The stories of nawabi khana, from battlefield to dastarkhwan.
That the shahi dastarkhwans, or the cuisines of the royal courts of pre-Independence India lean towards ostentatiousness is a narrative we are well-versed with. One doesn’t have to look too far to be told and retold legends like the wildly popular, if surreal case of the parinda puri, in which a sparrow flies out of a deep-fried puri when it is presented to the king for inspection. The king in question is a nawab in some accounts, and a raja in others, and the legend is claimed by many royal lineages today, pointing to a collective ownership of the extravagance of courtly cuisines.
Early examples of this indulgence born of kingly whims can be found in Abul Fazl’s ‘Ain I Akbari’. Fazl’s accounts contain a detailed account of Emperor Akbar’s resolution to drink only the water of the Ganges, both at home and on travels.
Fazl also documents the proficiency of the imperial kitchen, which was personally supervised by the prime minister, no less. *1
“In the course of 24 hours His Majesty [Akbar] eats but once, and leaves off before he is fully satisfied; but the servants have always things so far ready, that in the space of an hour, after the order has been given, a hundred dishes are served up”, Fazl writes. *2
The hundred dishes presented to the emperor for one meal would be plated in serve-ware of silver, gold, stone, and earthenware, copper, and china – tied variously in red (for the gold and silver dishes) or white cloth and carried to the dastarkhwan by an army of servants, accompanied by the head chef or Mir Bakawal, who would wait in attendance as the emperor ate. The dishes in question, which could now appear as a menu of an unaffected Mughlai restaurant you’d find in say, Old Delhi’s Jama Masjid, comprised preparations like biryani, dopiaza (do pyaaza), qaliya (kalia), various kababs, and saag. Perhaps the most technique-laden of the recipes Fazl archives is the Mussaman, in which the khansamas, or courtly cooks ‘take all the bones of a fowl out through the neck, the fowl remaining whole.’ *5
The focus at this time of Akbar’s courts, then, leans towards excesses in quantity, as opposed to novelty. One must also note that this was yet early days of the Mughal emperors in the subcontinent, and the cuisine we understand as belonging to the Mughals was only just firming its foundation in Akbar’s imperial kitchen.
Before Akbar, Babur and Humayun had spent longer years trying to establish their supremacy in Hindustan than actually sitting on the throne in Delhi. And so, most of their treasuries’ resources, naturally, were allocated to strengthening the military and security. There was little left to fritter away in kitchens. It was only under Akbar’s rule that Mongol-Uzbek ideas of food collided with the produce of the Punjabs and the Ganga-Yamuna basin, it was here that it met the hand of Hindustani cooks; and as a natural import of marital relations – underwent Rajput tweaks and Persian refinement.
And so later on, in Nur Jehan and her husband Jehangir’s time, one finds examples of elevated culinary innovation recorded in the Alwan-e-Nemat. Food historian Salma Husain, who has translated this text from its original court-Persian tells me that one of the chapters in the manuscript focuses solely on the presentation of food. Under this are listed pulaos decorated with leaves and flowers made of edible gum; and/or a paste of sugar, eggs, and rice-flour — not unlike frosted cakes today.
There are also dishes like the Shishranga Pulao, which uses extracts of spinach, saffron, beetroot and other ingredients to colour a Pulao with six colours of rice grains. Similarly, there is the Paanch Rang Ki Dahi, with once five colours of sweet yoghurt set in a single pot. These are, without doubt, fantastic innovations, and evidence of a patronage of a stable, thriving administration. But also one that also focussed on the developing the culinary arts alongside solidifying an empire. But nothing yet, or even in the next couple of hundred years of Mughal rule strikes as ostentatious and whimsical as the culinary creations one would find coming out of the courtly kitchens of the post-Mughal era, when several scattered kingdoms, and kings took reign of heralding new cuisines.
This is most popularly imagined of kitchens of Avadh, which are the most fascinating in the regard of fantastical stories around food and feasts. Look to written records and you find a cluster of grandoise dishes, of egoistic master chefs and jaw-dropping kitchen purses. The author Abdul Halim Sharar notes this in the seminal chronicle on the Lucknowi nawabs – Mashriqi Tamaddun ka Akhiri Namuna: Guzishta Lakhnau, when he writes of when Mirza Asman Qadar was invited to dine by the Nawab Wajid Ali Shah.
The Mirza was served murabba, but when Asman Qadar tasted it, he was taken aback because the beautiful murabba presented to him wasn’t the sweet conserve he was expecting at all but a qaurma, a meat curry, which the chef had made to look exactly like a murabba.
Needless to say, the Mirza had his revenge later. He invited the Nawab to dine at his home and had his cook Sheikh Husain Ali present the guest with hundreds of delicacies – pulao, zarda, sheermals, quormas, kababs, chutneys, achaars. When the Nawab tasted these dishes, he realised that every single dish was made of sugar. The curries, rice, the breads, even the plates and the dastarkhwan itself were a work of intricate and expert, deceptive sugar craft.
What one notices very prominently here, which is a deviation from how food was considered in the Mughal courts, is the idea of one-upmanship. With the destabilisation of the Mughal court, its legacy faced the crisis of beneficence. Artists, artistes, craftsmen, and cooks moved to the courts of Avadh, Hyderabad, Mysore and others in search of new masters and patrons. The narrative, including that of food, shifted from one central command to many smaller, compeer ones. A sense of competition, of outdoing one another would have been but natural, then, these cultural duels emerged from the fragmentation of power into many regimes, after centuries of a central Mughal canon.
The time frame within which such culinary fashions developed was also around the same time that British colonists were declaring paramountcy on the Indian subcontinent, and forcing a number of these principalities into subsidiary allowance, and eventually — in the first half of the nineteenth century — annexing them. The nawabs and rajas who had grown in power after the weakening of the Mughal court were asked now by Western colonizers to refrain from negotiations and battle to expand their kingdoms. The resources that would have gone into the military coffers could now be used elsewhere – to patronise the curation of architecture and literature, in the curation of visual, performing and culinary arts.
It is then possible for us to deduce that this over-the-top courtly cuisine became a means for royal lineages to assert their power, and display their ascendancy over each other. During the time. a number of grand palaces and forts and monuments were commissioned as a show of wealth and domination. This opulence, and showmanship also extended to the dining table.
While the causes may be varied and several, the results were certainly splendid. Take the legendary Kamal Pulao of Rampur, where each grain of rice would be carved into the shape of a lotus! Or in Patiala, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh’s caprices didn’t just stop at the Patiala necklace with its 2,930 diamonds but also extended to a 1,400-piece commissioned dinner set, made of silver gilded with gold, flown in only to host the Prince of Wales in 1922.
In Bhopal, in turn, seven birds – including a prized peacock – would be stuffed into another and cooked to perfection in the Parinde mein Parinda to be presented to the Nawab Begum’s guests. What is this if not a sophisticated display of supremacy? What could we call this if not an exercise and indulgence in the dance of royal showbiz?
As for our nawabs, and rajas, they made proper use of their new, regal conundrum: Can’t go head to head on the battlefield? Move the battle to the dastarkhwan instead.
Citations
1,2,4,5 – Mubārak Abū al-Fazl ibn, & Blochmann, H. F. (1873). The Ain I Akbari. Asiatic Society of Bengal.
The following book has been used as a reference
Husain, S. (2015). In Flavours of Avadh: Journey from the Royal Banquet to the Corner Kitchen. essay, Niyogi Books.
Shubhra Chatterji, with inputs from Salma Yusuf Husain.