Put Your or Friend’s and Family’s Food Knowledge to the Test
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1Indian food is famous for chilli heat. When did the chilli actually reach India?
Chillies are American. The Portuguese brought them to Goa in the 1500s and they spread across the subcontinent in roughly a century. Every fiery curry you can think of is, historically speaking, a recent development.
2So what made Indian food hot before chillies turned up?
Both were valuable trade spices and both are pungent in a way nothing else available was. Long pepper, pippali, is the sharper of the two and has largely dropped out of everyday cooking.
3Curry powder, as a single standardised all-purpose blend, was developed mainly for which market?
Spice blending in India is far older than any of this, but it is done per dish and often per stage of a dish. The single all-purpose tin was put together for British kitchens and the export trade, to stand in for a whole cuisine.
4Vindaloo gets its name from...
A Portuguese marinade of wine and garlic that landed in Goa and met palm vinegar and chillies. The 'aloo' has nothing to do with the Hindi for potato, though plenty of later versions do include potatoes.
5The samosa arrived in India from where?
It has antecedents in Persianate and Central Asian pastries and turns up in Persian writing well before it reached Delhi. The Indian samosa then evolved locally — and the potato filling had to wait for the Portuguese to bring potatoes.
6Which of these is actually native to India?
Pepper is from the Malabar coast. Potato, tomato and chilli are all American, and all three arrived in the last five hundred years.
7Roughly how many crocus flowers does it take to make one gram of saffron?
Roughly 150 to 200, depending on the flowers and the dry yield. Each gives three red stigmas, and both picking and separating them are still largely done by hand. That is what saffron costs.
8The bhut jolokia, or ghost pepper, comes from which part of India?
It grows in Assam, Nagaland and Manipur, and in 2007 Guinness certified it as the world's hottest chilli. It has since been comfortably overtaken, which tells you something about the people breeding chillies.
9Why does milk help with chilli burn when water does not?
Capsaicin is hydrophobic, so water mostly moves it around. The proteins and fat in milk disperse it far more effectively. Lassi with a hot meal is not decoration.
10Which part of a chilli is hottest?
The placenta, that white rib inside, is where capsaicin is made. Seeds only taste hot because they have been sitting against it. Deseeding a chilli works mostly because you scrape the pith out along with them.
11About what share of the world's turmeric does India grow?
Indian government figures put it at about 80 per cent. India also eats most of what it grows, so relatively little enters world trade. Crop shares move year to year.
12Hing, the asafoetida in your tadka, is mostly...
India has traditionally imported nearly all its raw asafoetida, chiefly from Afghanistan and Iran, for a spice it uses constantly. Domestic cultivation is now being developed.
13Nutmeg and mace are...
Mace is the scarlet lacy covering wrapped around the nutmeg seed. One fruit, two spices, two prices.
14Which Delhi restaurant is commonly credited with popularising tandoori chicken?
Kundan Lal Gujral brought it from Peshawar after Partition. The tandoor itself is much older; what Moti Mahal did was make this version famous. Butter chicken came out of the same kitchen.
15In the best-known Moti Mahal origin story, butter chicken was created to solve what problem?
Unsold tandoori chicken reportedly went into a tomato, butter and cream gravy to bring it back. It is restaurant lore rather than documented history, but it is a good story about one of the world's most ordered dishes.
16One widely repeated but disputed origin story places chicken tikka masala's invention in...
The story has a Glasgow cook improvising a sauce for a customer who said his chicken was dry. Other accounts place it in the subcontinent. The argument has never slowed the dish down.
17Tomato ketchup is commonly traced back to what?
Early English ketchups were thin, dark, savoury sauces influenced by Asian fermented ones, and the word is usually linked to that family. Tomatoes were a later substitution, and the fish quietly dropped out.
18What does the 'jamun' in gulab jamun refer to?
Gulab is rose water, jamun is the java plum, which the fried balls resemble in size and colour. The dish is named for looking like fruit it is not.
19Why does paneer hold its shape in a hot curry instead of melting?
Curdling milk with acid and pressing the curds gives a protein structure that softens but will not flow the way mozzarella does. Halloumi also resists melting, but by a different route — it is rennet-set and heated in whey.
20What makes idli batter rise overnight?
Nothing is added. Microbes already on the grain, the water and the vessels do it, which is why the same recipe behaves differently in different kitchens and seasons. Bacteria do more of the lifting than the name 'wild yeast' suggests.
21Garam masala literally means 'hot spice'. Hot in what sense?
It describes a warming aromatic blend rather than chilli heat. A classic garam masala often has no chilli in it at all — cinnamon, cardamom, clove, pepper, cumin.
22Basmati means...
From Sanskrit roots meaning aroma. The name is about the smell, not the shape, which is the right way round: the smell is the point.
23Which technique is especially associated with biryani?
