In North India, the power vacuum left by the disintegration of the Lodis, the last of the Delhi sultanates, was filled by a new dynasty called the Mughals (from the Persian word for Mongols). It was founded by Babur (1483–1530), a prince of the tiny kingdom of Ferghana in Central Asia, whose ancestors included Timur/Tamerlane and the Mongol leader Genghis Khan.
In 1526 Babur entered the Punjab with a small army at the invitation of a local ruler. He defeated the opposing armies at the battle of Panipat (the first time gunpowder was used in India), and proclaimed himself emperor of all Hindustan. Babur is one of history’s most intriguing figures: a brave warrior who as a very young man fought hostile tribes in Afghanistan and founded a powerful dynasty, but also a talented Persian poet, a sensitive memoirist and a devotee and planter of gardens. He wrote in one of his couplets: ‘Enjoy the luxuries of life, Babur, for the world is not going to be had a second time.’1 Although his native language was Chagatai, a Turkic language, he was fluent in Persian and steeped in Persian culture.
Babur’s birthplace, the Ferghana Valley (now part of Uzbekistan, Tadjikistan and Kyrgyzstan), was famous for its grapes and melons. He frequently interrupts his stories of battles and treachery to describe a delicious melon he came across in his wanderings. According to his translator Annette Beveridge, ‘Babur’s interest in fruits was not a matter of taste or amusement but of food. Melons, for instance, fresh or stored, form during some months the staple food of Turkistanis.’2
Babur’s first encounter with Hindustan was a disappointment. In a famous passage in his memoirs, he wrote:
Harvesting the almond crop, from the Memoirs of Babur (c. 1590).
The emperor Babur supervising the laying out of the Garden of Fidelity outside Kabul, c. 1590, watercolour and gold on paper.
Hindustan is a country of few charms. Its people have no good looks; of social intercourse, paying and receiving visits there is none; of genius and capacity none; of manners none; in handicraft and work there is no form or symmetry, method or quality; there are no good horses, no good dogs, no grapes, muskmelons or first-rate fruits, no ice or cold water, no good bread or cooked food in the bazaars, no hot baths, no colleges, no candles, torches or candlesticks.
On the other hand, Hindustan
is a large country and has masses of gold and silver. Its air in the rains is very fine . . . Another good thing about Hindustan is that it has endless workmen of every kind. There is a fixed caste for every sort of work and for everything.3
A banquet being prepared for Babur and the royal princes, from the Memoirs of Babur (c. 1590).
Banquet being given for Babur, with roast goose at the centre, 1507, miniature.
Of all the fruit Babur encountered in Hindustan, the only one that appealed to him was the mango, although with the caveat that ‘mangoes when good are very good, but as many as are eaten, few are first-rate.’ He notes that they are usually plucked when green to ripen indoors, and are best made into condiments or preserved in syrup. Babur planted gardens wherever he went, and imported seeds and gardeners from Central Asia and Persia to grow melons, peaches, apricots, pistachios, walnuts and almonds. Dishes mentioned in his memoirs are lamb kebabs and chikhi, a porridge made from wheat-flour paste, meat, ghee, onions, saffron and aromatic spices.4
At parties, guests drank chaghir, a cider-like alcoholic drink made from apples, pears or grapes, imported from Kabul and Shiraz. But Babur regretted that he drank alcohol; in 1526, on the eve of an important battle, he pledged to renounce wine, emptied his flask on the ground and smashed his goblets. However, he continued to consume ma’jun, a paste of poppy seeds (opium), hashish seeds, walnuts, pistachios, cardamom, milk and honey.5
After defeating Ibrahim Lodi, the last of the Delhi sultans, Babur set up his court in Delhi. Wanting to try Hindustani dishes, he ordered that his predecessors’ cooks be brought to him, and out of 50 or 60 kept four. Ibrahim Lodi’s mother tried to murder him by enlisting one of the cooks to sprinkle poison on his meal of bread, hare, fried carrots and dried meat. The attempt failed. Babur died at the age of 47 in Agra. He was buried there, but his body was later moved to his beloved Kabul, to a place now called Babur Shah’s Gardens.
After 1539 Babur’s son Humayun (1508–1556) temporarily lost the kingdom to the Afghan invader Sher Shah Suri and, together with his Persian wife, sought refuge at the Safavid court in Persia, where Shah Tahmasp feted him in grand style. On hearing of Humayun’s imminent arrival, the shah issued the following decree:
Upon his auspicious arrival let him drink fine sherbets of lemon and rosewater, cooled with snow; then serve him preserves of watermelon, grapes and other fruits with white bread just as I have ordered. For this royal guest prepare each drink with sweet attars and ambergris; and each day prepare a banquet of five hundred rare and delicious and colorful dishes . . . O my son, on the day of his arrival give feast, tremendous and enticing, of meats and sweetmeats, milks and fruits to the number of three thousand trays.6
In 1555, with Shah Tahmasp’s military help, Humayun regained his kingdom and took some of the shah’s artists, poets, administrators and cooks with him. Persian became the language not only of culture but also of administration, a position it held until it was replaced by English in 1837. But Humayun reigned for only six months, and little is known about his culinary habits. He is said to have abstained from meat for several months when campaigning to regain his throne.
It was Humayun’s son Akbar, considered one of India’s greatest rulers, who was the chief architect of the Mughal Empire. By 1560 he had established his authority over the Gangetic Valley, and he eventually extended it to all of northern and western India, including Bengal, Kashmir, Gujarat and Baluchistan, as well as part of the Deccan Plateau. By war and matrimonial alliances with the Rajput princes, he brought all of Rajasthan under his control. In 1572 he annexed Gujarat, where he encountered the Portuguese, who had established trading posts along the coast.
