mangoes, jackfruit and grapes with powdered sugar, cardamom, edible camphor and musk (if available), and ghee, then wrapping it in dough and baking it.
Stuffed Aubergine, from the Supa Shastra
‘This is one of the top preparations of aubergines, with all its aroma, charm, taste, and makes you crave for it whenever memory recalls it.’
Take an aubergine and remove the top with a knife so that it can be replaced afterwards.
Remove the inside and set aside. Take another aubergine, which is already boiled, and remove the inside. Mix the following ingredients with the pulp: grated coconut fried in ghee, pepper, cumin seeds, fenugreek, sesame seeds, chickpeas, urad dal, dried and fried little pieces of bread, turmeric powder, all fried in ghee, ginger, onion, curry leaves, coriander leaves, all chopped finely and then fried in ghee. Stuff the mixture into the unboiled aubergine, then fry it nicely in ghee or oil.
The second chapter covers drinks, including milk and its products, and sweet drinks made from fruit, flowers and the water that remains from cooking rice. The third chapter features 20 rice preparations, including several versions of khichri, kanjika (porridge), rice flavoured with tamarind or mustard seeds, and sweet rice pudding.
The vegetables in the recipes are those that are sold today in Indian markets or grow in people’s gardens. The fourth chapter contains recipes for aubergines and plaintains; of the 60 vegetable recipes in the Supa Shastra, about half are for aubergines and half for plantains or plantain flowers. Aubergines are particularly versatile because of their ability to absorb flavour. In the Supa Shastra they are boiled into a soup; fried with spices; baked with yoghurt; steamed, filled with ground spices and simmered in a thick broth; stuffed with green leaves; grilled then mixed with yoghurt and spices or boiled in milk; cut into tiny pieces, mixed with onion and sautéed in ghee and spices; stuffed with panir (farmer’s cheese) and spices; roasted, flavoured with tamarind juice and oil and served as a salad; or baked and flavoured with yoghurt and ginger.
Plantain flowers are boiled, squeezed dry and prepared in many ways, some quite elaborate. Pieces of plantain and panir strung on a metal wire are brushed with ghee and grilled over hot coals to make an edible garland. Banana chunks are served in sugar syrup or sprinkled with ghee, mustard or pepper.
The fifth chapter contains recipes for ridged gourds and pumpkin, and 34 recipes for jackfruit, an enormous green fruit (one can weigh up to 36 kg/80 lb) with a prickly skin that grows wild throughout India. After being soaked and drained, pieces of jackfruit may be fried in ghee and spices; boiled with lentils; minced with onions and coconut and shaped into balls; or boiled and served in sugar syrup.
The final chapter offers recipes for amla (Indian gooseberry) and bamboo shoots or sprouts – common ingredients in western Karnataka and northeast India, where they are often pickled. In the Supa Shastra, the shoots are cut into chunks or rounds and sautéed with spices; slightly fermented and cooked in a liquid, such as buttermilk; mixed with ginger, onion and grated coconut to form a paste, which is wrapped in betel-leaf cups and steamed; or ground with ginger, onion and curry leaves, steamed, then mixed with rice, urad dal and coconut, and fried.
Ksemakutuhalam (Diet and Well-being) is a Sanskrit treatise in verse written about 1550.19 The author, Ksemasarma, was a poet and scholar and possibly physician at the court of King Vikramasena, who most likely was a Rajput ruler, perhaps in the kingdom of Ujjain, just 80 km (50 miles) north of Mandu.20 The author was a brahmin and the book is filled with references to Hindu gods, albeit in a charming, slightly irreverent manner. For example, a dessert is described as having tasty layers ‘that resemble the chapters of the Puranas’; another has such a divine fragrance that ‘even men who hanker for liberation long greedily to taste it’, while a drink is described as ‘a delicacy rarely met with even in paradise’.
The author’s concern for the healthy properties of dishes and their effects on the doshas is combined with a gourmet’s appreciation and love of good food. His personal comments, snippets of poetry, appeals to the gods and metaphors are scattered throughout the text. Some recipes come from medical literature, others from the Manasolassa, while still others may be his own creations.
