Category Archives: Culinary History

The King of Fruits: Pineapples and Class Culture in British Cookbooks from 1661-1850

By Elizabeth Schmidt

In 1789, John Taylor sent a pineapple to his mother Jean in Scotland; the pineapple was from his cousin’s plantation in Jamaica, where John lived and worked as a merchant. Not having seen the fruit before, Jean turned to friends for guidance. On November 20, she wrote to John: “I have not looked in to the Pine Apple yet as they tell me its only to show out a Grand Table & not to be eat.” Four months later she added, “I do not intend to open the Pin Apple till you Come.” Laying on maternal guilt to convince him to return for a visit, she promised John a party in his honor where the pineapple could sit center stage.

Native to South America, the pineapple was cultivated by Indigenous peoples across the Caribbean. The plant was called hoyriri or anona by the Tupi, and iaiama by the Taino. Columbus and his crew were probably the first Europeans to taste the fruit in Guadalupe, and they brought back a case of pineapples for King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella. Only one survived unspoiled enough to eat, but King Ferdinand declared it his favorite fruit after just one taste. In England, the first pineapple was presented to the king somewhere around 1661, a “queen-pine” from Barbados.[1] The fruit is quite beautiful: the hexagonal eyes around the body grow in a spiral sequence that are often cited as a three-dimensional representation of the Golden Ratio, and the leaves on the top of the pineapple are commonly referred to as its “crown.”[2]

In a painting by Hendrick Danckerts, ca. 1675-1680, King Charles II is presented with a pineapple. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
In a painting by Hendrick Danckerts, ca. 1675-1680, King Charles II is presented with a pineapple. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Why did Jean’s friends tell her it was not to be eaten, and only “to show”? Even today, producers harvest and ship pineapples before they are perfectly ripe to ensure that the fruit reaches its destination while still attractive, since ripe fruit bruises easily and rots quickly. Unfortunately, once a pineapple is harvested, it does not continue to ripen.[3]

In eighteenth-century Scotland, Jean’s pineapple would have looked attractive but tasted terrible. Cookbook authors capitalized on this, offering instructions to preserve pineapples whole for repeated display. First seen in Elizabeth Raffald’s The Experienced English House-keeper (1769), preservation recipes were offered for readers who desired pineapple centerpieces. The fruit was brined for five days in saltwater, then boiled in a saucepan with the brining liquid. Then, the sugaring process began: the cook would submerge the pineapple in a thin sugar syrup for a week, remove it, re-boil the syrup, and then submerge again. This process was replicated over eight to ten weeks, with the syrup re-boiled two or three times in that period to prevent molding. Francis Collingwood refined these instructions in The Universal Cook and Country Housekeeper (1792): the pineapple was left in the jar for six to eight weeks, re-boiling the syrup every week. The final instruction was to remove the pineapple from the jar and cover it with a thick, cool, sugar syrup that had been boiled with slices of ginger, a natural preservative. According to Raffald and Collingwood, a pineapple preserved in this way would “keep several years, if tied down close with a bladder.” This preservation process had been used on fruit in Europe since the fourteenth century. Preservation played a key role in both cuisine and medicine through the eighteenth century, especially as diet remained a key element in managing health.[4]. In fact, Collingwood’s 1792 cookbook had similar instructions to preserve cherries with their stalks and leaves to “make a very pretty appearance in a desert [sic] by candle-light.”

By the mid-eighteenth century, aristocrats could buy pineapples grown in “pine-houses” rather than imported from the Caribbean. Dutch horticulturist Agnes Block experimented with propagating new pineapple plants from the crown of the fruit and successfully produced the first European-grown specimen in 1687. Later, horticulturists realized they could import whole plants from the West Indies: the plant is drought-resistant and capable of storing water in its leaves to keep it alive.[5] Soon elite estates across Britain built their own pine-houses. Cookbooks aimed at the upper classes introduced recipes for pineapple desserts as early as 1732, when Richard Bradley included a pineapple tart in The Country Housewife and Lady’s Director. In 1770, Borella’s The Court and Country Confectioner, a book clearly aimed at either royal or aristocratic houses, included two recipes for “Anana, or Pine Apple Cream Ices.” By the mid-nineteenth century, pineapple recipes were much more numerous yet still aimed at the upper classes. Charles Francatelli’s The Modern Cook (1846) had ten recipes with pineapple, including fritters, souffles, and brioche. Yet Francatelli was the chef to Queen Victoria, and his cookbook did not purport to be written for the average English housewife.