Akbar divided the empire and its 100 million inhabitants into twelve provinces and smaller subdistricts. Each province was ruled by a viceroy or governor, known as a subadar or nawab (a word that came to signify a person of great wealth and importance). Their courts were miniature versions of that of the emperor in Delhi. Because the wealth of Mughal grandees reverted to the emperor on their death, lavish spending and high living became the order of the day. Poetry, painting, music and cuisine flourished.
During his long reign (1556–1605), Akbar won the support of his non-Muslim subjects by abolishing discriminatory taxes, appointing them to high posts in his administration, encouraging and patronizing Hindu culture, and marrying the daughters of Hindu Rajput kings (as well as a Christian Portuguese woman). Akbar banned the eating of beef at his court and avoided other foods that would offend Hindus and Jains. He invited Hindu, Muslim, Jain, Parsee and Jesuit scholars to explain their religions to him. Like his father, Humayun, Akbar visited the tombs of Sufi saints and welcomed Sufi holy men to his court.7 He even tried to start a new religion called Deen-i-llahi that combined elements of different faiths.
Descriptions of the imperial cuisine are given in the Ain-i-Akbari (a detailed chronicle of Akbar’s court by his prime minister Abu’l-Fazl ibn Mubarak Allami) and the accounts of European travellers.8 The royal kitchen was a department of state reporting directly to the prime minister. Its enormous staff included a head cook, a treasurer, a storekeeper, clerks, tasters and more than 400 cooks from all over India and Persia. Food was served in gold, silver, stone and earthenware dishes, tied in cloths, inspected and approved by the head cook and tasted several times before being served. Ice, used for cooling drinks and making frozen desserts, was brought daily from the Himalayas by an elaborate system of couriers.
The kitchen commanded the finest ingredients from every part of the empire: regional and seasonal varieties of rice, butter from a certain town, duck and waterfowl from Kashmir. The palace chickens were fed by hand with pellets flavoured with saffron and rosewater, and massaged daily with musk oil and sandalwood. A kitchen garden provided a continuous supply of fresh vegetables and especially fruit, since, as Abu’l-Fazl wrote, ‘His Majesty looks upon fruits as one of the greatest gifts of the Creator, and pays much attention to them.’8 Akbar brought horticulturists from Central Asia and Iran to supervise his orchards. They cultivated many varieties of melons, peaches, apricots, walnuts, pistachios, pomegranates, almonds, plums, apples, pears, cherries, chestnuts and grapes.
The Catalan Jesuit priest Antonio Monserrate described the meals at Akbar’s court:
His table is very sumptuous, generally consisting of more than forty courses served in great dishes. These are brought into the royal dining hall covered and wrapped in linen cloths, which are tied up and sealed by the cook, for fear of poison. They are carried by youths to the door of the dining hall, other servants walking ahead and the master of the household following. Here they are taken over by eunuchs, who hand them to the serving girls who wait on the royal table. He is accustomed to dine in private, except on the occasion of a public banquet.9
In his chronicle, Abu’l-Fazl lists three categories of dish. The first were vegetarian dishes, called sufiyana, meant for the emperor’s days of abstinence from meat. They included khushka, plain boiled rice; pahit, lentils cooked with ghee, ginger, cumin seeds and asafoetida; khichri, made of equal parts rice, mung dal and ghee; thuli, sweet, spicy cracked-wheat porridge (a dish eaten today in western India); chikhi, a dish described by Abu’l-Fazl as made from a fine paste of wheat flour, onions and spices dressed with various kinds of meat; badanjan, aubergine cooked with onions, ghee and spices; sag, green leafy vegetables; zard birinj, rice pudding flavoured with saffron; and various kinds of halwa.
Dishes in the second category were made with meat, served with rice or other grains. They include qabuli, a mixture of rice, chickpeas, onions and spices; qima pulao (the only mention of pulao), rice and ground meat; shulla (see recipe); bughra, meat, flour, chickpeas, vinegar, crystallized sugar, carrots, beet, turnips, spinach and fennel leaves; harissa, meat and cracked wheat; kashk, meat with crushed wheat, chickpeas and aromatic spices; halim, a porridge of meat, cracked wheat, turnips, carrots, spinach and fennel leaves; and sanbusa or qutab (a Turkic word still used in Azerbaijan for samosas, which Abu’l-Fazl notes can be made in twenty different ways – which unfortunately he does not describe).
The third category, meat dishes, included yakhni, a meat stock; musamman, stuffed roast chicken; dopiaza, meat prepared with large quantities of onions; dampukht, meat cooked slowly with aromatic spices in a pot with a sealed lid; qaliya, highly spiced meat with a thick gravy; malghuba, a soup made from lamb, vegetables, lentils and rice; biryan (from a Persian word meaning frying or roasting), prepared from a Dashmandi sheep (a town in Afghanistan), ghee, saffron, cloves, pepper and cumin seeds; and various kinds of kebab.
Abu’l-Fazl does not give cooking directions for any of these dishes; of biryan, he simply states that ‘it is made in various ways’. But cooking techniques were no doubt very complex and labour-intensive. The dish murgh mussalam, for example, was made by removing the bones of a chicken so that it remained whole, marinating it in yoghurt and spices; stuffing it with rice, nuts, minced meat and boiled eggs; and baking it coated with clarified butter and more spices.
The names of the dishes reflect the diverse culinary influences. They come from Arabic (halim, harissa, halwa, sanbusa), Persian (kashk, shirbirnj, pulao, zard birinj, dampukht, bandijan) and Turkic (qutab, qima, boghra, shulla). But despite the Persian influence, some of the most characteristic features of Persian cuisine are missing, notably the combination of sweet and sour flavours and the addition of green herbs and fruit to meat stews (khoresht).
