This Companion outlines the enormous variety of cuisines, food materials and dishes that collectively fall under the term’ Indian food’. Drawing upon material from a range of sources – literature, archaeology, epigraphic records, anthropology, philology and botanical and genetic studies - the book chronologically details the history of Indian food, beginning with prehistoric times and ending with British rule. Achaya discusses the various regional cuisines, theories and classification of food, as well as the customs, rituals and beliefs observed by different communities and religious groups. This book won an international prize awarded by the Italian food promotion organization, Premio Langhe Ceretto in 1995. Extensively revised since its first publication in 1994, this rich storehouse of fascinating information on Indian food will interest food aficionados, historians anthropologists, and general readers.
The present volume is the outcome of a research project on the history of Science in India, funded generously by the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi. The Centre for the History and Philosophy of Science, Bangalore: provided the administrative support. I am grateful to Dr. A. K. Bag of the former organization and Dr. B. V. Subbarayappa of the latter.
The book deals with the food materials and food practices of the Indian subcontinent. The arrangement of the first thirteen chapters is broadly historical, ending with the period of British food ambience in India. A few regional cuisines have been considered, again within a historical context wherever possible; there will still be room for exploration by scholars of local literatures and cultural mores. The fourteenth and fifteenth chapters describe the origins of Indian food materials in botanical and genetic terms. The last chapter is concerned with the food plants that were brought into India from South America and Mexico after the 15th century AD. Each chapter carries one or more boxed items. This essentially journalistic device enables the inclusion and highlighting of relevant material which might otherwise interrupt the narrative flow of the text. References are numbered chapterwise, and listed together at the end of the book, to avoid distractions caused by footnotes, or even end-of-chapter notes. The four indexes should be helpful in locating various types of specific information without difficulty.
Italicizing Indian words in a text dealing with Indian food would have made for uncomfortable reading, and has therefore been avoided. I have attempted to use English spellings as close as possible to the Indian pronunciation. This has meant some simplification of the several sh, th, ch, t, I and n sounds of Sanskrit, Tamil and other Indian languages. Except for indicating lengthened vowels, diacritical marks have been avoided. Thus thava represents the Indian griddle pan, shali winter rice, shastra knowledge and Charaka and Sushrutha the two medical writers.
Particular assistance in regard to the historical foods was rendered by Smt. Visalakshi and Dr. (Smt.) Radha Krishnamurthy (for Karnataka), by the late Dr. Saradha S. Srinivasan (for Gujarat), and by Smt. Bunny Gupta and Smt. Jaya Chaliha (for Bengal), to all of whom I owe a debt of thanks. Illustrations have come from many hands, each of which has been individually credited. I am grateful to the Oxford University Press, and to Mukul Mangalik for seeing the book through the press.
Globalization may have brought Indian food closer to the international palate, but it has generated many myths. There is perhaps no bigger irony than considering the replacement of fish and chips with chicken tikka masala as the national dish Britain as symptomatic of the Indianization of the British palate. The Illustrated Foods of India, an authentic and textured account of Indian cuisine and its rich heritage, will dispel such myths forever.
Drawing upon the country's oldest literatures in Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil, and Kannada, The book provides readers the AZ of Indian food. Not just about food per se, it covers the historical, regional, and religious influences on Indian food showcasing the intricacies of the various sub-cultures of India through their cuisines. Actual recipes from historical sources like Ani-i-Akbari, menus from the diaries and cookery books of colonials, and quotations from the accounts of foreign travelersalong with the more than 80 visuals add significantly to the book's appeal.
Extensively cross- referenced for easy access, the Illustrated foods of India will charm and inform both foodies and food academics.
K.T. Achaya (1923-2002), a renowned nutritionist and an authority on Indian food, pursued scientific research in the areas of oilseeds, vegetable oil, processed foods, and nutrition. His books Indian Food: A Historical Companion (OUP 1994) and A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food (OUP 1998) are considered classics on the subject.
