Fuel for appetite, across times

Feasts and Fasts — A History of Food in India is Chicago-based food historian Colleen Taylor Sen’s most recent culinary outing. An ambitious effort at exploring the history of Indian gastronomy, the fascinating journey of which, this richly illustrated single volume traces from the Indus Valley Civilisation to its present incarnation. It is served as a detailed introduction to the dietary evolution of a diverse sub-continental people since prehistoric times, with generous dollops of myriad influences that have accorded it the status of a much-preferred world cuisine today. The author peels away, chapter by chapter, how faith, climate, geography, foreign rule, among others, shaped our culinary heritage and modern-day food habits.
               

The opening section helps demystify the effects of physical features, environment, landscape and climate on food patterns since antediluvian ages. The ones after, walk the reader through the prevalence of Indo-Aryan customs during the Age of Ritual (1700-1100BCE), and how Vedic Indians of the 16 mahajanapadas effected the Renunciation Tradition and Vegetarianism (1000 to 300 BCE).

Later, orthodoxy and newer religious movements would sway culinary customs to a large extent and Puranic thought would come to prevail till the 10th century CE. Nearly concurrent, or at least from 600BCE to 600CE, the author has us know, doctors were an essential ingredient in nutritional trends of the time. Much of our knowledge about food in ancient India is rooted in medical texts.
Culinary customs in the Middle Ages took on a more sophisticated flavour, largely due to the patronage of local and regional dynasties that ruled the sub-continent. This period also saw the mushrooming of food writing as rulers were wont to show off their knowledge by authoring books on various topics.

Food as we know it, particularly in the north, is replete with Central Asian flourishes, and Sen justifiably devotes a chapter to the Mughals and how they inspired the delectable cuisines of Awadh, Hyderabad, and Kashmir. The halwas, samosas, biryanis and pulaos we relish today are all part of this legacy. Then came along the Europeans bearing tomatoes, potatoes and chillies; rice in any case had arrived many centuries ago from China to become the staple of a large part of the sub-continent.