A cookbook from Jahangir’s royal kitchen

In 2002, eminent Persian scholar Salma Yusuf Husain was going through a catalogue of books from the Mughal period at the National Archives of India in New Delhi. She was working there, and had earned herself a name for translating rare Persian texts into English. While she loved the language, she was equally fond of Mughal history, especially their food. She was going through the catalogue with a single-minded focus—to find if the Mughals left any account of their cuisine. As luck would have it, she chanced upon a seventeenth century manuscript, Alwan-E-Nemat, a cookbook from Mughal emperor Jahangir’s imperial kitchen. It was a treasure trove of 374 unique recipes.

Husain began translating it by trying a few recipes, experimenting with cooking methods, while simultaneously working on multiple food books highlighting Mughal cuisine. “It’s a topic that fascinates me, because one finds variations of Mughal-influenced dishes across restaurants, but no one truly knows the intricacies of the cuisine. Mughal dishes are not supposed to be dunked in oil and spices. You are meant to taste the meats and ingredients,” she explains. During the Mughal period in India, from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, there was minimal uses of spices and the flavour of each ingredient was sacrosanct. To feed her curiosity and dispel misconceptions, the 79-year-old author has written 11 books on this subject, including Emperor’s Table: The Art of Mughal Cuisine (2009), Flavours of Avadh: Journey from the Royal Banquet to the Corner Kitchen (2015) and Nushka-E-Shahjani published under the title The Mughal Feast: Recipes From The Kitchen Of Emperor Shah Jahan (2019) with translated recipes from the emperor’s royal table. Her newest book is the translated edition of Alwan-E-Nemat published by Penguin Random House India last month.

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Alwan is the Persian word for colour and Nemat means table. She called the book Colours of the Table because Jahangir was a gastronome and his wife Nur Jahan paid careful attention to food presentation. Although the original manuscript had 374 recipes, Husain chose 120 for the purpose of ease. “I want people to be able to carry and use it. A book with 374 recipes would have been extremely bulky. Also, some of the recipes will not work in modern kitchen,” she explains. But, she retained a dal recipe, dal-i-be aab (lentils cooked in gravel), because it is ‘fascinating’. It uses gravel, instead of water to give the dal a mushy texture. “In those days, the gravel had a chemical that could melt the dal,” she shares. Although it has no utility in the kitchen, it is recipes like these that offer a glimpse into not just cuisine, but also ancient archaeology. The ingredients and utensils also hold clue to their way of life. There are recipes with kasturi or musk which is now banned, and Husain suggests substitutes like rose water or kewra water. There’s mention of a unique griddle, mahi tawa, in several recipes. “You will find the mahi tawa in north India, in cities like Lucknow. It is a copper griddle with a one-inch border to fry fish and cook kebabs,” she says.

The book has a selection of naans, kebabs, pulaos, desserts like halwas and condiments, such as murabbas. In Jahangir’s times, murabbas were believed to have healing properties. One of the most interesting recipes is a collection of khichdis named after the chefs who invented them. For examples, they are called Khichdi Mukhtar Khani, Baba Farid ki Khichdi, Khichdi Mahmoodi, and so on. “Jehangir spent some time in Gujarat, and the man who managed his accounts was a Gujarati. He introduced the emperor to bajra khichdis that he came to love,” says Hussain. The khichdis got a Mughal spin with the addition of ingredients like lamb, dry fruits and saffron. These dishes exemplify how Mughals adopted recipes and cooking techniques from India to expand their culinary repertoire.

One of Husain’s favourite recipes from the book is the Narangi Pulao (fried, orange-shaped meat dumplings served with lamb rice). It’s a mainstay at her house parties, and she says it looks absolutely beautiful on the table: “Try making it, and you will love it.”

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