A strong tendency rather than a rule. Kacchi biryani layers raw marinated meat with part-cooked rice and cooks them together, and biryani and pulao overlap plenty across regions. Families will argue about this at length.
24In dum cooking, what traditionally seals the pot?
A rope of atta dough pressed around the rim traps the steam. It bakes hard during cooking and gets broken open at the table, which is half the theatre.
25What makes kulfi denser than ice cream?
Ice cream can be up to half air by volume. Kulfi is frozen still, in sealed moulds, and the milk is usually cooked down first, so it is dense twice over.
26Why do Indians wince slightly at the phrase 'chai tea'?
Chai is tea in Hindi and many other languages. It and the English word both go back to the same Chinese character, by two different routes: chá overland, and the Min Nan te by sea. The drink people mean is masala chai.
27South Indian filter coffee traditionally contains what besides coffee?
Many traditional blends carry chicory root, often a fifth or so, though it is not universal and proportions vary. Shortages helped popularise it and the taste kept it. It is what gives the decoction its body.
28Before the British planted tea in Assam, tea drinking across India was...
The plant grew wild in Assam and communities there used it, but it was not a national drink. Mass tea drinking was built by a marketing campaign in the early 1900s, and it worked.
29Which country produces the most milk?
India has led since the 1990s, on the back of a cooperative movement that turned millions of one and two-animal households into a national dairy supply.
30Which country grows the most mangoes?
On recent figures India grows roughly two-fifths of the world's mangoes, depending on the dataset, and exports few of them because they get eaten at home. The number of named varieties runs into the hundreds and is often given as more than a thousand.
31Which is the most expensive spice by weight?
Saffron, at retail today, though grade and origin move the price a great deal. Vanilla is usually next, and both are expensive for the same reason: the harvest resists mechanising.
32Black pepper was once called 'black gold'. Which Indian coast built its wealth on it?
The Malabar coast of Kerala. The search for a sea route to that pepper is the reason Vasco da Gama sailed, and the reason a great deal of subsequent history happened.
33Jalebi's name comes from...
Indian jalebi belongs to the same family as the West Asian zalabiya. Nearly every sweet-shop favourite has a passport, which is rather the point of Indian food.
34A papad puffs and blisters over a flame because...
The dough is dried, not dead: the little moisture left flashes to steam and lifts the layers. The same physics puffs a puri and a phulka.
35For a puri to balloon properly, the oil must be...
Hot oil sets the outside instantly, so the steam inside has nowhere to go but up. Cool oil lets it soak in and you get a heavy, greasy disc.
36Jaggery, or gur, is...
Cane juice boiled down without separating out the molasses, which is where the colour and the mineral taste come from. Palm and date versions are common too.
37The English word 'sugar' traces back to which language?
Sanskrit sharkara, through Arabic and Italian into English. Crystallising sugar from cane was worked out in India, and the word travelled with the technique.
38In Sanskrit the coconut palm is kalpavriksha. What does that mean?
Rather generous, but defensible: the fruit, the water, the oil, the milk, the shell, the fibre, the leaves and the timber all get used.
39Why is a banana leaf such a practical plate?
The waxy surface holds a wet meal without going soggy, and warm food draws a faint green aroma off it. The part nobody mentions is that it is a plate you throw on the compost heap.
40West Bengal and Odisha both hold a GI tag connected to rasgulla. What settled it?
Bengal was granted one for Banglar Rasogolla in 2017 and Odisha one for Odisha Rasagola in 2019. Two tags, two sweets, and an argument that carries on regardless.
41The fortune cookie's precursor comes from which country's baking tradition?
It descends from a Japanese cracker and took its modern form in California, where several families have claimed it. It is served in Chinese restaurants nearly everywhere except China.
42Bhindi is which vegetable?
Okra, or ladies' fingers. The sliminess that puts people off is soluble fibre. Dry pods, a hot pan and a little acid all reduce how much of it you notice.
43Karela is famously bitter. What is the usual way to tame it?
Salting draws out moisture and takes some of the bitterness with it, though how much varies. Plenty of cooks skip it, on the grounds that the bitterness is the entire point.
44In 'chicken tikka', what does tikka mean?
It just means bits or pieces. The cooking method is in the tandoor, not in the name.
45A thali is named after...
The plate. A meal named after its crockery, which is a fair description of a format where the arrangement is as fixed as the food.
46Which country grows and eats the most pulses — dals, beans, chickpeas?
India on both counts, by a wide margin on recent figures, and it still imports more on top. Which is roughly how much dal gets eaten there.
47The green paste served with sushi outside Japan is usually...
Real wasabi is difficult to grow and loses its punch within about fifteen minutes of grating, so most of the world has been eating dyed horseradish for decades.
48Which of these does not spoil, essentially ever?
Very little water and a fairly high acidity leave most microbes with nothing to work on, so honey stored properly keeps almost indefinitely. It will crystallise and darken, which is not spoilage.
49Why does pineapple sting your tongue?