The Mughals’ ethnic background left some mark on their cuisine. In the early seventeenth century the court included Uighurs, Chagatai Turks, Turkmens, Uzbeks and other groups from Central Asia. They were once herdsmen who moved around Central Asia with their flocks of sheep, goats and horses. According to the food historian Charles Perry, grains were an important part of their diet from the tenth century onwards as they moved west into grain-growing regions. Two of the dishes listed by Abu’l-Fazl may reflect this heritage: kashk, a porridge of crushed wheat and meat, and shulla, which came to refer to a rich dish based on boiled grain, preferably rice, enriched with whatever the host could afford to throw in to honour his guest.10
Wheat bread was part of every meal at Akbar’s court. A large bread similar to modern naan was baked in an oven; a small, thin bread which sounds rather like the modern chapatti was cooked on an iron plate. (The seventeenth-century French traveller and writer François Bernier, who served as a physician to the Mughal royal family, admired many aspects of Indian life – but not its bread, which, he wrote, while occasionally good, ‘can never be compared with the pain de Gonesse and other delicious varieties to be met with in Paris’. He attributed this inferiority to the poor quality of Indian ovens.11) Small plates of pickles (Abu’l-Fazl lists 30 kinds sold in the market), yoghurt and lime were served during meals.
Many recipes in the Ain-i-Akbari call for onion and ginger, but very few contain garlic. The main cooking medium was ghee, which was used in enormous quantities. (The recipe for khichri, for example, calls for equal amounts of rice, lentils and ghee.) The most frequently used spices were ginger, cinnamon, black pepper, cumin, cardamom, cloves, saffron and coriander. However, many of the spices sold in the marketplace were not used in the royal dishes, including long pepper, dried ginger, aniseed, turmeric, kalonji (nigella), fennel, mustard seeds, black and white sesame seeds, tamarind and curry leaves. Perhaps these spices, key elements in the local cuisine, were still foreign to Central Asian and Persian taste.
Also missing are red chillies from the New World, since they had not reached North India by Akbar’s time, although a reference to them can be found in a South Indian poem written in the first half of the sixteenth century.12 Tomatoes and potatoes are likewise absent, but pineapples had reached the capital: Abu’l-Fazl notes that a single pineapple was sold in Delhi markets for the price of ten mangoes.
Another New World gift was tobacco, which was introduced by the Portuguese in the Deccan. A courtier brought tobacco to Akbar’s court, together with a jewelled hookah. (The hookah may have been invented at Akbar’s court by a Persian physician, Abu’l-Fath Gilani, who perhaps got the idea from a primitive version using a coconut shell as the base that had been used to smoke opium and hashish.13) Akbar apparently liked it, because tobacco-smoking became popular in the royal household, despite the disapproval of religious conservatives.
At around the same time, Shah Abbas banned smoking in Iran. The Mughal ambassador at the court was a chain-smoker, however, so the shah made an exception and wrote the following poem:
The ambassador of our friend
Is so fond of smoking
I shall light up the tobacco market
With the candle of my friendship.14
Coffee had reached India by the early seventeenth century, since it is mentioned by Edward Terry in 1617. It had probably been introduced earlier than that by Arab traders (although a poetic legend attributes it to a Muslim holy man, Baba Budan, who brought seven coffee seeds back from Mecca in 1720). A poet at the court of Akbar’s son Jahangir praised it with the following verse:
10 seers meat (1 seer = approximately 1 kg/2¼ lb)
3½ seers rice
2 seers ghee
1 seers chickpeas
2 seers onions
½ seer salt
¼ seer fresh ginger
2 dam garlic (1 dam = 20g/¾ OZ)
1 dam each round pepper, cinnamon, cardamoms and cloves
Reconstructed directions
Melt the ghee in a pot and fry the meat, onions and garlic for five minutes over a medium heat. Add 360 ml (1½cups) water, the salt, chickpeas and cinnamon. Simmer for ten minutes. Stir in the other spices, then add the rice and another 120 ml (½ cup) water. Simmer until the rice is cooked.
Coffee is pleasing to princes
The water of Khidr [a Muslim saint who is said to have discovered the water of eternal life] is concealed within;
In the gloomy kitchen filled with its smoke
The coffeepot seems like the source of life.15
Despite the opulence of the cuisine at his court, Akbar himself led an austere, even ascetic, existence, as Abu’l-Fazl wrote:
If his Majesty did not possess so lofty a mind, so comprehensive an understanding, so universal a kindness, he would have chosen the path of solitude, and given up sleep and food altogether; and even now . . . the question ‘What dinner has been prepared today?’ never passes over his tongue. In the course of 24 hours, his Majesty eats but once and leaves off before he is fully satisfied; neither is there any fixed time for this meal, but the servants have always things so far ready that in the space of an hour after the order has been given, a hundred dishes are served up.16
And elsewhere:
His Majesty cares very little for meat, and often expresses himself to that effect. It is indeed from ignorance and cruelty that, although various kinds of foods are obtainable, men are bent upon injuring living creatures, and lending a ready hand in killing and eating them; none seems to have an eye for the beauty inherent in the prevention of cruelty, but makes himself a tomb for animals. If his Majesty had not the burden of the world on his shoulders, he would at once totally abstain from meat; and now it is his intention to quit it by degrees, conforming, however, a little to the spirit of the age.17
A seller of zarda (flavoured tobacco) which is sometimes added to paan. Tobacco was introduced by Europeans in the 16th century.
Akbar fasted regularly and gradually increased the number of days on which he did so. He did not impose his abstinence on his subjects, although it was his wish that people should refrain from eating meat during the month in which he came to the throne, so that the year would be an auspicious one.
Akbar’s son Jahangir (ruled 1605–27) and grandson Shah Jahan (ruled 1627–58) preserved and slightly extended Akbar’s empire. Jahangir built many palaces and mosques, planted gardens – including the famous Shalimar Bagh in Kashmir – and supported large ateliers of artists. Like his great-grandfather Babur, he was fascinated by the natural world and left behind descriptions of plants and wildlife. He honoured and emulated his father by ordering that no animals should be killed on Thursdays, the date of his accession, and on Sunday, the day of Akbar’s birth, quoting his father, who said that on that day ‘all animals should be free from the calamity of those of a butcherly disposition’.
