50 Fun Facts About Indian Food

Which Delhi restaurant, run by Punjabi refugees from Peshawar, is credited with inventing butter chicken?

Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi mixed leftover tandoori chicken into a buttery tomato sauce. The same kitchen popularised tandoori chicken.

According to the story, how was butter chicken created 'by chance'?

Makhan means butter, which is why the dish is also called murgh makhani.

How hot can a tandoor oven get?

That is around 900°F. The vase-shaped clay oven is heated by charcoal or wood and kept lit for long stretches.

Tandoori chicken is marinated in spices and what before it goes into the oven?

Moti Mahal in Delhi popularised it in the late 1940s. The red colour traditionally comes from Kashmiri chilli or food colouring.

Biryani is thought to descend from a rice dish from which cuisine?

Either pilau or birinj biryan. It was likely perfected in the Mughal court kitchens, though some say it reached South India earlier.

Vindaloo takes its name from a dish brought to Goa by which European colonisers?

Carne de vinha d'alhos is pork with wine-vinegar and garlic. The 'aloo' has nothing to do with potatoes.

Rogan josh is a signature dish of which Indian region's cuisine?

It is a mainstay of the wazwan feast and gets its red colour from Kashmiri chillies and alkanet. The name is Persian for oil and stew.

Which cooking technique defines a korma?

Mughlai in origin, it was later softened for Anglo-Indian and then British tastes into the mild, creamy dish on takeaway menus.

A dosa is a South Indian crepe made from a fermented batter of rice and what?

Idli uses a similar batter of hulled black lentils and rice, but is steamed into cakes instead.

An idli recipe appears in the Manasollasa, a 1130 CE encyclopedia compiled by a king of which region?

Someshwara III of the Western Chalukyas wrote it. The idli of that era may not even have contained rice.

The word samosa comes from an old word, sambosag, meaning what?

Sambosag. The snack travelled from Central Asia and the Middle East and can be a triangle, a cone or a crescent.

What is the main difference between the two flatbreads, naan and chapati?

Naan uses yeast and is baked in a tandoor or on a tawa; chapati is unleavened whole-wheat atta cooked on a griddle.

Chapatis are made from atta, which is milled from what?

Just atta and water, rolled thin and cooked dry on a tawa until it puffs.

Traditional papadums are made from the flour of which bean?

They are deep-fried or held over an open flame until crunchy. Lentil, chickpea, rice and potato versions exist too.

How is paneer made?

It is a fresh, non-aged, non-melting cheese, which is why it holds its shape in a curry or on a skewer.

What is ghee?

The Sanskrit root means 'to sprinkle' and is a distant cousin of the Greek word behind 'Christ', meaning anointed.

What does 'garam masala' literally mean?

Garam refers to the warming effect in Ayurveda rather than chilli heat. Blends vary by region and household.

Masala chai is made by brewing which kind of tea in milk and water with spices?

Usually crush-tear-curl leaves. Tea drinking itself was popularised in India by the British.

What are dals?

Lentils, peas and beans that need no soaking. Lentils are among the oldest cultivated foods, found in Bronze Age settlements.

What does the Hindi word 'thali' literally mean?

It came to mean the whole meal of small dishes served on the round platter.

By what other names is the street snack pani puri known?

A hollow fried puri is filled and dipped in spicy coriander water or sweet tamarind water.

Vada pav, a fried potato dumpling in a bread bun, is the most famous street snack of which city?

It began as cheap street food and is claimed as part of Mumbaikar culture.

Which two Indian states have both won geographical indication status for their versions of the rasgulla?

West Bengal got 'Banglar rosogolla' in 2017 and Odisha 'Odisha rasagola' in 2019, after a long feud over who invented the syrupy cheese ball.

Dhokla, a steamed savoury sponge, is native to which state?

It is made from a fermented batter and is popular all over India as a snack.

Gulab jamun is made mainly from khoya. What is khoya?

The balls are fried at low heat and soaked in syrup flavoured with cardamom and rose water. Gulab means rose.

How is jalebi batter formed before it is fried and soaked in syrup?

The word comes from the Arabic zulabiya. Some claim the American funnel cake is a distant relative.

Kulfi originated in which century, in Mughal-era Delhi?

It is denser and creamier than ice cream because it is not churned.

The word chaat comes from a Hindi verb meaning what?

As in licking your fingers. The snack family originated in Uttar Pradesh.

