This paper aims to present a socio-historical review of Indian cuisine and its evolution. Based on a thorough analysis of a wide range of documents, the investigation focuses on four eras, each having a significant and lasting effect on Indian cuisine. Parallels have been drawn to modern Indian cuisine wherever possible. This study follows the advances in Indian cuisine through the prehistoric era, into the Vedic era, where religious scriptures, especially the Hindu scriptures, affected what was cooked during the time, followed by the invasion of the subcontinent by the Mughals. Finally, the effects of European colonization on Indian cuisine are critically analysed and an attempt is made to examine threads, if any, connecting culinary preferences of people across these phases. The results of the analysis indicate the intriguing impact of intricate connections among several sociocultural factors on the evolution of Indian cuisine. At the end of the paper, a few areas are identified for future exploration.

This paper tries to trace the history of Indian cuisine, a topic that remains surprisingly underexplored in the gastronomy literature. Unique in its standing and mysterious in many ways, as claimed by the famous novelist E. M. Forster [20], India remains a curious case of interest. Among other things, its food culture has a vibrant history filled with tasty twists and turns, which is in agreement with the claim that Indian culture can be explored through its foods. In fact, across many cultures, one can historically trace sociocultural reasons behind culinary choices [1]. Tracing the history of food in India is pivotal to understanding Indian cuisine. For a very long time, each of India’s conglomeration of kingdoms had a royal court tended by chefs and innovations in food took place in these kitchens; new dishes were created, and old dishes were recreated. In the kitchens of commoners, cooks or housewives would try to recreate those dishes using ingredients at their disposal. Modern Indian cuisine is the result of the flavourful adventure India has been through, and in this adventure, one can socio-historically trace the interaction between personal and social choices, the divine and the mundane obligations [8], and the karma and its repercussions. The beginnings of India’s food history, especially during Vedic times, were driven by the attributive property of Guṇa, a Hindu philosophical concept referring to quality or peculiarity. Sattva, rajas, and tamas, the three Guṇas, were believed to have manifestations in the form of ‘vegetarian, spicy and carnivorous’ [6, 43]. Even the philosophy of ahimsa shaped the food choices of people in ancient Hindu civilizations [42]. This philosophical tradition underwent a series of changes, challenged by the geopolitical and sociocultural changes that came to India with the Mughal invasion and European colonization. In this paper, we have presented a brief historical review of Indian cuisine that covers a period starting with the prehistoric era and ending with European colonization and have demonstrated how the evolution of food in India is deeply enmeshed in various factors like culture, religion, ethnicity, financial background, social class, and availability of and access to raw materials.

We collected data for the study through thorough document analysis. We surveyed ancient religious scriptures from archives, newspapers, memoirs, travelogues, research articles, poems, history books and books written on food cultures, and made comprehensive notes. All the notes were verified through information collected from more than one source. Then, we searched for patterns in the data and organized the details under the four most frequently found patterns in food culture: Prehistoric, Vedic, Mughal, and European colonization. For each era, we arranged the information in a systematic manner which mainly focused on discussions on the evolution of food through a close interplay between sociocultural factors and the availability of raw materials required for the preparation of food.

Prehistoric era

Prehistoric food habits in India still remain partly shrouded in uncertainties [33]. Like literature, cuisines from a different era have proved difficult to understand. Written recipes may be one of the sources of determining the type of food eaten by the people then, but language still remains a barrier [11, 16, 32], which is especially true in the case of prehistoric India. What we know about people’s food habits is an episodic story of survival and a transition to becoming an agrarian community [33]. The information is obtained through anthropological evidence and cave paintings found in various parts of Indian states such as Rajasthan, Gujrat and Punjab [1].

Bones of cattle, goats, sheep, buffalo, and pigs have been found at Harappan excavation sites. While cattle, goats, and sheep may have been domesticated, it is also possible that they were hunted or raised for their flesh. Cattle farming was mainly restricted to the Zebu cattle, native to the Indus Valley region (see Fig. 1) [21]. Bones of wild animals like boar, deer, and gharial have also been found. Along with these, the remains of fish and fowl were also discovered. Grilling was the preferred way to cook meat. The animal would be roasted whole on an open fire or cut into bite-size chunks [33, 35, 36]. These chunks were pierced onto a skewer and roasted, like modern-day tikkas. The animal was lodged onto a stick, which could be rotated, and placed over the fire. Pottery from prehistoric times has revealed the presence of bowls with wide mouths, which indicates the use of boiling as another method of preparation.