Jahangir was very fond of khichri, especially a version he encountered in western India. In his memoirs he wrote:
Of the food that is particular to the people of Gujarat, there is the bajra khichri, a mixture of split peas and millet boiled together. It is a kind of split grain which does not grow in any other country but Hindustan. It is cheaper than most vegetables. As I had never eaten it, I ordered them to make some and bring it to me. It is not devoid of flavour, and it suited me well. I ordered that on days of abstinence, when I partake of dishes not made of flesh, they should frequently bring me this khichri.18
Jahangir’s memoirs also describe his battle with alcohol and how he reduced his consumption. Unlike his father, Jahangir also enjoyed meat, especially wild game. In an account of his visit to Jahangir’s court, Edward Terry was surprised that instead of eating large joints of meat, as the English did, the Mughals cut it into small pieces and stewed it with ‘onions, herbs, roots and ginger and other spices with some butter’. At one royal banquet, he was served 50 dishes; he particularly liked one of spiced venison with onions (dopiaza) and rice coloured in fantastic shades, including green and purple.
Shah Jahan (who built the Taj Mahal in Agra as a monument to his late beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal) was deposed by his son Aurangzeb (ruled 1658–1707), a religious man of ascetic leanings who reversed the prevailing policy of religious tolerance and cooperation. Aurangzeb was very puritanical and often fasted. He ate a mainly vegetarian diet and had a passion for fruit, especially mangoes. Tavernier, his doctor, wrote that as no animal food passed his lips, he became ‘thin and lean, to which the great fasts that he keeps have contributed . . . he only drank a little water and ate a small quantity of millet bread’.19 When he seized power, Aurangzeb imprisoned his father, but he offered to let him eat his favourite dish every day for the rest of his life. The prison cook advised Shah Jahan not to choose a complicated dish but to ask for dal, assuring him that he could make a different dish out of it every day of the year.
Average Indians ate quite differently from their rulers. Agriculture was often at the mercy of the weather, and so food production was unreliable. The ambassador Sir Thomas Roe (1581–1644) wrote:
The people of India live like fishes do in the sea – the great ones eat up the little. For first the farmer robs the peasant, the gentleman robs the farmer, the greater robs the lesser, and the king robs them all.20
The reports of European travellers indicate that poor people ate mainly vegetarian fare (as they did in much of the world at the time): rice boiled with green ginger, a little pepper and butter; bread made of a coarse grain (perhaps millet) baked on small round iron hearths; boiled lentils; and local fruit and vegetables.
There was a lively street-food scene in towns and cities. The Portuguese priest Friar Sebastien Manrique (1585–1669) was fascinated by the brilliantly lit bazaars of Lahore, where he saw
a great number of occupied tents, or should I say cookshops; in some, only the roast flesh of various domestic and wild animals was sold. We saw other shops containing large spits bearing the meat of winged creatures such as fowls, capons, chickens, young pigeons, peacocks, doves, quails and other birds . . . [and] booths containing household utensils and brass vessels in which were sold the same kind of meat but different to the palate owing to varied seasoning. Among these dishes, the principal and most substantial was the rich and aromatic Biring [birinj, meaning husked] rice. It is cooked in innumerable ways, and Persian Pulao [is] a dish composed of rice with meat and other ingredients or of rice and spice without meat.21
Three kinds of bread were sold in the market: a cheap paper-thin unleavened bread baked on a skillet and then on live charcoal (like chapatti); a more expensive bread that was as thick as a finger; and, for the wealthy, khejuru, a sweet bread made from wheat flour, a lot of ghee, poppy seeds and sugar.
At its height in 1700, the Mughal Empire covered 3.2 million sq. km (1.25 million sq. miles) and had a population of 150 million – a quarter of the world’s population at the time. However, its decline began under Aurangzeb and accelerated after his death. Poor transportation and communications made control of such a vast territory difficult, and the regional governors had considerable autonomy. Another factor was the military victories of the Hindu Marathas under the leadership of Shivaji Bhosale (1627–1680) and his successors. At its peak, the Maratha Empire stretched from Tamil Nadu in the south to Peshawar in the north, and as far east as Bengal. The Marathas remained the dominant power in India until they were defeated by the British in 1817. The Rajputs, hereditary rulers of kingdoms in western India, regained some of their territory from the Mughals after Aurangzeb’s death but also fell victim to the Marathas until they accepted British suzerainty in 1818.
A severe blow to Mughal rule occurred in 1738 when the Persian ruler Nadir Shah invaded India. He sacked Delhi, slaughtering tens of thousands of people and looting a great quantity of gold and jewels. His victory gave him control over much of Central Asia and Persia, but his empire quickly disintegrated after he was assassinated in 1747.
Other foreign powers were by this time making inroads into the subcontinent. The Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the British filled the power vacuum left by the declining Mughals. By the early nineteenth century the Mughal Empire had ceased as an effective political organization, although it existed in name until 1857, when it was replaced by the British Crown. Meanwhile, the regional governors became in fact, if not in name, independent of the imperial court in Delhi. The main centres were Hyderabad in South India; Awadh in North India; Murshidabad in West Bengal; Lahore, now in Pakistan; and Kashmir. But many of the traditions of the Mughal court were preserved and enhanced at the courts of these various rulers, creating new cuisines that in some ways surpassed the old.
