Calcutta’s Culinary Character

by Claire Chambers

I’m excited about the imminent Halloween publication date of Forgotten Foods: Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia, a book I edited with Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Tarana Husain Khan. The new book is a partner volume to Desi Delicacies which I edited and wrote about for this blog in 2021.

One of the most nourishing things about venturing into cookbooks, food writing, and editing heritage recipes has been getting to know a whole new world of South Asian literature. As part of this, I was delighted to be sent Nilosree Biswas’s sumptuous book Calcutta on Your Plate, with its beautiful food photography by Irfan Nabi. Desi Delicacies had included two chapters, one a short story and the other an essay, by Bangladeshi writers. Now Forgotten Foods contains an essay entitled ‘Islam on the Table in [West] Bengal’, in which Jayanta Sengupta especially zeroes in on the Calcutta mutton biryani, complete with its distinctive inclusion of potatoes. However, I didn’t know too much about Bengali cuisine beyond what I had learnt from these pieces, as well as being familiar with British-Bangladeshi curry houses and the eastern South Asian region’s reputation for a sweet tooth.

Biswas does not neglect either the divisive Bengali biryani or its famous sweets. Her appraisal of the former is fascinating, as she argues that this biryani’s ‘signature chunky piece of boiled potato’ signifies the cosmopolitanism of Bengal’s ruler Nawab Wajid Ali Shah (1822–1887) and his ‘ability to accept new-world ingredients – non-Islamic and completely cut off from his familiar food culture’. Nor does she overlook other popular ‘crossover’ rice dishes, such as the pulao borrowed and adapted from Lucknavi cuisine (pictured below right). As for the vaunted mishti, there is a bravura section towards the end of this book entitled ‘The Sweet Mafia Attack’, in which Biswas ranges from rice puddings and the Portuguese-derived ingredient of chhana (‘acid curd cheese’) to the much-loved roshogolla and sandesh.  Pictured below left is a typical mishtir dokan or sweetshop in Kolkata. Innumerable similar outlets dot the city today, having been crucial in retaining the culture of sweetmeats for which Kolkata is renowned.

Not only does this book spread out Calcutta’s culinary traditions for readers but it also plates up the history of the metropolis, starting with its colonizer Job Charnock (1630–1692). In an interview with Biswas, I asked her how the colonial history of Calcutta ties into the culinary history of Calcutta. She told me that the early encounters with Britons like Charnock are deeply interlinked with Calcutta’s food journey. As the city developed from a trade post of the East India Company to a sprawling urban centre, people from various backgrounds moved in. This would lead to the emergence of primary and secondary consumption patterns, as well as the rise of markets and food supply chains.  This book shows how the urban food of today’s Kolkata is thus shaped by its colonized history, the panoply of gustatory preferences held by those who came to live there, including the Europeans, the Afghans, the Chinese, the Baghdadi Jews, the Armenians, and the local landed gentry of Bengal (who mostly moved to the city after the Permanent Settlement). Biswas expressed the opinion that ‘a city’s political, social history is almost always interconnected with its culinary culture, and this is true of any colonized city.’

Asked about the most surprising thing she uncovered during the research process, she shared that it was her finding that Job Charnock, in the hope of making some extra money while in India, had co-founded a tavern. Charnock’s tavern was Calcutta’s first European-style drinking establishment. However, like Sake Dean Mahomed‘s Hindostanee Coffee House – London’s (and Britain’s) first curry house – it was too much ahead of its time and quickly went out of business. These bankruptcies are galling to think about, since taverns in India and ‘Indian’ restaurants in the UK would later catch on. ‘The tavern was a fun thing to read about,’ said Biswas, ‘and yet it had the power to impact how I understand Charnock’s character today.’

Another interesting aspect of this treasure-trove of a book is Biswas’s discussion of housewives, home cooks, and women’s magazines and recipe collections. I thus asked the author how women have contributed to the culinary heritage of Calcutta, and what role they play in her book. She answered without hesitation:

Women are my heroes. I acknowledge them as decision makers, catalytic in letting the gastronomy of Calcutta take wing – they helped Bengali food find its identity not only by experimenting with recipes and dishes but ultimately letting the new ingredients enter their private space (read: home) and its core (read: kitchen). Since women held the agency in their kitchen (however limiting), it was their prerogative to let particular food stuffs get cooked at home. An instance would be the eventual popularity of omelettes, bread, and butter in its packaged form, and how even today women across lines of class, caste, and faith feel these are their own foods.

In Calcutta on a Plate, Biswas does not shy away from recognizing how religious divisions and caste have influenced the food culture in the city, especially as regards the adoption of certain dishes from other communities and rejection of others. As the food culture of Calcutta developed during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were particular food that acquired tags like that of ‘Musalman khabar’ (Muslim food). Ready examples of such Musalman khabar encompass puddings made of vermicelli (it took years for Hindu Bengalis to accept that pudding can cooked with sewaiya or vermicelli as opposed to rice grains), the gradual popularity of biryani (both chicken and mutton – again considered Muslim and till today mostly not cooked at home), some kinds of fish, porcupine meat, the tortoise (denoted as lower-caste food in the Hindu caste system), the restricted consumption of dishes with pork and beef (viewed as Mleccha khabar – food of the non-Hindus, referring mostly to Muslims and Christians), any dessert or pastry that might contain wine (for the same reason). Yet in today’s Kolkata, biryani – especially that which is made with chicken – is the second most loved one-pot meal next to home food. Chicken chow mein or even plum cake for a dessert (particularly high-selling during Christmas) are also very popular. Biswas notes in the book how cookbook writers were often cautious not to hurt the religious sentiments of upper-class and -caste Hindu women when they came up with instructions or recipes.

It should not escape our notice that it was mostly these elite women who were the target audience for these cookbooks across the Bengals (including present-day Bangladesh).

Calcutta on Your Plate is a clever and vivid book in which the writer stirs together a compelling narrative generously seasoned with colonial and premodern history, art, culture, and food in South Asia. Biswas’s storytelling skills are impeccable, and her contributions to the fields of food studies and cultural history demonstrable. This book not only explores the varied culinary traditions of Calcutta but also serves up the city’s rich history, shedding light on the complex relationships between food, identity, and social structures. Calcutta on Your Plate stands as an illuminating work, helping readers share Biswas’s profound understanding of the diverse influences that have shaped Calcutta’s epicurean essence.