Do you know about the fascinating journey of various food plants from the New World to India? How food of other countries was integrated into Indian cuisine? How food items etymologically evolved, for example, from the aboriginal Munda tongues into Sanskrit?
Celebrating the culinary rainbow of India, A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food traces the gastronomic history and food ethos of the country. Drawing on archaeology, historical writing, botany, genetics, and ancient literature in sanskrit, Pali, Tamil, and Kannada, this volume provides a wealth of information on food materials, cuisine, and recipes of India. Alphabetically arranged and extensively cross-referenced, this book will delight both foodies and food academics.
K.T. Achaya (1923-2002) was a renowned nutritionist and an authority on Indian food.
Several readers of my earlier book. Indian Food: A Historical Companion published by Oxford University Press in 1994, felt there was need for a historical dictionary that would bring together, in alphabetical order, material scattered all over the earlier volume, besides of course relevant new material. Some cut-off point was necessary, and 1947, the year of Indian Independence, seemed appropriate. In the event, this is only relevant to a few entries, such as wheat milling or sugarcane products, where certain production figures for 1947 were in order. Of course the general thrust of the volume is the progression, over some four thousand years, of food materials themselves, and their conversion to edible products, in the Indian sub-continent.
The choice of entries was not confined to food per se. nor could it be when the basis of Indian dietetics is a holistic one that even embraces a cosmic moral cycle. Ayurveda is the science of life as a whole, and its precepts have for millennia governed, to greater or lesser degrees, the choice and style of food in India. Accordingly, ayurvedic parameters of taste (rasa), aftertaste (vipaka), potency (vlrya) and guna or property (hot-cold, heavy- light, oily-dry and so on), have been noted in the entries for several common food materials. and in turn their effect on the hurnoural balance (dosha) of the body. Hindsight has generally been avoided; thus the amla or Indian gooseberry is now known to have an exceptional content of vitamin C. but traditional medicine had its own reasons for the value of amla in several restorative blends.
Being a historical dictionary, the country's oldest literatures, which are in Sanskrit, Pali, Tamil and Kannada, have naturally, been drawn upon extensively, as have the often illuminating accounts of visitors to India, starting with the Greeks in the fourth century BC, Entries which enumerate these sources, with historical dates, therefore seemed warranted, Another fascinating area, especially in the realm of food, is the transfer of words across languages, from the aboriginal Munda tongues into Sanskrit, from Tamil and Malayalam (often by way of Portuguese or Spanish) into English, and in reverse from these languages into Indian tongues.
Archaeological, literary, historical, botanic and genetic evidence have all been drawn upon to situate Indian foods in time and place. Of particular interest is the recent migration, following Columbus and Vasco da Gama, of food plants from the New World to India through Portuguese and Spanish agency. So quickly did these become integrated that today the potato, tomato, papaya and above all the chilli are all but indispensable to Indian, cuisine. Brief notes on the origins and transfer of these food materials are included in this dictionary. Despite extensive cross-referencing in the text, some repetition could not be avoided if each entry was to be reasonably complete; thus the entry on meat dishes would include preparations from Kashmir, Hyderabad and Kodagu, which would also figure in entries devoted to these cuisines.
In a book dealing with Indian food, it would have been pedantic and tiresome to italicize Indian words, like dhal or roti or ghee. In writing Indian words in English, except for indicating lengthened vowels, diacritical marks have been avoided. Phonetic forms of spelling close to the original sound have been sought, like palao, chana (for the Bengal gram), chhana (for precipitated milk solids), and Sushrutha Samhita (for the medical text). References are listed together at the end of the text, followed by their own author index, and three other textual indexes; of Authors, Literary Works, and Historical Persons; of Indian Words; and of Latin Names.
In the rush into modernization, many traditional food preparations will be lost irretrievably unless documented by those in a position to do so. Women would be at a particular advantage in such efforts.
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