The practice of displaying pineapples continued long after recipes were developed for baking them into sweet treats. In P. Masters’s Young Cook’s Assistant, and Housekeeper’s Guide (1841), the recipe for “Pine Apple Cream” tells readers that “the pine must be quite ripe – one too ripe for the table will do for this purpose.” Cookbooks authored for the “middling classes” kept including the preservation recipe first written by Raffald, as pineapples remained quite expensive. A 1787 memoir of a London actress tells the story of finding pineapples for sale for one pound per fruit. The author remarks of the actress that “for the first time since I knew her, she declined to gratify her inclination at such an expence.”[6] At the coronation of King George IV in 1821, hundreds of hothouse pineapples were purchased for the banquet.[7] Some were certainly eaten, but others were displayed on tables as exotic centerpieces, as showcased in a painting of the event by Denis Dighton (1821)

The Third and Last Challenge by the Champion during King George IV's Coronation Banquet in Westminster Hall (1821). At intervals along the table, you can see the yellow pineapples with their green crowns. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
The Third and Last Challenge by the Champion during King George IV’s Coronation Banquet in Westminster Hall (1821). At intervals along the table, you can see the yellow pineapples with their green crowns. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

So, while John probably thought he was sending his mother an exotic, expensive, and exciting gift, he actually sent her a project: a fruit that required significant labor to transform it into a centerpiece she could showcase.
*****
Elizabeth M. Schmidt is a recent PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara specializing in British Atlantic foodways of the eighteenth century. From roast beef to turtle soup, she researches the intersection of eating and identity during the Age of Revolutions and imperial turmoil. Using microhistories of figures like sailors, military generals, merchants, and housewives, she explores the impact of foodways on discussions of identity, belonging, inclusion, and exclusions. Elizabeth also enjoys cooking historical manuscript recipes, translating eighteenth and nineteenth century instructions, measurements, and tools into their modern equivalent to learn what she can about culinary knowledge and labor.

[1] Kaori O’Connor, Pineapple: A Global History (London: Reaktion Books, 2013), 17-20.

[2] Judithlynne Carson, “Fibonacci Numbers and Pineapple Phyllotaxy,” The Two-Year College Mathematics Journal 9:3 (June 1978): 132.

[3] Fran Beauman, The Pineapple: King of Fruits (London: Chatto & Windus, 2005), 6.

[4] Anne Stobart, Household Medicine in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2016).

[5] Bauman, The Pineapple, 31; O’Connor, Pineapple, 24.

[6] Elizabeth Steele, The Memoirs of Mrs. Sophia Baddeley. Late of Drury-Lane Theatre (Dublin, 1787), 90.

[7] Sir Roy Strong, Coronation: A History of Kingship and the British Monarchy (London: Harper Collins, 2005), 33; James Jennings, Two Thousand Five Hundred Practical Recipes in Family Cookery (London, 1837), lv.

The Tomato-Chili Nexus: Reconstructing the Mesoamerican Influence on Europe through Taste and Method

By Serin Quinn

The earliest known recipe referencing tomatoes was published in Naples in 1692. This is not simply the earliest European recipe to include the ingredient, but the first written tomato recipe world-wide. The history of the tomato – a foodstuff indigenous to the Americas – is dominated by European sources: our recipes, botanical descriptions and illustrations all stem from either European or post-conquest authors.

How, then, can we use such European recipes to understand the cultural influence of Indigenous American cultures? This blog explores how following taste offers us a means to recreate the unrecorded past and to bring to the fore hidden histories.