One of these provinces was Awadh (called Oudh by the British) in what is today Uttar Pradesh. Humayun had made it a province of his empire in 1555 under a governor known as the nazim or nawab, an honorific title. In 1719 the Persian adventurer Nazim Sa’adat Khan became the de facto independent ruler, and the position became hereditary. In 1753 Asaf-ud-Daula moved the capital to Lucknow, which came to rival Delhi as the cultural and culinary capital of North India and reached ‘a level of splendour and sophistication scarcely paralleled in any other Indo-Islamic society’.22
These are the words of Abdul Halim Sharar (1860–1926), a journalist and historian who chronicled life in Lucknow in his book Lucknow: Last Phase of an Oriental Culture. He describes a vibrant syncretic culture that combined elements of North Indian Hindu and Muslim music, dance, clothing, painting and cuisine. A more colourful description was given by the twentieth-century art historian Stuart Cary Welch, who compared the city to ‘an Indian mixture of [pre-revolutionary] Teheran, Monte Carlo and Las Vegas, with just a touch of Glyndebourne for good measure’.23
Gourmetship was prized not only by the nawab and his entourage but also by wealthy landowners and even middle-class and ordinary people. The affluent vied with one another over who could create the most complex dishes; chefs, called rakabdar, enjoyed a high status and salary. One of the nawab’s cooks was paid 1,200 rupees a month, equivalent to perhaps £5,000 today. These cooks were much in demand in other parts of India, and disseminated Lucknavi cuisine to courts at Hyderabad and elsewhere. They would cook only small quantities for a few people, since they considered it beneath their dignity to produce large amounts of food, something that was the province of the bawarchi (ordinary cooks). Presentation was extremely important: dishes were adorned with dried fruit cut into the shape of flowers or edible silver leaf.
One of these cooks’ special talents was to create dishes from unusual ingredients or to make an entire meal from a single ingredient, a technique called pehle (riddle). For example, when a prince from Delhi who was a well-known gourmet dined with the tenth and last nawab, Wajid Ali Shah (1822–1887), he was served what he was told was a murabba, a thick, highly spiced conserve made of fruit or vegetables. In fact, it was a korma, a meat curry, but fashioned to look like a murabba. A few days later the prince reciprocated by serving the nawab hundreds of dishes, including pulao, korma, kebabs, biryani, chapattis and other breads – all made of sugar, even the serving plates. One chef was famous for making khichri from pistachios shaped like lentils and almonds cut to look like grains of rice. Another chef specialized in making arvi ka salan, taro root in a sour, spicy gravy. His only condition of employment was that he be allowed to serve a different arvi ka salan twice a day all year round. A Kashmiri dish that became popular in Lucknow was shab degh – a slow-cooked stew of minced meatballs and turnip, its two main ingredients impossible to tell apart.
Pulao and korma were favourite dishes of the aristocracy. Wealthy epicures fed their chickens musk and saffron pills to scent their meat, which was cooked to make a broth in which to simmer rice. Sharar writes that in Delhi biryani was popular, but in Lucknow people preferred pulao. The difference between the two dishes has been the subject of much debate and discussion. Sharar offers the following distinction:
A Lucknow resident and his wife at dinner.
Mughal Cuisine
The Oxford Companion to Food describes Mughal food as ‘a blend of Persian and Hindu kitchen practices’ featuring such dishes as pilaf (pulao), biryani, kebabs, kormas, koftas, tandoor dishes and samosas, and cream, almonds and rose-water as ingredients. Related are dishes containing the words shahi (royal), Akbar, Shah Jahan and the like in their names. The term ‘Mughal’, which was probably first used by enterprising restaurateurs to lend cachet to their dishes, has become a catchphrase for rich, generally meat-based dishes associated with Muslim cuisine of north India or Pakistan. However, the usage is somewhat inaccurate. Many of the dishes attributed to the Mughals existed earlier at the court of the Delhi sultans, and some (such as kebabs) had antecedents in indigenous cuisine. In addition, the Mughal emperors themselves, with their frequent fasts, avoidance of meat on certain days and love of khichri, were far from being either gourmets or gourmands (perhaps subconsciously hankering after the simple food of their Turkish or Mongol forefathers).
To the uninitiated palate both are much the same but because of the amount of spices in biryani, there is always a strong taste of curried rice, whereas pulao can be prepared with such care that this can never happen. In the view of gourmets, a biryani is a clumsy and ill-conceived meal in comparison with a really good pulao.24
A hotly debated issue in Indian gastronomy is the difference between pulao and biryani. A lot has been written on this topic, much of it contradictory. Both dishes consist of long-grained rice dishes prepared with meat, poultry, fish, seafood and vegetables and sometimes they are almost impossible to tell apart. Moreover, there are a great many regional and local variations. There are few general distinctions: first, pulaos are usually an accompaniment to a meal whereas biryanis are the centre piece, accompanied by various side dishes. Second, pulao is a single-pot dish made by first sautéing the spices, meat and rice in oil, then adding a liquid and simmering until the liquid is absorbed. For biryanis, the meat and rice are prepared separately, then combined. The meat may be marinated with yogurt and spices or ground onions, ginger and ginger pastes, and spices, and the rice is parboiled. Layers of meat and rice are put in a pot, which is sealed and slowly cooked for hours. Finally, usually the spicing for pulao is simpler and milder than for biryanis.
Pulaos had poetic names, such as gulazar (garden), nur (light), koku (cuckoo), moti (pearl) and chambeli (jasmine). Chefs sought to transform pulaos into works of art. In one pulao, half of each grain of rice was coloured fiery red like a ruby, and the other half was white and sparkled like a crystal, so that together they resembled the seeds of a pomegranate. The apogee of the pulao-maker’s art was a moti pulao made by beating 200 g (7 OZ) of silver foil and 20 g (¾ OZ) of golden foil into the yolk of an egg. The mixture was stuffed into the gullet of a chicken, which was lightly cooked. When the skin was cut with a knife, shining pearls appeared; they were mixed with the meat and the whole was mixed with rice.
Other chefs fashioned meat into the shape of small birds, which perched on the edge of the plates as if they were pecking at the rice. (A variation popular in Hyderabad was a large pie that contained small birds that flew away when the pie was opened – probably inspired by the nursery rhyme, since it was a favourite of British officials and their wives at state dinners.)