Bromelain breaks down protein, and your tongue is protein. It is, briefly and very slightly, eating you back.
50Early cultivated carrots came in which range of colours?
Purple, yellow and white were all ordinary, and orange is simply the one that won. India still grows a deep red-black carrot for kanji and gajar halwa.
51The cashew, so at home in Goan and Kerala cooking, came from...
Portuguese traders brought it from Brazil in the 16th century. Feni, Goa's cashew spirit, is made from the fruit the nut hangs off, not the nut.
52Why do you never see cashews sold in the shell?
The shell oil blisters skin, and shelling is skilled, hazardous work. That labour is a large part of what you are paying for.
53Kadhai paneer is named after...
The deep curved pan. Its shape concentrates heat at the base and makes tossing and reducing easy, though the dish cooks perfectly well in something else.
54Ghee keeps far longer than butter because...
Take out the water and the milk solids and you have almost pure fat, which keeps for months without a fridge. It is not indestructible — fat still goes rancid with heat, light and damp, so keep it covered and dry.
55Indian tej patta and the European bay leaf are...
Tej patta is cassia, closer to cinnamon. Swapping in a Mediterranean bay leaf gives you a completely different flavour and a mildly confused biryani.
56Chilling an onion before chopping helps because...
Cutting releases enzymes that produce a volatile sulphur compound; cold slows the reaction and the gas rises less readily. A sharp knife helps too, by crushing fewer cells.
57India is the world's second largest producer of rice. Who is first?
China has grown more for years, though India has recently been the larger exporter by some distance.
58Why is naan hard to make properly at home?
A tandoor runs around 400-480°C, roughly double a home oven. The blistering and the chew both come from cooking that fast. A very hot cast-iron pan is the usual compromise.
59What do sourdough bread and idli batter have in common?
Same principle, different continents and grains. Both are also unreliable in a cold kitchen, and both are the reason cooks talk about their batter as though it has moods.
60Kala namak, black salt, smells strongly of what?
Sulphur compounds give it a distinctly eggy note. It is also why it turns up in vegan cooking outside India, doing an impression of scrambled eggs.
61The vada pav was invented outside a railway station in which city?
Commonly credited to a stallholder named Ashok Vaidya, near Dadar station in the 1960s. It is the widely repeated account rather than a documented one, and it is still eaten standing up.
62The 'pav' in vada pav is a Portuguese word. What does it mean?
Commonly traced to pão. Portuguese bakers brought yeasted bread to the west coast, and the square roll it became is now inseparable from Bombay street food.
63Bombay duck is...
A lizardfish, usually dried until it is pungent enough to be noticed from another room. One popular but unproven story links the name to the Bombay dak mail trains.
64Mulligatawny is an English mangling of two Tamil words meaning...
Milagu tannir. Colonial cooks were asked to turn a thin south Indian rasam into a proper soup course, so in went meat, rice and cream, and out came something quite different.
65The British breakfast dish kedgeree descends from which Indian dish?
Khichdi is rice and dal. Kedgeree kept the rice, dropped the dal, and added smoked haddock and hard-boiled egg, which nobody in India had asked for.
66The word 'punch', as in a bowl of punch, comes from a Hindi word meaning...
Often said to come from panch, five, for a drink built on five things — spirit, sugar, citrus, water and spice. Etymologists argue about it, and the recipe was never fixed.
67'Chutney' entered English from which word?
Roughly, something you lick. Which is a fair description of what happens to the last spoonful.
68Traditional appam batter is leavened with what?
Fermenting sap tapped from the coconut palm. Most modern recipes use yeast or an overnight ferment instead, which works but is less fun to explain.
69Feni, Goa's local spirit, is distilled from what?
Cashew feni uses the fleshy fruit the nut dangles from, which is otherwise mostly wasted; coconut feni uses palm sap. Goan Cashew Feni is a registered Indian geographical indication.
70Tamarind, the backbone of south Indian sourness, is originally from...
Africa, not India. Kew places its native range around Madagascar and the Comoros, and says long cultivation has made the exact origin hard to pin down. Its Latin name, Tamarindus indica, and the Arabic tamr hindi both mean 'Indian date', which is two continents' worth of confusion in one plant.
71Kokum, used along the Konkan coast, is used for...
A dried purple fruit rind that sours a curry without the muddiness of tamarind. It also makes sol kadhi, which is pink, cold and the correct thing to drink after a very hot meal.
72Amchur powder is made from...
Green mangoes, dried and ground. It sours a dish without adding liquid, which is why it turns up in dry sabzis and stuffings where lemon juice would make a mess.
73Kasuri methi is...
Dried leaves, crushed between the palms at the end so the heat wakes them up. It is the smell people cannot place in a good butter chicken.
74Fenugreek seed is used commercially to imitate the flavour of...
The compound sotolon smells strongly of maple. Eat enough fenugreek and other people can smell it on you, which is a genuine and well-documented nuisance.