I am not the first to note this issue: following Marcy Norton’s 2008 work Sacred Gifts, scholars have begun to reconsider the role of American foods in European cuisines. Nonetheless, studies to date have focused on foods that have distinct paraphernalia (chocolate cups or tobacco pipes) or that have necessary treatments, such as the nixtamalization of maize or de-toxification of cassava. The pre-Columbian history of the tomato is harder to grasp, but its study shows us that even the most ordinary of American foods had a fundamental influence on the food cultures of Europe.

[Xi]tomamolli: Mesoamerican tomato sauces

To reconstruct pre-Columbian tomato-usage (in Nahuatl xitomatl), we must consider the form and taste of food and relationship between ingredients.

The post-conquest primary sources we do have – ethnographies such as the so-called Florentine Codex and government reports such as the Relaciones Geográficas – provide us with two key pieces of information. These sources do not give us a fixed recipe of the type we would find in contemporaneous recipe European books, but there are notable consistencies in their reports that speak to common, repeated practice. Critically, these sources repeatedly tell us that tomatoes were consumed as a sauce or stew and that they were consistently paired with chili peppers: as the Relaciones report from Texcoco (1582) stated, ‘They have tomatoes and tomatillos, which serve as a spice with chilli, from which they make sauces and appetizers to eat’.

Ethnographic work suggests tomatoes and chilis were first charred to remove the skin and then pounded together using a stone molcaxitl (‘sauce bowl’) and a texolotl grinding stone. This sauce-paste was then used to flavour dishes such as tamales and stews of beans, turkey eggs or meat (deer/dog/turkey/fish/newt). As the authors of the Florentine Codex observed: ‘Where [it is] tasty, [it has] chili, salt, tomatoes, gourd seeds: shredded, crumbled, juiced’. This is the quintessential Mesoamerican tomato recipe, as recreated from common practice.

In the centuries following the conquest, tomatoes continued to be eaten in this way by the populations of New Spain. As one chronicler wrote in 1698, tomato-dishes were the ‘be-all, end-all of the stews of the Indies’.

Salsa de tomates: tomatoes in Iberia

Across the Atlantic, in the Spanish-controlled Mediterranean, we see a clear continuation of both these forms of cooking and of the tomato-chili nexus.

The earliest recipe, from Spanish Naples, is for a tomato sauce ‘in the Spanish style’, and sauces and stews/soups also form the bulk of recipes in Spanish and Portuguese. The author of a manuscript Portuguese cookbook (c. 1715) wrote: ‘Tomatoes in all foods, that is, in meat, in stews, or in roast sauces, add a particular flavor to everything’.

Almost all recipes from this period are directions to use tomatoes as a sauce or as the base for stews/casseroles (with one or two recipes directing tomatoes to be pickled or used in salads). If we deconstruct these recipes to their base elements, a consistent method appears that can be expressed as follows:

Take ripe tomatoes; roast them; remove their skins; mince or crush them until fine; mix with chili, oil and vinegar and [onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, oregano, or thyme], serve with [fish, chicken, eggs, beans, or rice].

Some aspects of the flavour profile varied between recipe in the choice of herbs, spices and alliums, but the addition of chili, as well as oil and vinegar, was almost always to be found. The association between the two foods was so strong that they were customarily depicted together in paintings.

Tomatoes, chili, oil (aceite) and vinegar (vinagre) – the staple ingredients of tomato sauce – in Francisco Barrera, August, 1640, oil on canvas, 102 x 155 cm, Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava. Public domain.
Tomatoes, chili, oil (aceite) and vinegar (vinagre) – the staple ingredients of tomato sauce – in Francisco Barrera, August, 1640, oil on canvas, 102 x 155 cm, Slovak National Gallery, Bratislava. Public domain.

 

Love apple sauce: tomatoes in Britain

The transfer of tomato-tastes to Spanish colonisers and subsequently to their homeland in Iberia is perhaps not surprising. Yet through tomato recipes we can see that the spread of Mesoamerican tomato-chili sauces travelled further, into the early modern British diet.

English recipes for tomatoes – then called love-apples – fall into two categories: pickles and sauces/soups. Recipes for these sauces use the methods seen above: rather than ‘roasted’ they are ‘baked’ and their skins removed by pulping through a sieve rather than peeling, but the result is the same. Importantly, alongside ‘Old World’ ingredients such as onion and ginger, almost all these recipes contained chilis. We see this across both print and manuscript recipes, and usually in the form of ‘capsicum’ or chili vinegar, as in the recipe below.

