40 Fun Facts About Bengali Food

Which silvery fish, a herring relative prized in Bengali kitchens, is the national fish of Bangladesh?

Hilsa is caught in such numbers that Bangladesh is the world's top producer, and its festival-season shipments to India were nicknamed Hilsa Diplomacy.

Which spongy Bengali sweet of chhena balls in syrup won West Bengal a geographical indication tag?

Rasgulla as Bengal knows it is credited to Kolkata confectioner Nobin Chandra Das, whose son later vacuum-packed it in cans and carried its fame far beyond the city.

Which Kolkata street food, said to have begun at Nizam restaurant, is named after bamboo kebab skewers?

Kathi roll takes its name from kati, the Bengali word for stick, which caught on after Nizam swapped its heavy iron skewers for bamboo ones in 1964.

Which vegetable sets Kolkata biryani apart, in a recipe credited to the exiled nawab Wajid Ali Shah?

Potato goes into the pot with the meat and rice, a twist dated to the 1850s, when Kolkata became a refuge for exiled nawabs.

Which crisp, hollow snack, dunked in sour tamarind water, do Bengali speakers in Kolkata call phuchka?

Panipuri goes by phuchka in Bengal, a name that imitates the sound of eating one, and Kolkata vendors traditionally hand over a dry one free at the end of a round.

Which fruit, cooked green in curries as a stand-in for meat, is the national fruit of Bangladesh?

Jackfruit can weigh up to 50 kg and stretch 90 cm long, and Sri Lanka claims it as a national fruit too.

Which Anglo-Indian breakfast dish is thought to derive from khichuri, the Bengali dish of rice and lentils?

Kedgeree reached Victorian breakfast tables with returning colonials, who made it with flaked smoked haddock and hard-boiled eggs.

Which Bengali dessert is made by fermenting sweetened, thickened milk overnight in an earthenware pot?

Mishti doi thickens in its clay pot because water slowly evaporates through the porous walls, which also keep the culture at the right temperature.

Bengali chingri malai curry simmers prawns in which creamy liquid, a possible echo of old trade with Southeast Asia?

Coconut milk, not dairy cream, is the malai in this dish, which is made with tiger or king prawns and gentle spices.

Sailors from which region of Bangladesh settled in Britain and went on to run most of its Indian restaurants?

Sylhet was home to the lascar sailors who settled in Britain in the early 20th century, and about 95% of the Bangladeshis who own its curry houses trace their roots there.

The Bengali fried sweet ledikeni is named after the wife of which Governor-General of India?

Lord Canning governed India from 1856 to 1862, and the sweet made for his wife, by legend the work of Bhim Chandra Nag, saw her title wear down in Bengali speech to ledikeni.

Which dish of cooked rice soaked overnight in water do Bengalis eat to welcome their New Year, Pohela Boishakh?

Panta bhat ferments as it soaks and is usually eaten in the morning with salt, onion and chilli, though high-end restaurants in Bangladesh serve it too.

Which Bengali blend mixes equal parts of whole seeds, among them fenugreek, nigella and fennel?

Panch phoron literally means five spices, and Bengali cooks sometimes swap one of the seeds for radhuni, or wild celery seed.

Bengali pantua, deep-fried chhena balls soaked in syrup, is the regional cousin of which North Indian sweet?

Gulab jamun is made from khoa and scented with rose, while pantua starts from chhena and is flavoured mainly with cardamom.

Which Bengali sweet, made by tossing chhena with sugar over low heat, is moulded into conch shells and fish?

Sandesh in medieval texts was most likely a sweet of solidified kheer, and by the second half of the 19th century the name had settled on the chhena version.

Nolen gur, the winter jaggery that flavours Bengali sweets such as Jaynagarer moa, comes from which tree?

Date palm juice is collected only in winter, so sweets made with nolen gur, like the moa of Jaynagar, are sold only from about November to January.

Bengali beguni is a crisp fritter made by dipping slices of which vegetable in besan batter?

Eggplant is begun in Bengali, which gives the fritter its name, and the slices are usually cut lengthwise before frying.

Jhalmuri, the spicy Kolkata street snack that a British chef took to London, is built on which ingredient?

Puffed rice is tossed with spices, chopped vegetables and chanachur, and chef Angus Denoon began selling it on London streets after trying it in Kolkata.

Bengali kasundi is a sharp relish made by fermenting the ground seeds of which plant?

Mustard for kasundi was pickled after the winter harvest, and in many Bengali homes the seeds were ceremonially washed on the day of Akshaya Tritiya.

Shukto, the mixed-vegetable dish that traditionally opens a Bengali meal, is known for which taste?