75What is the curry leaf's relationship to curry powder?
Curry leaf is the leaf of Murraya koenigii, a citrus relative. Curry powder is a variable blend that generally has none in it. The leaf also loses most of its character dried, which is why the dusty jar disappoints.
76In the United States, bottles of Indian mustard oil are often labelled...
Expressed mustard oil is not approved there as a cooking oil, largely on erucic acid, so it reaches the shelf labelled for external use. Regulatory treatment differs for other mustard preparations.
77Why are spices bloomed in hot fat rather than stirred into water?
Two things at once: heat drives the volatile compounds out of the spice, and the fat dissolves many of them and carries them through the dish. It is why a tadka goes in hot fat and not into the pot.
78Browning onions properly takes time because you are waiting for...
An onion is about 89 per cent water, and the surface cannot get hot enough to brown until that water has gone. Which is why the recipes promising deep brown onions in ten minutes are describing something else.
79The UN declared 2023 the International Year of Millets at whose proposal?
India grows more millets than anyone and had been pushing them as a drought-tolerant, low-water grain. Bajra, jowar and ragi went from rural staple to fashionable overnight.
80Makki di roti is made from maize. Maize came to India from...
Another Columbian import. Punjab's most traditional-looking winter meal is built on a grain that arrived at roughly the same time as the chilli in it.
81Star anise was for years the main industrial source of what?
Shikimic acid, the starting material for Tamiflu, before fermentation-based production took over much of the supply. For a while the price of a biryani spice tracked global flu scares.
82Cloves are...
Picked before they open and dried until hard. Eugenol makes them numbing, which is why clove oil ends up in dentistry and why biting one is a small shock.
83Most 'cinnamon' sold worldwide is actually cassia. How do you tell them apart?
True cinnamon rolls up like a cigar of tissue paper and crumbles easily. Cassia is one hard slab. Indian dalchini is usually cassia, and most recipes assume it.
84Black cardamom and green cardamom are...
Different species. Black is dried over fire and turns up in savoury braises; green is floral and goes in sweets and chai. Swapping them ruins both dishes.
85Why is black pepper added to some turmeric supplements?
Piperine is meant to raise how much curcumin reaches the bloodstream, and some studies at particular doses show that. Results vary by formulation, and none of it says a pinch of pepper in a sabzi does the same thing.
86Umami was identified as a distinct taste in 1908 by a chemist in which country?
Kikunae Ikeda, working out what made kombu broth so satisfying. He isolated glutamate and went on to sell it as MSG.
87A peanut is botanically...
It is a pea that grows underground. This is why peanut and tree-nut allergies are separate things, and why this site declares them separately.
88Which of these is botanically a berry?
Bananas qualify; strawberries do not. Botanical categories were not designed with fruit salad in mind.
89Why were tomatoes mistrusted in much of Europe for so long?
They arrived related to deadly nightshade and were written up accordingly. The story about acid drawing lead out of pewter plates is often told as the cause; it is one theory. Southern Europe was eating them well before the rest caught up.
90The idea that carrots improve night vision was spread by...
The wartime campaign pushed surplus carrots and fitted neatly around RAF night-fighting success. Whether it was devised specifically to hide radar is still argued over. Carrots do supply vitamin A, and a deficiency does harm night vision — but eating more of them will not improve eyesight that is already fine.
91Vanilla is expensive largely because each flower must be...
Outside its native range natural pollination is far too scarce to farm on, so every pod is pollinated by hand within hours of the flower opening. The technique still in use was worked out on Réunion in 1841 by Edmond Albius, who was twelve and enslaved.
92The Aztecs used cacao beans as...
You could buy a turkey for a hundred beans. There are also records of counterfeiters filling empty husks with clay, which is a very modern crime for the 15th century.
93Eating nutmeg by the spoonful is a bad idea because it is...
Myristicin causes nausea, palpitations and hours of unpleasant confusion. A grating over kheer is delightful. A tablespoon is a trip to hospital.
94Singapore's public transport operators prohibit durian because of its...
The signs on the MRT are pictorial and unambiguous. Enthusiasts describe the fruit as custard; everyone else describes it as a problem.
95Those crunchy white crystals in a mature cheese are...
Usually tyrosine, an amino acid, or calcium lactate, formed slowly as the cheese ages. They are a sign of a well-matured cheese rather than anything wrong with it.
96Apples float in water because they are about a quarter...
Roughly 25 per cent of an apple's volume is air held between the cells, which is the whole reason bobbing for apples works.
97Putting an unripe avocado in a bag with a banana works because bananas release...
Ethylene is a ripening hormone, and trapping it in a bag speeds everything in there along. It is also part of why one overripe apple hurries the rest of the bowl.
98Kopi luwak coffee is made from beans that have been...
The civet digests the fruit and leaves the bean. It is among the most expensive coffees in the world, and the industry around it is now a serious animal-welfare problem.