The province of Awadh was renowned for its bread. Leavened bread was baked in underground clay ovens (tandoors), while Hindus traditionally fried their unleavened bread in ghee. According to Sharar, this gave Muslim bakers the idea of adding ghee to their bread, which was cooked on a griddle – and so the paratha was born. (Some of Sharar’s ideas, like this one, are fanciful and must be taken with a pinch of salt.) Delhi’s bakers were famous for their parathas, which were made with equal amounts of ghee and flour. However, Sharar complained that when he lived in Delhi the parathas could only be eaten fresh; when cold they were like leather, because the ingredients were not well mixed.
Another bread Sharar claims originated in Lucknow, although it probably came from Persia (shirmal means ‘washed with milk’ in Persian), is shirmal, a unleavened bread made from a dough of white flour and sugar, baked in a tandoor and sprinkled with milk and saffron. It was supposedly invented by a vendor called Mahumdu, whose nihari (beef stew) was so famous that the wealthiest aristocrats patronized his stall. Served with shirmal, it became an essential dish at any celebration. A variation is bakharkhani, a multi-layered bread made with plenty of ghee and cooked on a grill.
THE COLLECTIVE NAME for the dishes served at a dinner or sent to others was tora (Persian for ‘basket’). The custom of sending food to people’s homes arose to include the women of the household, whose movements were restricted because of purdah (the custom of keeping women secluded and revealing their faces only to family members). At a minimum a tora included pulao; muzaffar, a sweet saffron-flavoured rice dish; mutanjan, meat, sugar and rice with spices; shirmal; safaida, a simple sweet rice dish; fried aubergine; shir birinj, a sweet dish of rice boiled in milk; korma, pieces of meat slowly braised in spices and a yoghurt or cream gravy; arvi (taro) cooked with meat; shami kebabs (ground meat and chickpea patties); and, as condiments, murabba, pickles and chutney.
The number of dishes reflected the host’s status. The nawab’s tora consisted of 101 dishes, each one said to cost 500 rupees. Although this custom may have originated at the Mughal court, Sharar comments that he had never seen ceremonial observances in Delhi equal to those in Lucknow, which was (and still is) famous for its residents’ exquisite and elaborate manners. The system of etiquette became popularly known as pehle-aap (‘after you’) because of its emphasis on lowering one’s own importance and elevating that of others (a custom sometimes parodied in Bollywood films). In culinary matters, it extended to the most minor matter. When serving water to even the most lowly person, a servant would place the glass on a small tray, cover it and hand it to the guest with the utmost respect.
Shirmal is often served with korma, a rich meat stew.
Shirmal, a speciality of Lucknow and Hyderabad, is a leavened bread made of white flour, milk and sugar, baked in the oven and flavoured with saffron. |
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Lucknow was also famous for its sweets. Those sold to the general public were usually made by Hindu moiras (confectioners), while the upper classes enjoyed sweets made by Muslim confectioners (halwais). But Sharar comments that the standard of Hindu sweets on the whole was higher, and that the people who really appreciated sweet dishes were Hindus. The reason, he surmises, is that Muslims are meat-eaters and prefer salty food, whereas Hindus have a sweet tooth.
For the Love of Ghee
Ghazi ud Din Hadar, the seventh nawab of Lucknow (ruled 1814–27) loved parathas, and his chef would cook six each day using 4.5 kg (10 lb) of ghee for each one. One day the vizier (prime minister) asked the chef why he used so much ghee. He replied, ‘Sir, I cook parathas.’ The vizier asked to watch and was shocked when the chef threw the ghee away after cooking each paratha. He informed him that from now on he would receive only 900 g (2 lb) of ghee for each paratha. After a few days the nawab asked his chef what was wrong with the parathas. He replied, ‘Your Majesty, I cook the parathas as the vizier has ordered.’ The nawab sent for the vizier, who told him: ‘Your Majesty, your people rob you right and left.’ The nawab became angry and slapped him. ‘What about you? You rob the whole monarchy and the entire country and think nothing of it. He only takes a little too much ghee for my meals.’ The vizier repented, and never interfered with the chef again.25
Sweets were both Indian and foreign in origin. According to Sharar, while the word halwa is of Arabic origin and came to India via Persia, tar halwa (also known as mohan bhog), a pudding-like sweet made with semolina, clarified butter and nuts and eaten with puris, is purely Hindu. The five most popular kinds of halwa are sohan, hard orange-coloured discs with nuts; papri, which is hard and dry; jauzi, soft and crumbly; habshi, soft and black; and dudhia, a steamed jelly-like sweet.
Much attention was paid to the production of malai, or cream. The milk was warmed in very shallow trays over a slow fire and the layers removed one by one and carefully stacked on top of each other, a technique similar to that used to make English clotted cream or Turkish/Central Asian kaymak.
Sharar does not mention two of Lucknow’s best-known contributions to Indian cuisine: the dum (Persian for ‘steam’) style of cooking and the local kebabs. Dumpukht is a method of cooking a dish in a sealed pot. According to legend, in 1784 during a terrible famine Nawab Asaf-ud-Daula provided jobs for his people by building a great monument, the Bara Imambar, in Lucknow. Every day workers constructed it and every night they tore it down. Their food was cooked in giant pots sealed with dough and kept warm in huge ovens. One day the nawab sampled the food and liked it so much that he adapted the oven for use at court banquets.26
Kakori kebabs, a distinctive Lucknow kebab, are made from minced tendon from a leg of mutton, khoya (thickened milk), white pepper and a secret blend of spices. According to legend, it was invented by the nawab of Kakori, a town near Lucknow. Offended when a British officer complained that the kebabs served at dinner were coarse, he ordered his chefs to create a more refined, softer dish. Even more delicate are galawati (or galavat) kebabs made of very finely ground minced meat and cream, shaped into patties and fried in ghee, which were created for Nawab Wajid Ali Shah when he lost his teeth in his old age. The original version was said to contain more than 100 aromatic spices and flower essences.