These sauces came to Britain not through direct colonial contact with Mesoamerica, as in Iberia. Rather, the authors of eighteenth-century encyclopaedias and gardening manuals attested to a different origin of influence: Jewish refugees, specifically Sephardi Jews fleeing the Spanish/Portuguese inquisitions of the 1720s. As one horticulturalist noted, ‘it is agreeable in Soups. Those who are us’d to eat with the Portuguese Jews know the Value of it’. As Iberian consumers once adopted a taste for the tomato from Mesoamericans, so they later brought it with them to their new home.

In both Iberia and Britain, therefore, we see how the tastes of a minority group can have a powerful and lasting impact on the diets and desires of the majority, and how knowledge is spread through a series of incorporations and re-introductions.  

‘Tomatar Sauce’ from Miscellaneous Household Recipes, Loveden Family, Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, c. 1780-1835. Reproduced with permission from the Royal Berkshire Archives, catalogue ref: D/ELV/Z5/1-15.
‘Tomatar Sauce’ from Miscellaneous Household Recipes, Loveden Family, Buscot Park, Oxfordshire, c. 1780-1835. Reproduced with permission from the Royal Berkshire Archives, catalogue ref: D/ELV/Z5/1-15.

The enduring relationship between tomatoes and the chilis illuminates a path of cultural influence from pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to eighteenth-century Britain. While we lack detailed guides on how tomatoes were prepared prior to the conquest, understanding preparation methods and flavours profiles allows us to trace the movement of culinary knowledge over time and space and to reestablish the role of Indigenous American tastes in shaping European cuisine.
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Serin Quinn is an early modern historian, specialising in food, horticulture and global connectivity. Her PhD at the University of Warwick was on the introduction of the tomato to early modern England and was funded by Midlands4Cities. Her article on the early English reception of sweet potatoes recently won the Food & History Best Article Award 2025. As of October 2026, she has a research fellowship with the Society for Renaissance Studies, working on a new project on aphrodisiac-foods in pre-modern Europe.

 

Bal-Po Stew: The Empire’s Recipe

By Lewis Ebert

Bal-Po Stew in the "Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Diet." Figure scanned by CADAL from the Peking University Library displayed as part of the Open Source Chinese Text Project.
Bal-Po Stew in the “Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Diet.” Figure scanned by CADAL from the Peking University Library displayed as part of the Open Source Chinese Text Project.

The third entry of the section entitled “Strange Delicacies of Combined Flavors” in the medieval Mongol cookbook, “Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Food and Drink,” is the Bal-Po stew, a recipe that exemplifies the multivalent food culture of the Yuan dynasty:

Bal–po Soup [Stew] (Nepali Soup) (fig 1)

It supplements the centre, and brings down qi. It extends the diaphragm.

Mutton, cardamom pods (five), chickpeas (500ml, pulverize and remove the skins), Chinese radish.

Boil ingredients together to make a soup. Strain broth. Chop meat and radish. Add the mutton cut into coin-sized pieces to the soup, then add cooked Chinese radish [4 grams] of saffron, [8 grams] of Turmeric, [8 grams] of Black (“Iranian”) Pepper, [2 grams] of chicory, and coriander leaves.

Adjust flavours with a little salt. Eat over cooked aromatic non-glutinous rice. Add a little Vinegar. [1]