99Saffron is commonly adulterated with...
Safflower petals and corn silk look close enough and cost almost nothing. Home water tests are not conclusive either way, so who you buy from matters more than any trick with a glass.
100Sugarcane was first domesticated in...
New Guinea, several thousand years ago. It reached India later, and India worked out how to crystallise the juice into something you could carry — which is what turned a chewable stalk into a world commodity.
101Rajma, the kidney bean at the heart of a Punjabi Sunday lunch, is native to...
Kidney beans are American, like the chilli, the potato and the tomato. Rajma chawal is built on a bean that has only been in India a few hundred years.
102Why does rajma need a hard boil rather than a long gentle simmer?
Undercooked kidney beans contain phytohaemagglutinin, and a few of them are enough to make you very sorry. Ten minutes at a rolling boil destroys it. Warm but not boiling is the worst place to leave them.
103Jeera, cumin, is native to...
Cumin came from the Levant and Egypt, and arrived early enough to feel indigenous. India now grows and eats more of it than anywhere else.
104Which country grows the most cardamom?
Guatemala, where the crop was planted by a German coffee grower about a century ago, has out-produced India for decades. It exports nearly all of it; India eats most of what it grows.
105Black pepper is Kerala's oldest export. Which country grows the most of it now?
Vietnam took the lead in the 1990s and now grows roughly a third of the world's pepper, several times India's crop.
106The Alphonso mango is usually said to be named after...
Afonso de Albuquerque, who took Goa in 1510. The Portuguese brought grafting to the Konkan, and Marathi turned Alphonso into hapus.
107Which was the first Indian product to be given a GI tag?
Darjeeling tea, registered in 2004. A GI ties a name to a place, which matters when tea grown three borders away is sold under yours.
108The original Scoville scale measured chilli heat by...
Wilbur Scoville's 1912 test was a panel of tasters and a great deal of sugar water. Laboratories now measure capsaicin directly and convert the result back into Scoville units, out of respect for the tradition.
109Idli and dosa batter is rice and which pulse?
Urad, black gram. Its proteins hold on to the gas the fermentation makes, which is what gives an idli its lift.
110Bajra is which grain?
Pearl millet. Ragi is finger millet and jowar is sorghum: three different grains that an English menu will happily call all of them millet.
111Dhania leaf and dhania seed come from...
One plant, two ingredients that taste nothing alike. The leaf is bright and green, the seed warm and citrusy, and no recipe treats them as swappable.
112Some people taste soap in coriander leaf. Why?
A variant near a cluster of smell-receptor genes makes certain aldehydes in the leaf read as soapy. It is not fussiness: they are genuinely smelling something you are not.
113Garlic only turns pungent once you...
A whole clove is nearly odourless. Breaking the cells lets an enzyme meet its substrate, and allicin forms within seconds. That is why crushed garlic bites harder than sliced.
114Khus khus, the poppy seed that thickens a Bengali or Awadhi gravy, comes from...
The very same plant. The seed itself holds no useful opiate, which is how it comes to sit in the spice cupboard rather than anywhere more exciting.
115Til, sesame, was first domesticated in...
Charred sesame from Harappa is about 4,500 years old, the earliest found anywhere, and it is among the oldest oilseed crops we know of.
116A spoon of yesterday's curd sets today's because it carries...
Lactobacillus, mostly, handed on from batch to batch. Some household cultures have been kept going that way for years.
117Why does a pressure cooker cook faster?
Water in a domestic cooker boils at around 120°C rather than 100°C. Twenty degrees is the difference between an hour of rajma and twenty minutes.
118Kathal, the jackfruit, holds which record?
A jackfruit can pass thirty kilos, the largest fruit borne on any tree. Green it is cooked as a vegetable, ripe it is a dessert: two ingredients out of one fruit.
119In Kolkata, a pani puri is called a...
Puchka in Kolkata, gol gappa in Delhi, gup chup across much of Odisha, pani puri in Mumbai. One snack, and no two cities willing to agree on it.
120Ajwain tastes so strongly of thyme because the two share...
Ajwain seed is full of thymol, the compound that gives thyme its scent. The plants are not related at all. The chemistry is the whole of the resemblance.
121The English word curry comes from which language?
From kari, which in Tamil means a sauce or a spiced dish eaten with rice. The Portuguese wrote it down as caril and the British turned it into one word covering half a subcontinent.
122Korma is not a description of the spicing. What does the word describe?
Qorma means to braise. It says how the dish is cooked, slowly in its own liquid, not how mild or creamy it is. A korma is allowed to be fierce.
123Rogan josh is named after two things. Which two?
Roghan is clarified fat and josh is heat or vigour, so the name describes meat cooked hard in fat. The colour comes from Kashmiri chilli and, traditionally, cockscomb flower.
124Nihari takes its name from a word meaning what?