Kheer, or payasam, is what kind of dish?

Milk, sugar or jaggery and rice, boiled slowly. The name comes from the Sanskrit for milk.

In the ancient Sushruta Samhita, laddus of jaggery, peanuts and sesame were used for what purpose?

The name means 'small ball' in Sanskrit. Today the motichoor and besan varieties are festival staples.

Sambar, the South Indian lentil stew, is cooked with tamarind broth and which pulse?

A 16th-century Tamil poem already lists sambar ingredients, so the legend that a Maratha king invented it in Thanjavur is doubtful.

Turmeric belongs to which plant family?

The rhizomes are boiled, dried and ground into the deep yellow powder that colours curry powder.

Which Central American country is a top-three cardamom producer alongside India and Indonesia?

Green cardamom is among the most expensive spices by weight, though a little goes a long way.

Asafoetida, or hing, is used in Indian cooking as a substitute for which two ingredients?

Its sulphurous smell earned it the nickname 'devil's dung', but it mellows in hot oil. Jains and some Hindus who avoid alliums rely on it.

The word basmati comes from Sanskrit roots meaning what?

Vas for fragrance and mayup for ingrained. India's export authority requires a precooked grain length of at least 6.61 mm.

In 2007 Guinness World Records certified which Northeast Indian chilli as the world's hottest?

The ghost pepper rated over a million Scoville units, 170 times hotter than Tabasco. The Trinidad Scorpion took the title in 2011.

Which foods did European colonisers introduce to India from the New World?

It is hard to imagine Indian food without chilli, but it only arrived after Columbus. Sweet potato, peanut and squash came too.

Chicken tikka masala, 'a true British national dish' per Robin Cook, is thought to have been created in which city?

Possibly by Ali Ahmed Aslam at the Shish Mahal. A 1998 survey of 48 recipes found the only common ingredient was chicken.

The balti, cooked and served in a bucket-shaped bowl, was developed in the 1970s in which English city?

Its cluster of restaurants is called the Balti Triangle. A bid for EU protected status failed because the recipe was too loosely defined.

What do the famous dabbawalas of India's biggest city deliver?

Picked up late morning, moved by bicycle and train, and the empty tins returned by afternoon. Forbes never actually certified them as Six Sigma.

Pav bhaji began as a fast lunch for whom in Mumbai?

The mashed-vegetable curry is cooked on a flat tawa with plenty of butter, and the bread roll is toasted in more of it.

A Kerala sadya, the Onam feast of two dozen or more dishes, is traditionally served on what?

Each dish has its fixed spot on the leaf, so waiters can tell at a glance what needs topping up. Pickles go top left, the banana bottom left.

Bhel puri, Mumbai's favourite beach snack, is built on a base of what?

Crunchy puris and sev go on top, then potato, onion and two chutneys. A full bhel can run to fifteen ingredients.

Mysore pak, the fudge-like sweet from Karnataka's royal kitchens, is made mainly from what?

A palace cook named Kakasura Madappa is said to have improvised it for Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV and named it on the spot.

Litti, a roasted wheat ball stuffed with roasted chickpea flour, is a staple of which state?

Eaten with chokha, a mash of roasted aubergine or potato, it is linked in legend to Lord Ram and offered as prasad at Buxar.

The Tamil rice dish pongal, cooked for the harvest festival of the same name, literally means what?

As the milk rises in the pot, onlookers shout 'Pongalo pongal!' to urge it on. Venn pongal is savoury; sakkarai pongal is sweetened with jaggery.

Bebinca, the 'queen of Goan desserts', is traditionally baked with how many layers?

Each layer of coconut-milk and egg-yolk batter is grilled before the next is poured on, which is why the Christmas cake takes so long to make.

Which Maharashtrian moth-bean curry was named the world's tastiest vegetarian dish in 2015?

The winning plate came from Aaswad restaurant in Dadar. Kolhapur's version is the fieriest; Pune's adds flattened rice.

Lassi, the Punjabi yogurt drink, is traditionally served in a clay cup called what?

In Punjab the yogurt was traditionally made from water-buffalo milk. Bhang lassi, infused with cannabis, is sold legally around Holi.

Fans of poha, the flattened-rice breakfast, celebrate International Poha Day on which date?

The flakes are made by dehusking, parboiling, drying and rolling rice; thin flakes go into breakfast dishes, thick ones are deep-fried.