Kakori kebabs, a Lucknow delicacy, are soft, sausage-shaped kebabs made from finely minced mutton, thickened milk and spices.
Take half a seer or about 500g (1 lb) mutton, four or five whole onions, a piece of green ginger, two dried cassia leaves, eight corns of black pepper and 6 quarts (7 litres/14¾ pints) of water.
Boil these ingredients in an earthen vessel until 1½ or 2 quarts (1.5–2 litres/3–4 pints) of liquid remain.
Mash the meat with the liquor and strain the broth (yakhni).
Melt 450 g (1 lb) butter in a tinned copper vessel and fry the onions cut into long slices until they become reddish.
Remove the onions from the pan. In the remaining butter, fry a chicken that has already been boiled. Remove it and fry the dry rice in the butter.
As the butter evaporates, add the broth and boil the rice in it.
Put in 10 or 12 cloves, 10 or 12 peppercorns, 4 pieces of mace, 10 or 12 small whole green cardamoms, one dessertspoonful of salt, a piece of sliced ginger and 2 dried cassia leaves.
When the rice is done, remove the coals from underneath the pot and put a few of them on the cover of the pot. If the rice is hard, add a little water and put in the fowl, so that it may imbibe the flavour. When serving, put the fowl on a dish and cover it with the rice, garnishing the latter with a few hard-boiled eggs cut in two and the fried onions.
Ja’far Sharif, trans. Gerhard Andreas Herklots, Qanoon-e-Islam; or, The Customs of the Moosulmans of India (London, 1832)
In 1856 the British East India Company annexed Awadh and exiled Wajid Ali Shah to Matiabur on the outskirts of Calcutta, where he set up a mini-Lucknow. (This event was one of the sparks that in 1857 ignited the First War of Independence, also known as the Indian Mutiny.) Many cooks who had worked for the nawabs found work in wealthy homes or set up food stalls in Lucknow’s old markets, where even today vendors sell shirmal, kebab and pulao.27 Others moved with him to Calcutta and opened stalls and restaurants, perhaps contributing to a local tradition of excellent Muslim food.
Haleem, a dish of Middle Eastern origin, is a porridge of grain and meat. |
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Hyderabad, today the capital of Andhra Pradesh, was home to a vibrant, eclectic culture and cuisine under different Islamic dynasties. The region was annexed by Muhammad Tuqhlaq, but a revolt in 1347 by the governor led to the creation of the Bahmani sultanate, which extended across much of the Deccan. The Bahmanis, who claimed descent from Bahman, a legendary king of Iran, were patrons of Persian language, culture and cuisine.
In the early sixteenth century a Persian adventurer declared independence from the Bahmani sultanate and established the Qatb Shahi dynasty of Golconda. In 1581 one of his successors founded Hyderabad as his capital. In 1687 the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb conquered the region and made it part of the Deccan province. But in 1724 the viceroy Nizam Asaf Jah declared his independence and founded a dynasty known as the Nizams of Hyderabad. They ruled the kingdom until 1948, when it became part of independent India. Hyderabad was the largest of the Indian princely states, and for a time the Nizams were the richest men in the world, their wealth coming mainly from the diamond mines of Golconda.
The royal flag of Hyderabad featured a unique culinary symbol: a kulcha (a round, slightly leavened flatbread). According to legend, before leaving Delhi, Asaf Jah visited a Sufi holy man, who shared his meal with him. Asaf Jah ate seven kulchas, and, although pressed to take more, declined. The holy man then blessed him and told him that he and his descendants would rule the Deccan for several generations (which turned out to be the case).
The local cuisine incorporated many influences, since the city was at the crossroads of east and west, north and south. Although the rulers were Muslim, the majority of the population was Hindu, including many officials, and the Nizams supported the construction of Hindu temples. The local staple was rice; wheat parathas were eaten mainly at breakfast. The Persian influence remained strong, since the rulers in theory recognized the shah of Iran as their sovereign, and until the mid-twentieth century there was a sizeable Iranian community in Hyderabad. The palace guard were Arabs, mainly from Yemen, and their presence is said to account for the popularity of haleem (see below).
In the mid-eighteenth century a French soldier in Hyderabad wrote enthusiastically about the local food:
There are dishes consisting of bread made à la manteque [with butter; probably paratha], stew and the liver of fowls and kids, very well dressed, but most renowned of all is the rice boiled with quantities of butter, fowls and kids, with all sorts of spicery . . . which we found to be very good and which refreshed us greatly.28
Like their Lucknow counterparts, the Nizams and their officials were gourmets who practised one-upmanship when it came to food. Every nobleman’s house had its own speciality. Once when the nawab was invited to the home of a noble to taste his chutneys, he said he would accept if the meal consisted only of chutneys and bread. The host served more than 100 types of chutney.
A detailed account of the region’s food customs is found in an unusual work commissioned by the East India Company: Qanoon-e-Islam; or, The Customs of the Moosulmans of India, published in London in 1832.29 According to the author, Ja’far Sharif, a wealthy Muslim had three meals a day: a breakfast at 7 am of tea (probably green tea from China) and coffee with sweets; a midday meal of unleavened bread, soup, minced savoury meat, cream, vegetables and sometimes rice; and a dinner at 7 pm consisting of rice and dal or rice boiled with meat, meat and fish, and, at the end, yoghurt, mangoes or plantains. The three daily meals of middle-class people were less elaborate, while poor people ate two meals: a breakfast of millet bread at 11 am and rice and dal with a little ghee and chillies or onions in the evening.