From nahar, day or morning. It was eaten at dawn after cooking all night, often straight after prayers, and the overnight simmer is the whole of the dish.
125The word kheer comes from the Sanskrit for what?
Ksheera is milk. The dish is named for its liquid and not its grain, which is why kheer can be rice, vermicelli, millet or bottle gourd and still be kheer.
126What does the 'pak' in Mysore pak mean?
Paka is syrup, or the cooking of something in it, in Kannada. It was made in the Mysore palace kitchen for Krishnaraja Wadiyar IV and named for where it came from and what it is.
127The balti, as curry houses serve it, was invented where?
Birmingham, around 1980, in restaurants run by families from north Pakistan. The name nods at the pan it is cooked and served in. There is no balti tradition in India to go looking for.
128Chicken Manchurian was invented where?
By Nelson Wang at a Mumbai club in 1975, when a member asked for something that was not on the menu. Nothing about it is Manchurian, and Indian Chinese has been its own cuisine ever since.
129Which dish is India's official national dish?
India has never declared one. Khichdi was promoted at a food fair in 2017 and half the internet decided it had been crowned, and the government had to say publicly that it had not.
130A US patent was granted in the 1990s on turmeric for healing wounds. What became of it?
India's CSIR fought it with old Sanskrit and Urdu texts as evidence that the use was ancient and public, and the patent was struck down in 1997. It is the case everyone cites on biopiracy.
131Hyderabadi haleem holds a first among India's protected foods. What is it?
It took its geographical indication in 2010, the first non-vegetarian preparation in India protected that way. The tag covers haleem made in Hyderabad, in the season it is made.
132Kashmiri chilli is used in a red gravy mainly for what?
It gives deep red at a fraction of the heat of ordinary chilli powder, which is how rogan josh gets its look without being punishing. Colour and heat are separate properties in a chilli.
133Kalpasi, the 'stone flower' in a Chettinad masala, is what?
A lichen, scraped off rock and bark, which is not a plant in the ordinary sense at all. It smells of almost nothing raw and turns deep and smoky the moment it meets hot fat.
134Panch phoron is five whole spices. Which is not usually one of them?
The five are fenugreek, nigella, cumin, black mustard and fennel, and in parts of Bengal radhuni stands in for the mustard. They go into the fat whole and are never ground.
135Baingan, the aubergine, was domesticated where?
It is one of the few things in an everyday sabzi that India can claim as its own, and the country is still a centre of its diversity. Most of what shares the pan with it arrived from elsewhere.
136Cauliflower is in half the sabzis in north India. When did it get there?
Brought from Europe in 1822 and now grown here on a scale almost nowhere matches. Gobi is a recent arrival wearing very old clothes.
137Chana holds up half of north Indian cooking. Where was it domesticated?
In the Fertile Crescent, around ten thousand years ago, and it reached India early enough to feel native. India now grows most of the world's crop and still imports more.
138The betel nut chewed in paan is not a nut. What is it?
The seed of the areca palm's fruit. The leaf it is wrapped in comes from an unrelated climbing vine, so neither half of paan is what its name suggests, and the two plants are strangers.
139Ragi is unusual among cereals for carrying a great deal of what?
Finger millet has several times the calcium of rice or wheat, which is why it turns up in weaning food and wherever dairy is scarce. Most of it sits in the husk, so it is milled whole.
140On a drumstick tree, which part is the most nutritious?
The leaves beat the pods by a distance on protein, iron and vitamins, and most of the world grows moringa for them alone. South India cooks them as murungai keerai; much of the north knows only the pods.
141Sattu, the Bihari summer staple, is made from what?
Roasted chana, milled to a flour. It needs no cooking, keeps without a fridge and carries real protein, which is why it travelled with anyone working away from home.
142How is poha made?
Parboiled, dried, then flattened between rollers. That is why it wants rinsing rather than cooking: the grain is already done and is only asking for its water back.
143Good basmati is usually sold in what state?
Ageing dries the grain, which is what lets it stretch rather than swell and stops it clumping. New-crop basmati cooks sticky, and the price gap between new and aged is real.
144India is the world's largest milk producer. Which animal gives most of it?
Buffalo milk is around half of India's output and cow milk most of the rest. Buffalo milk is far fattier, which is why paneer, khoya and ghee behave differently depending on what went in.
145How did coffee reach India, by the usual telling?
Baba Budan is said to have smuggled seven fertile beans home from Mocha past a ban on exporting anything that could germinate, and planted them in the Karnataka hills that carry his name.
146Bengal's chhena sweets, sandesh and rasgulla, owe their technique to whom?
Splitting milk on purpose was foreign to older Indian cooking, which treated curdled milk as ruined. The Portuguese in Bengal made cheese that way, and Bengali confectioners took the method somewhere they never did.
147Modak is made in quantity for which occasion?
It is the sweet Ganesha is said to favour, and twenty-one the number usually offered. The steamed one is rice flour round coconut and jaggery; the fried one keeps for days.