Culinary Equipment in Sixteenth-century India
(from Ksemakuthuhalam)
Broom Big pot Brush Grindstone Bamboo vessel Jar filled with water Stones to produce fire Pieces of dry wood cut to arm’s length, not old, neither very thick nor thin, and free from worms and insects Sieve Strainer |
Pestle and mortar Winnowing basket Clod of clay Ladle Square piece of cloth Two pairs of tongs Four pieces of cloth Tubular reed Knife Iron spit for roasting Frying pan Long ladle-like piece of iron to move fire Wooden or iron pot for storing ghee |
The Ksemakutuhalam consists of twelve chapters, or utsava, each dealing with a separate topic, including the royal kitchen and its equipment; the qualities of a good physician and head cook (he should be both an expert in Ayurveda and a good manager); healthy daily routines; seasonal diets; and recipes. The recipes list ingredients but, with a few exceptions, do not give quantities or cooking times. They reveal a rich and diverse cuisine with few restrictions, although onion and garlic are used very sparingly. Except for beef, almost every kind of meat is consumed by the king, including boar, lamb, castrated goat, venison, rabbit, lizards, wild and domesticated pig, game birds, peacocks and tortoises. (Being a brahmin, the author notes that he has not personally tasted the meat dishes, but describes only what he has learned about their preparation.) Ksemasarma writes that meat should be freshly killed and animals that have died from natural causes avoided. The best meat comes from an active animal, since it is good for the heart and improves appetite.
The most important factor in preparing delicious meat dishes, however, is the skill of the cook. Ksemasarma writes:
Be it [the meat] of village-bred animals, of forest beasts, of those that are aquatic or those that live in burrows, be it white, yellow, green or red in colour, be it floated in oil, roasted on spits, cooked as broths, boiled or cut in pieces, meat that is prepared by excellent cooks is savoured by man and praised in accordance with their taste.21
Many of the meat and vegetable dishes are flavoured with water infused with asafoetida. Other common spices are black pepper, ginger juice, ground ginger, turmeric and, to a lesser extent, cardamom, clove, camphor, musk and cinnamon. Many recipes call for a spice mixture called vesavara (which in Ayurvedic texts means a spiced dish of minced meat) – a blend of asafoetida, fresh ginger, cumin seeds, black pepper, turmeric and coriander seeds. Trikatu, an Ayurvedic mixture of equal parts of long pepper, black pepper and ginger, is another common flavouring for meat. Spices are added at different points in the cooking process, as they are today: to flavour a sauce, as a rub or marinade, or fried in oil and sprinkled over a cooked dish to lend extra fragrance (cardamom, clove, camphor, musk, black pepper and cinnamon are mentioned as ingredients for such a garnish). Sesame oil is a common cooking medium, and a souring agent such as pomegranate is occasionally added.
Cooking should always be done over a low flame, especially milk, which should never be cooked over high heat unless it is mixed with rice. The ratio of water to rice is four to one. Mung dal requires three times as much water, urad dal slightly more. When frying meat, the ratio of oil to meat is one part oil to ten parts meat. When cooking fish, the ratio of oil and spices to flesh is one to four. Still, all amounts have to be adjusted to the eater’s taste.
The best cooking pots are made of clay, since they imbue the food with healthful qualities, but rich men and kings use gold and silver vessels since they cure deranged doshas and improve the intellect. Boiled rice can be served in its own cooking pot; other dishes should be transferred to a serving plate. Ghee is stored in a wooden or iron pot. Milk products are served only in earthenware containers. Rich people keep deer, swans, peacocks and other animals in their gardens to test for poison, since each will react in a specific manner when served a poisoned food.
The king’s meal consists of rice, dal, ghee, a dish cooked with coconut and cucumber, soft and crispy papads (papadums), meat with vegetables, a dish made with rice flour, and boiled milk mixed with cooked rice and a sweet juice. Fruit (except for cucumber and banana) is eaten only at the start of a meal. The king should be moderate in his diet, and his meals should be served between three and six hours apart. The author cites a long list of undesirable combinations: milk, for example, should not be taken with tamarind, horse gram, vegetables, certain fish, alcohol, meat, sesame, oil cake, salt or yoghurt.
As for service, a large plate is placed on a platform in front of the diner, who sits on the floor. Cooked rice is piled in the middle of the plate. Dal, ghee, meat, vegetables and fish are placed (in that order) on the right, and broths, water, drinks, food that is sucked and licked, and pickles on the left. Nowhere in this or other texts is it mentioned that food is eaten with the right hand, presumably because this was so well known. The server, who must be a brahmin or come from a respectable family, must have bathed and be anointed with sandalwood paste, have an elegant countenance, and be adept at cooking and tidy by nature.