According to Ja’far Sharif, there were at least 25 varieties of pulao, among them:
Babune, flavoured with chamomile
Korma, in which meat is cut into very thin slices
Mittha, ‘sweet’, rice, sugar, butter, spices and aniseed
Shahsranga, like the above but drier
Tarl, rice, meat, turmeric and butter
Soya, dill
Macchhi, with fish instead of meat
Imli, with tamarind
Dampukht, steamed; butter added when nearly cooked
Zarda, yellow, with saffron
Koku, fried eggs
Dogostha, two meats; very hot
Biryan, marrow, spices, limes, cream, milk
Mutanhan, meat, rice, butter and sometimes pineapple and nuts
Haleem, chickpea, wheat, meat, spices
Lambni, cream, nuts, crystallized sugar, butter, rice, spices (especially aniseed)
Jaman, jaman fruit
Titar, partridge
Bater, quail
Kofta, meatballs
Khari chakoli, meat, vermicelli, green lentils.
In addition to the standard roti, parathas and puri, local breads included godida, ‘ox-eyed’, and gaozaban, ‘ox tongue’ naans, so-called because of their shape; satparati roti, a cake made by layering seven thin breads, sprinkling them with butter and sugar and frying them in butter; laungchira, a bread shaped like a clove; andon ki roti, a white bread filled with eggs; gulguli, deep-fried balls of flour, sugar, yoghurt and spices; and roghandar, bread made with plenty of butter.
Around the same time, Dr Robert Flower Riddell, the superintending army surgeon at the court of the Nizam, wrote the Indian Domestic Economy and Receipt Book (1841), featuring recipes for dishes made at the Nizams’ court, including salan, a curry-like meat or vegetable dish with a thinnish gravy.
A more recent description of court cuisine is given by Sidq Jaisi, a poet from Lucknow who lived at the Hyderabad court from 1931 to 1938. He describes his first meal at the court in the following way:
How can I describe each dish? Each grain of rice in the biryani seemed to be filled with ghee. The last dish consisted of almonds and cream. Bowls, each containing about 3 kilos of cream, were placed in front of each person. Another dish, similarly placed, contained almonds and pistachios. Those nuts were eaten with cream. The layer of cream was at least three to four fingers thick . . . The buffaloes whose milk was used to make this cream were fed on almonds and pistachios from morning to evening. I counted eleven bowls of cream that evening. That day the famed cream of Lucknow which I had tasted earlier at the table of the nobles of Awadh fell in my estimation.30
At the end of another meal, the servant brought five round wafers of sohan halwa, each weighing at least 20 kg (44 lb). These were shared among the guests together with the special cream.
As in Lucknow, there was a cult of making dishes that looked like something else. Khichri, for example, was composed of peeled almonds sliced thinly to resemble grains of rice and pistachios sliced to look like green lentils. Almonds, pistachios and lentils were mixed in equal measure and cooked slowly with either an equal or a double amount of ghee.
One writer prepared a list of more than 200 dishes that were served at the court in the early twentieth century: 112 main dishes, 76 sweet dishes and 33 chutneys and achars (pickles), including many that are standard in Hyderabad today, notably bagharay baigan, fried aubergines stuffed with spices in a sour gravy; chakhna, a spicy offal stew; dalcha, a tamarind-flavoured stew of mutton and lentils; tootak, baked pastries filled with panir and potatoes; salan ka mirch, green chillies or capsicum in gravy; murtabak, baked layers of minced meat, panir and eggs; double ka meetha (also called shahi tukra), a bread pudding with cream; khubani ka meetha, apricot purée with cream; gosha ka meetha, elephant ears (flaky pastry) with cream; ande ka halwa, a saffron-flavoured halwa made with eggs and milk; badam ki jaali, lacy almond rounds; haleem; and biryani.31
Until the fourteenth century Kashmir was ruled by Buddhist and Hindu kings. In 1334, following devastating invasions by Tatar and Mongol tribes, Shah Mir, an Indian Muslim, seized power. He founded a dynasty that lasted until 1587, when Akbar conquered Kashmir and made it part of his empire. Kashmir, which the Mughals called Bagh i Khas (Garden of Elites), was their favourite place for rest and recreation. Kashmir’s hundreds of orchards and gardens became a major supplier of grapes, melons, cherries and saffron to the Mughal court, carried by men in conical baskets.
Following Timur’s invasion of North India in 1398, some 1,700 skilled woodcarvers, architects, calligraphers and cooks are said to have migrated from Samarkhand to Kashmir. Their descendants became a class of professional Muslim chefs called wazas, who are still engaged by both Hindu and Muslim families to prepare banquets, called wazwans, to celebrate weddings, births and other important events. Dozens of male cooks headed by a master chef, the vasta waza, bring herds of sheep and goats and enormous cooking pots to the celebrants’ home. The animals are slaughtered according to Muslim ritual and butchered on the spot.
Hyderabad is famous for its biryani.
Preparation for a wazwan: an elaborate Kashmiri feast with as many as 36 dishes.
A traditional wazwan consists of 36 courses, between 15 and 30 of which are meat. There are a few vegetable dishes, but dal is never served. According to the wazas, there are 72 parts to an animal and most of them will be cooked, including the organs. Guests are seated in groups of four and share the meal from a large metal tray. Many of the dishes have rich, often yoghurt-based sauces. Seven dishes are always present: rista (meatballs in a red gravy), rogan josh (lamb cooked in a thin, tomato-based sauce), tabak maaz (lamb simmered in a yoghurt sauce and then fried), daniwal korma (lamb roasted with yoghurt and flavoured with coriander), aab gosht (lamb cooked in thickened milk), marchwangan korma (chicken thighs in an onion-based gravy) and, at the end, gushtaba (meatballs in a spicy yoghurt sauce). Even Kashmiri brahmins (called pandits) eat lamb and goat (although not chicken, onions or garlic).
Today the cuisines of Lucknow, Hyderabad and Kashmir are considered by some to be the crowning glories of Indian Muslim haute cuisine. Although the nawabs, maharajahs and other rulers lost their kingdoms and their official privileges in the twentieth century, their rich culinary heritage lives on in the kitchens of their descendants and a few top restaurants.