148Ayurveda counts six tastes. Which one does Western cooking usually leave off its list?
Kashaya, astringent: the dry pucker of unripe banana, raw turmeric or over-brewed tea. The others are sweet, sour, salty, pungent and bitter, and a balanced meal is meant to touch all six.
149In a kachchi biryani, what goes into the sealed pot raw?
Kachchi means raw. Marinated meat goes in uncooked with par-cooked rice above it, and the two have to finish together in one sealed pot. Pakki biryani cooks the meat first and forgives far more.
150A full Kashmiri wazwan traditionally runs to how many dishes?
Thirty-six is the number people name, cooked by a team under a vasta waza and eaten four to a plate. Most of them are meat, and the order they arrive in is not negotiable.
151Sarson da saag is built primarily around which leaves?
Sarson means mustard. The Punjabi dish may include spinach or bathua for balance, but mustard greens provide its defining flavour and identity.
152Why were baati-style breads well suited to Rajasthan's desert conditions?
The firm wheat rounds need relatively little water, can be baked in embers, and travel better than soft breads—useful qualities in an arid region.
153What gives traditional laal maas its famous red colour?
Rajasthani Mathania chillies are prized for deep colour and a distinctive heat. Tomato-heavy versions are later adaptations.
154Ker sangri combines two ingredients adapted to what landscape?
Ker berries and sangri pods come from hardy desert plants. They are commonly dried, then rehydrated and cooked into a tangy Rajasthani preparation.
155The 'gatte' in gatte ki sabzi are made chiefly from what?
Gatte are seasoned cylinders of besan, or gram flour, that are boiled, sliced, and finished in a spiced gravy.
156In the name undhiyu, what does the word point to?
The name is linked to the Gujarati word for upside down, recalling the older method of cooking the winter vegetables in an inverted earthen pot.
157Patra is made by rolling spiced gram-flour paste inside which leaves?
Patra uses colocasia, also called taro or arbi, leaves. The rolls are steamed, sliced, and often tempered or lightly fried.
158What is handvo?
Gujarati handvo is a savoury cake made from a fermented rice-and-lentil batter, often with bottle gourd, and finished with a seeded tempering.
159Parsi dhansak characteristically brings together meat with what?
Dhansak cooks meat with a mixture of lentils, vegetables, and spices, producing a thick, complex stew commonly served with browned rice.
160What is akuri?
Akuri is a moist Parsi egg preparation cooked gently with ingredients such as onion, chilli, coriander, and spices.
161The sharpness in Goan sorpotel traditionally comes mainly from what?
Vinegar is central to sorpotel's tang and preservation, reflecting the strong Portuguese influence on Goan meat cookery.
162Which ingredient forms the roasted body of many Goan xacuti masalas?
Xacuti typically uses roasted coconut with a layered mixture of spices, giving the curry its nutty depth and thick texture.
163Why is neer dosa called 'neer' dosa?
Neer means water in Kannada and Tulu. The unfermented rice batter is diluted until very fluid, producing a delicate, lacy dosa.
164Bisi bele bath literally describes what?
In Kannada, bisi means hot, bele means lentil, and bath refers to a rice preparation: essentially a hot lentil-rice dish.
165Kori rotti pairs a chicken curry with what distinctive base?
The coastal Karnataka dish is served over very thin, crisp rice wafers, which soften as they absorb the coconut-rich chicken gravy.
166Ragi mudde is traditionally eaten in what form?
Cooked finger-millet flour is beaten into smooth, dense balls. Small portions are dipped in a gravy or sambar and swallowed with minimal chewing.
167How is puttu traditionally cooked?
Moistened rice flour and grated coconut are layered in a cylindrical mould and steamed, giving puttu its crumbly, column-like form.
168On a Kerala sadya, food is traditionally served on which surface?
The feast is arranged on a banana leaf, with the placement and sequence of dishes following local convention.
169Meen pollichathu protects and perfumes fish by cooking it inside what?
In this Kerala technique, spiced fish is wrapped in banana leaf and cooked, trapping moisture while the heated leaf contributes aroma.
170The 'ada' in ada pradhaman refers to what?
Ada are small rice-flour pieces. They are simmered with jaggery and coconut milk to make the Kerala payasam known as ada pradhaman.
171Madurai's jigarthanda is best described as what?
Jigarthanda is a chilled Madurai drink commonly assembled from milk, reduced milk, syrup, and a softening gum or seed-based ingredient.
172Gongura gets its signature sourness from the leaves of which plant?
Gongura is roselle leaf. Its natural tartness makes it valuable in Andhra and Telangana pickles, dals, and meat dishes.
173Pesarattu batter is based mainly on which pulse?
Andhra pesarattu is made from soaked and ground whole green gram, or mung, usually without the rice-and-urad combination used for dosa.
174What supplies the defining sour note in pulihora?
