ISO foods of the Mughals

[cape chef]

How did this cuisine develope?

I have heard it called the "Haute cuisine" of India.

I'm looking for recipes and traditional foods used in the 16th century.

One of my daughters is studying India and it's history and culture. Now she is reading about the Mughals and I thought I would try to help her with some food history and trivia.

TIA
CC

[Athenaeus]

I love your "simple" questions cc...

[cape chef]

Sorry

Actually, I went to our public library and was able to find out eveything I needed.

[Athenaeus]

Was what you found confidential Cape Chef???

Can you share?

[cape chef]

What I learned from my public library
By : B.M.S
For : A.R.S

For hundreds of years groups of Muslims had been drifting into Northern India, bringing with them their everyday foods and cooking methods, but when the Muslim empire of the Mughals was established in the 16th century a new Haute Cuisine was introduced into India in the form of “Mughlai” cooking.

This style of cooking had been strongle influenced by that of the Isfahan in Persia – a place that was as much a symbol of splendor to 16th century Muslims as Versailles to 17th century Frenchmen – which in turn had owned much of the cuisine of Baghdad in the great days of the caliphate.

What was now introduced into India, therefore, included kebobs, pilaf, dishes of rice and shredded meat, the trick of mixing fruit into flesh dishes, the use of almonds, almond milk and rose water, and for garnishing of many kinds of food with fragile wafers of tissue beaten out of pure gold and silver. All of these were swiftly absorbed into the cuisine of the Indian princes.

Although the muslims did eat beef, there prefered meats were mutton and chicken, so non vegetarian hindus could adopt Mughlai-style food with out hesitation. Naturally enough, the new style became most common in the North of India, the heartland of Mughal rule. Even today, the cooking of Kashmir and the Punjab has almost as many links to the Near east as with traditional India.

In Kashmir, where the Muslims and Hindus shared the landscape for most of the 400 years before 1947 (when what had once been India was partitioned into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan). It was the minor not the major detailes that distinguished one cuisine from another, even if in some ways old habits die hard, Hindus continued to eat far more vegetables than meat, and Mulsims more meat than vegetables. Both, however, relied basically on rice and either Kohlrabi or a vegetable not unlike spring greens, livened up (after the introduction from America) with red or green chilies. Even so, initiates were always able to tell the Hindu version from the Muslim.. Hindus adding hing (asafoetida), and the Muslims garlic.


This imformation above was from notes I took from a few books, mostly from Food in History..By Reay Tannahill

Oh ~A~
BTW..
I am always willing to share