Meat was prepared in nine ways: deep-fried in ghee, fried, dry-roasted, boiled in a little liquid, simmered in a lot of liquid, roasted directly over a fire, minced, roasted on spits and baked in an underground pit. In a method called putapaka, minced meat is flavoured with the vesavara spice mixture, wrapped in leaves and white flour or orange peel, covered with clay and cooked in a pit in the ground. Minced meat is formed into cones or other shapes, boiled and then fried. To make a dish called tanduram, meat marinated in spices is hung in a pit filled with burning charcoal. Boiled meat, milk and sugar are even made into a sweet dish, called ksiramrtam (milk ambrosia).
Fish is cooked in the same way as meat, but with one-quarter of the oil. After smearing the fish with asafoetida to remove the odour, it is dipped in a batter of chickpea flour, turmeric, ground ginger and coriander, and fried in mustard oil. Fish forcemeat can be a stuffing for both idli and mandaka. There are many recipes for broth, some made with buttermilk, meat and spices.
The longest chapter in the Ksemakutuhalam is devoted to edible plants – the leaves, flowers, fruit, stalks, bulbs and roots. A simple method of preparation is to sauté vegetables in oil with salt, asafoetida and cumin seeds, then add tamarind or buttermilk. The long list of suitable plants includes various varieties of gourd, Bengal quince, wood apple, myrobalan, bitter gourd (poetically described as resembling ‘an emerald without and a coral within’), green Bengal gram, figs, plantain, cow peas and many with no English name. Green leafy vegetables include goosefoot, amaranth, cassia, spinach, fennel, fenugreek, black nightshade, purslane, jute leaves, black pepper leaves and safflower leaves. At one point the author inserts a whimsical dialogue between three leafy vegetables:
‘I am of two kinds and am rich in all the six tastes. What is the use of other dishes when I am there?’ In this manner the Indian spinach, mixed with rice, seems to smile proudly.
‘Although single, I am of multiple tastes and I am scented by my own fragrance.’ In this manner, Satapuspa (Indian fennel) seems to proclaim her victory.
‘What is the use of limiting one’s prosperity to oneself as Satapuspa is doing by scenting only herself with her fragrance? But I am not like that. I perfume the entire dining room with my fragrance.’ Thus does Fenugreek rebuke the selfish Fennel.22
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Aubergine (eggplant), a versatile ingredient, is indigenous to India. Late 18th or early 19th century, |
But the author’s favourite vegetable is the aubergine:
Fie on the meal that has no aubergine. Fie on the aubergine that has no stalk. Fie on the aubergine that has a stalk but is not cooked in oil and fie upon the aubergine that is cooked in oil without using asafoetida!23
Aubergines are featured in sixteen recipes: for example, pieces are boiled with tamarind, then fried in ghee, coriander, ginger juice and turmeric; the flesh of the green aubergine is dipped in asafoetida-flavoured mustard oil and black pepper; fried in ghee with rice flour, grated coconut, black pepper and cardamom; and cooked in vesavara spice mixture, black pepper, asafoetida and buttermilk. One dish resembles the modern baigan bharta: a whole aubergine is cooked over high heat until it is soft, then mashed and mixed with mustard seeds, rock salt and yoghurt. Aubergine served with tamarind and sesame oil ‘gives great pleasure, just as a maiden to her beloved’.