Pulihora is seasoned rice whose principal souring agent is tamarind, balanced with chillies, turmeric, and a nutty tempering.
175Why is the Andhra sweet pootharekulu sometimes called 'paper sweet'?
Its name evokes a coated sheet: nearly translucent rice-starch layers are folded with sugar and ghee, creating a paper-like sweet.
176Bagara baingan's sauce commonly gets richness from which combination?
The Hyderabadi aubergine dish typically uses a roasted peanut-sesame-coconut base, balanced with spices and a souring ingredient.
177Despite its name, the Hyderabadi dessert double ka meetha is made from what?
It is a bread dessert: fried or toasted slices are soaked with sweetened milk or syrup. The name is linked to double roti, a term for bread.
178In Odisha's dalma, lentils are cooked together with what?
Dalma combines dal with vegetables in one pot and is seasoned without relying on the onion-tomato gravy common elsewhere.
179Pakhala is centred on cooked rice served with what?
Pakhala places cooked rice in water, often lightly fermented and seasoned, making it especially refreshing in Odisha's hot weather.
180A Bengali posto preparation is dominated by which seed?
Posto means poppy seed. Ground white poppy seeds produce the pale, nutty paste used with potatoes and other vegetables.
181How does a Bengali luchi differ most clearly from a typical puri?
Luchi is generally made from maida, or refined wheat flour, whereas puri is more commonly made from whole-wheat atta.
182Thekua is especially associated with offerings during which festival?
The crisp wheat-and-jaggery sweet is a central prasad during Chhath, particularly in Bihar, Jharkhand, and adjoining regions.
183In Himachali madra, legumes are cooked in a gravy based primarily on what?
Madra uses yogurt as the body of its spiced gravy, often with chickpeas or another legume, and demands careful heat control to keep it smooth.
184Kashmiri kahwa is traditionally based on which tea?
Kahwa is a fragrant green-tea infusion commonly brewed with spices and sometimes saffron, then garnished with nuts.
185Axone, used in Naga cooking, is made by fermenting what?
Axone, also written akhuni, is fermented soybean. Its powerful aroma and savoury depth season vegetables, meat, and chutneys.
186Manipuri eromba commonly combines boiled vegetables with what intensely flavoured ingredient?
Eromba is mashed from boiled vegetables, chillies, and fermented fish, producing a pungent accompaniment rather than a smooth restaurant-style curry.
187What colours and flavours Meghalaya's dohneiiong?
Dohneiiong is a Khasi pork preparation whose roasted black-sesame paste gives the gravy its dark colour and nutty depth.
188Jadoh, a Khasi speciality, is based on which pairing?
Jadoh cooks rice with meat—classically pork—so the grain absorbs the meat's fat and seasoning.
189Tungrymbai, from Meghalaya, is made chiefly from what?
Tungrymbai is a fermented-soybean preparation, often cooked with aromatics and sometimes pork, valued for its deep savoury flavour.
190What is unusual about Assamese tenga compared with many rich Indian fish curries?
Masor tenga is a light, tangy fish curry. Tomato, elephant apple, lemon, or another souring ingredient provides brightness rather than a heavy gravy.
191What makes bebinca unusual among layered cakes?
A Goan bebinca is built patiently: a thin layer of batter is baked, then another is poured over it and baked, creating its striped cross-section.
192What creates an appam's characteristic crisp rim and soft centre?
The fermented rice batter is swirled around an appachatti. A thin film climbs the sides and crisps while a thicker pool remains soft in the centre.
193What gives haleem its unusually smooth, stretchy body?
Grains, lentils and meat are cooked for hours and worked until they merge into a cohesive paste. The texture comes from both the time and the pounding.
194What is distinctive about chhena poda?
The Odia sweet bakes sweetened chhena until it develops a dark caramelised crust. Its name points to roasted, or burnt, cheese.
195Why is shukto usually served near the beginning of a Bengali meal?
Shukto is a mild, often bitter vegetable preparation traditionally placed early in the meal, where its bitterness contrasts with the richer courses after it.
196What does 'kosha' signal in kosha mangsho?
Kosha refers to patient cooking and reduction: the meat and masala are worked until the sauce becomes dark, concentrated and close-clinging.
197What gives khaja its flaky structure?
Khaja is built from folded or layered dough, fried so the layers separate, and then sweetened with syrup.
198Himachali siddu is what kind of food?
Siddu is a yeast-fermented wheat bread, usually stuffed and steamed, then served warm with ghee, dal or a savoury accompaniment.
199Kashmiri nadru is which part of the lotus plant?
Nadru is the crisp, hole-patterned lotus rhizome, widely called lotus stem or lotus root, and used in curries, fritters and yogurt gravies.
200Assamese khar gets its defining alkalinity traditionally from what?
Traditional khar uses an alkaline liquid filtered through the ash of sun-dried banana peels or related plant matter, which gives the dish its character.
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