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6 Min
04/12/2025
India’s culinary history is like the tale of The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants, with familiar spices and ingredients taking shape to create dishes that are oh-so-familiar. From Kerala’s appam and stew to Kolkata’s rosogolla, there is at least one specific dish that defines the respective cuisines of their cities. So, here is a tour through India’s very own spice route and its chequered history.
India’s cities are defined as much by their flavours as by their streets and landmarks. Each signature dish, from Hyderabad’s biryani to Mumbai’s vada pav, reflects centuries of tradition, local ingredients, and cultural fusion. These foods were shaped by the city’s colonial past, the movement of locals and changing demands over the years. These iconic dishes use the best of local spices and techniques, some from home and some borrowed and turned into home.
Appam and stew represent the soul of Kerala's Syrian Christian community, particularly the Nasrani Christians whose origins trace back to the 1st century when St. Thomas visited India. This fermented rice pancake made with coconut milk is bowl-shaped with crispy edges and soft, spongy centres paired with coconut milk stew. The stew reflects Portuguese colonial influence through its use of vegetables like potatoes, carrots, and peas, which aren't traditional to South Indian cuisine. The dish uses coconut in multiple forms – grated, milk, oil and might use meat too.
Hyderabadi biryani emerged from the royal kitchens of the Nizams in the 18th century, when Mughlai culinary traditions merged with local Deccan flavours. The dish uses the ‘kachi akhni’ method, where raw marinated meat is layered with half-cooked basmati rice, sealed with dough, and slow-cooked in dum pukht style. Created during the reign of Nizam-ul-Mulk Asaf Jah I, this biryani became Hyderabad's face after 1857 when the city emerged as South Asia's cultural centre following the Mughal Empire's decline. The aromatic rice is perfumed with saffron, rose water, and kewda, which captures Hyderabad's rich heritage.
Rumour has it, the vada pav was born in 1966, when street vendor Ashok Vaidya served a vada between a bread roll, specifically for busy mill workers, near Dadar railway station. This snack was designed for cotton mill workers in Girangaon, quite cheap at 10-15 paisa, and convenient enough to eat in overcrowded local trains, unlike traditional batata bhaji and chapati. The dish gained cultural significance when Shiv Sena encouraged Marathi entrepreneurs to start food stalls, using vada pav to counter South Indian Udupi restaurants and physically claim the streets.
Chole bhature's story is intertwined with India's 1947 Partition, when refugees from Lahore, including Peshori Lal Lamba and Sita Ram, brought this Punjabi speciality to Delhi. The dish originated in pre-partition Punjab, based on pindi chole, named after Rawalpindi. Punjab's agricultural abundance made chickpeas a staple for centuries, initially prepared in homes and dhabas before migration popularised it. What emerged from the chaos of partition – families shattered, lives lost – was a recipe bringing hope for better lives in Delhi, where the curry found its perfect partner in deep-fried bhature.
This dish, which is much loved in Jaipur, started with Rajput warriors during Bappa Rawal's Mewar Kingdom reign, when soldiers buried wheat dough balls under hot sand to bake, which they extracted once they returned. The panchmel dal evolved during the Gupta empire when royal courts prepared a mix of five lentils with fragrant tempering of cumin and cloves. Churma was an accidental invention when a cook mistakenly poured sugarcane juice on baatis, making them softer. Guhilot women wanted to keep baatis moist until men returned home, eventually developing the sweet crumbled version.
The iconic Bengali rosogolla was invented in 1868 by Kolkata confectioner Nobin Chandra Das, who made this sweet with chhena and semolina, then boiling the balls in sugar syrup at his Bagbazar sweet shop, after endless experimentation. Chhana technology was taught by Dutch and Portuguese colonists to the Bengali locals in the late 18th century, giving birth to sweets like rosogolla in the region. Das's son, Krishna Chandra Das, introduced vacuum packing in 1930, making canned rasgullas available nationwide. To date, still sold at his shop, K.C. Das, in central Kolkata.
Legend says that Sister Bebiana at Santa Monica Convent in 18th-century Old Goa created a seven-layered pudding from leftover egg yolks after nuns used whites for starching clothes. These seven layers represent the seven hills of Lisbon and Old Goa. When priests found it too small, she added more layers, creating the twelve to sixteen-layer version. Made with egg yolks, coconut milk, flour, sugar, and ghee with nutmeg, each layer of the bebinca is baked individually and caramelised before adding the next, made after putting in hours of labour. Called the ‘Queen of Goan Desserts’, bebinca is served at Christmas, Easter, weddings, and christenings, traditionally enjoyed warm with vanilla ice cream or cold with tea.
From the streets to the royal kitchens, local ingredients, be it vegetables, grains or meat, along with spices, turned into iconic dishes which do more than feed. They are living relics of history, culture, and community. Sampling them is like tasting a city’s soul, layer by layer. So whether you’re biting into a soft appam in Kerala or savouring bebinca in Goa, remember: every flavour carries a story, every spice a memory.