The book contains many recipes for sweet dishes and snacks. For sweets, the basic ingredients are ghee, sugar and milk products: khoya is made by boiling milk until it is thick, and chhana by separating milk with a souring agent and then straining it. Ground lentils, rice flour and white flour are other ingredients. Dough is extruded to make vermicelli-like strands called sev that can be made into laddu and other sweets. The most frequently used spices are cardamom and black pepper. Many sweet dishes are soaked in sugar syrup, as they are today. The repertoire of sweet dishes includes:
Laddus, small balls made from rice flour and yoghurt, white or wholewheat flour, ground vegetables, lotus seeds, coconut, lentils, even fish and meat. Sometimes they are composed of sev or little globules
Phenika (modern pheni, or vermicelli), a lightly fried multi-layered cake made from white flour or ground lentils, yoghurt and ghee
Vatikas (vadas), a dough of ground fermented lentils or white flour and yoghurt formed into various shapes (square, oblong or round) and deep-fried
Mandaka, disc-shaped wheat-flour cakes similar to the modern mandige. They can be mixed with cardamom, ghee, sugar and milk
Polika, a thin mandaka filled with lentils and jaggery
Lapsika, a porridge of white flour, ghee, sugar, cloves and black pepper
Ghrtapura (from Sanskrit ghrta, ‘ghee’). Many varieties, made by cooking wheat or rice flour, khoya, mango, water chestnut and other ingredients with ghee and sugar, sometimes spiced with camphor and black pepper
Puri, a puffy bread made of chickpea and wheat flour flavoured with ajwain (small brown seeds that taste like thyme), asafoetida and cloves, and fried in ghee
Jalebi, a mixture consisting of two parts white flour and one part wheat flour and milk is fermented, then dripped through holes into hot ghee to form coils, which are then soaked in sugar syrup (of Arab origin, this may have been a borrowing from one of the Islamic courts)
Kapuranalika, white flour, ghee and water rolled into squares and fried in ghee to make polikas. They are wrapped around crystallized sugar to form tubes, fried in ghee and filled with camphor, ghee and sugar
Kasara, a mixture of sugar, white flour (or lotus-root or water-chestnut flour) and ghee is cooked, spread on to a pan smeared with oil, and cut into squares.
The final section of the Ksemakutuhalam describes drinks and other dishes that stimulate the appetite and increase energy. They include lemon or orange pulp mixed with sugar, pepper and cardamom; orange and sugar cooked in ghee, then cooled and mixed with milk; and various yoghurt drinks flavoured with rock salt, ginger and toasted cumin seeds. A recipe is given for the yoghurt dish sikharini (shrikhand), which is said to be especially nourishing for those who are ‘languid after enjoying dalliance with intoxicated ladies’.
Jalebi, spirals of fried lentil batter soaked in sugar syrup, is one of India’s most popular street foods.
In the south, a great Hindu kingdom called Vijayanagar came to rule much of the Deccan. Its founder, Harihara I (ruled 1336–56), won the support of powerful local landlords, built a huge army, conquered local kingdoms and built a capital city, Vijayanagar, that at its height was the largest or second-largest (after Beijing) city in the world with a population of 500,000. Foreign travellers painted glowing pictures of a rich, well-governed land and a capital city with elegant gardens and broad streets lined with merchants’ mansions. The port of Bharkal linked Vijayanagar to China, the Middle East and Southeast Asia. The countryside was fertile and extensively cultivated, but rainfall was scarce, so the rulers built irrigation systems and lakes to collect rainwater.
The Portuguese traveller Domingo Paes, who visited Vijayanagar in the early 1520s, compared the city favourably with those of his native land:
This is the best-provided city in the world, and is stocked with provisions such as rice, wheat, grains . . . and some barley and beans, mung dal, pulses, horse gram and many other seeds which grow in this country and which are the food of the common people, and there is a large store of these and very cheap; but wheat is not so common as the other grains since no one eats [it] except the Moors (that is Muslims).24
Paes noted that the markets were full of quail, partridge, hares, mutton ‘so clean and fat it looks like pork’ and pigs so white and clean ‘you could not see better in any country’. Every day carts brought loads of sweet and sour oranges, pomegranates, aubergines and other vegetables (but not, he notes, lettuce and cabbage as in Portugal), and limes that made those sold in Lisbon appear worthless. Ordinary people ate millet, and rice was the staple of the wealthy. Paes observed that while some people ate meat, the brahmins in charge of the temples ate neither meat nor fish nor anything that made a dish red, since that resembled blood. All classes of society consumed betel nut throughout the day (even though it stained their mouths red).
The last Vijayanagar rulers faced incursions from rival dynasties in the south as well as from the Portuguese, who were gaining an economic foothold in the region. In 1565 the empire was defeated by an alliance of Muslim rulers, who razed the city. Today all that remains are a few scattered ruins of buildings near the village of Hampi, which is a World Heritage Site. Meanwhile, a new power appeared in the north that was to establish one of the greatest Indian empires and bring cuisine to new heights: the Mughals.