Bitter foods at the start of a meal were thought to be medicinal, a habit promoted by Ayurvedic authors, and a version made with milk softens the edge.

Which deep-fried Bengali flatbread is made with refined maida, unlike its North Indian cousin puri?

Luchi dough also works ghee into the maida, and a classic stuffed version, radhabollobi, hides a dal filling inside.

The Bengali street food Mughlai paratha is believed to have been created for the court of which emperor?

Jahangir ruled when, by tradition, the keema-and-egg stuffed flatbread first appeared in Bengal, as an offshoot of the Turkish gözleme.

Which thick, biscuit-like flatbread of Old Dhaka is named in legend after a general and the dancer he loved?

Bakarkhani is said to honour Agha Baqer and the dancer Khani Begum, and the first shop in Dhaka to sell it opened close to Lalbagh Fort.

Mezban, the great feast of Chittagong in Bangladesh, is traditionally built around white rice and which meat?

Beef in every cut, down to bone marrow soup, fills the mezban table, and the feast's name comes from a Persian word meaning host.

Which sour yogurt drink, spiced with mint and green chilli, do Bangladeshis sip after biryani to aid digestion?

Borhani is a wedding and iftar fixture in Dhaka, made from sour curd with black salt and coriander, and some count it as a kind of lassi.

What is unusual about the tea Romesh Ram Gour says he devised at his shop in Srimongol, Bangladesh?

It has seven layers because teas of different density settle into separate bands, each with its own colour and taste, from syrupy sweet to spicy clove.

Which group of Bengali Hindu women, barred from eating fish and meat, pioneered inventive vegetable cooking?

Widows were also denied shallot and garlic, so they built a whole set of dishes from vegetables and cheap spices, with ginger still allowed.

Cooks from which neighbouring region ran the kitchens of affluent Kolkata families in the 19th century?

Odisha sent so many cooks to the city that some Kolkata classics are thought to have begun as Odia dishes, later refined in Bengali kitchens.

Which tannery district on Kolkata's eastern edge became the home of the city's Chinese community and its cooking?

Tangra is where the community finally settled after first living in a village south of the city, and Chinese food spread to almost every Kolkata street corner.

In Bengali home cooking, a bhorta is a spiced vegetable dish that has been prepared in which way?

Mashed vegetables, first roasted, boiled or fried, make a bhorta, and the same dish goes by chokha elsewhere in South Asia.

Posto, the white seed paste that thickens many Bengali vegetable dishes, comes from which plant?

Poppy seeds, ground to a paste, give aloo posto its rich body, and some Bengalis simply mix the raw paste with green chilli and onion to eat with rice.

Which tea from the hills of West Bengal became India's first product with geographical indication protection?

Darjeeling won the protection in 2004, after years in which other teas were blended in or mislabelled under its name.

Rui, a popular choice for Bengali fish curries, belongs to which family of freshwater fish?

Carp such as rui, known elsewhere as rohu, live in South Asian rivers, and rui even lends its name to a Bengali pulao.

Which Bengali harvest festival, whose name means new rice, is celebrated with special pitha cakes?

Nabanna pitha are mostly made of rice flour, with milk and jaggery among the usual additions, and winter pitha fairs are held all over Bangladesh.

Which district of Bangladesh gives its name to a sweet yogurt set in clay pots and protected by a GI tag?

Bogra traces its curd to Ghetu Ghosh of Sherpur, and the recipe calls for full cream milk, sugar, a little old yogurt as a starter and a clay pot.

Which West Bengal town is famed for the paired sweets sitabhog and mihidana, both protected by GI tags?

Bardhaman won national fame for the pair when Lord Curzon praised them on a 1904 visit, and sitabhog is made to look like a plate of plain rice.

The Bengali street snack ghugni is a spiced curry traditionally made from which dried legume?

White peas are soaked overnight and boiled before going into the gravy, while cooks in Bihar prefer green chickpeas or freshly harvested green peas.

Bhapa pitha, a winter rice cake of Bangladesh filled with molasses, is cooked by which method?

Steaming sets the freshly ground rice flour around its sweet filling, and brown sugar or jaggery can stand in for the molasses.

One theory credits traders from which European country with teaching Bengal to curdle milk for chhena sweets?

By this account, traders from Portugal reached Bengal in 1517; until then curdling milk was taboo for Bengali Hindus, and sweets were made from thickened khoa.

Many Chinese restaurant owners in India came from which community, whose name now labels a popular noodle dish?

Hakka families ran the tanneries of Kolkata as well as its kitchens, though the Indian noodle dish that carries their name has little in common with their home cooking.