“The Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Food and Drink,” compiled in 1330 by Hu Sihui, occupies a unique position in the history of Eurasian cuisine. Written under the Mongol Yuan dynasty, it is designed to offer life-extending medical solutions for the emperor and to foster a healthy diet for the court. As it is described in a famous encyclopedia of the Qing era: “[the author] compiled into a single book the rare and unusual delicacies, medicinal soups, poultices, and decoctions he offered, along with the formulas and methods found in the medical works from famous physicians.” [2] This manual for life-engendering dietary practice straddles multiple cultural products, ingredients, economic ties, and ritual cosmologies. Its genesis mirrors the vast empire that it was designed to accommodate: Mongol ancestral food types met Near Eastern ingredients all condensed into Traditional Chinese Medical form. Its prescriptions for the imperial table reveal a world in which food was never merely sustenance but a medium for negotiating health, hierarchy, and cosmology. Later, during the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), it was officially promulgated as a compendium of useful culinary insights; the Ming Imperial preface to the text states: “We have examined the entire book Yinshan zhengyao of the former Yuan dynasty…this book is not just an aid for hygiene and nourishing. It is also a great aid for training to receive the correct [way of living].” [3] The culinary and medicinal recipes detailed therein were thus disseminated by imperially sponsored publishing houses from the 14th century and beyond, even into the Qing dynasty. [4]

Among the “Strange Delicacies of Combined Flavours,” the Bal-Po stew, a seemingly modest dish of mutton, chickpeas, and spices, offers a particularly rich case study in the articulation of Mongol Empire culinary cosmology. The chapter features ninety-five courtly recipes, ranging from mutton to camel to wolf; each entry is first described in terms of its medical benefits (relation to qi or organs) before detailing its ingredients. At first glance, Bal-Po stew resembles the Mongol šülen, the mutton broth that, as Buell and Anderson have noted, was believed to contain the “very essence, the soul of the animal.” [5] The broth was achieved by the boiling down of whole animals, usually sheep, for extended periods of time until their collagen thickened the stew and the carcass imparted a strong flavour. In this way, the essence or soul of the sheep, its vital energies, were transposed directly into the broth, thus creating a nourishing meal. It is for this reason that the stew could be said to supplement the individual, balance the qi, or extend the diaphragm; its effects were at once nutritious and medicinal.

From this traditional šülen form, Bal-Po distinguished itself through its inclusion of imported aromatics (saffron, turmeric, and black pepper), Near Eastern ingredients (chickpeas), and ingredients typical of East Asia at the time (radish and cardamom). These ingredients, sourced across the empire from as far as India through Islamic trade networks, marked the stew as a product of the trans-Eurasian circulation that the Mongol empire made possible; they represented a new fusion of food that had never been consumed before on Chinese soil. The result, Buell and Anderson claim when cooking the recipes themselves, is a dish that resembles a curry from the Kashmir: “an excellent dish.” [6]

Of particular interest is the inclusion of chickpeas and radishes. The first, a typically West Asian ingredient, at once accommodates for the many Muslim clients of the Mongol Empire, but also fulfils a curious role as thickening agent. As mentioned above, šülen is generated out of the prolonged boiling of a sheep carcass until a thick broth is produced: chickpeas, however, along with a number of other thickening agents included throughout the cookbook, can expedite that process. In place of the long-standing collagen-based thickening technique, the introduction of the chickpea from West Asia symbolises an evolution of culinary technique: instead of waiting for hours for the broth to thicken, the use of chickpeas (along with ground almonds and mung beans elsewhere) can reproduce the desired texture in minutes. The second, the Chinese radish, had likely come into contact with the Mongol šülen in the past given the occasional assimilation between Mongol and Chinese cultures, but here, instead of being used in dumpling mixtures or in chopped salads, the radish’s inclusion has a more functional role: removing the gamey odour of the stew. As has been accounted for across the materia dietetica of this era, the šülen, although nutritious and of great spiritual significance, tended towards pungency. Thus, with the inclusion of one half-way domestic ingredient and one imported one, a stew could be produced with increased speed and reduced smell.

What appears to be a simple stew, then, actually features a unique set of cultural impulses that could only have come together during the territorial zenith of the greatest land empire in history: from its name, Bal-Po, meaning Nepal, one of the old territories of the Tibetan Empire then under Yuan dynastic control, to the diverse set of ingredients generated through an extensive Muslim trading network, to its textual representation in a Chinese medical framework, to its flavours that could even be considered West Indian, the dish exemplifies the multivalent nature of the Mongol Empire.
*****
Lewis Ebert is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford, specializing in East Asian culinary and ritual cultures. His research focuses on Mongol and Chinese food cosmologies, examining how recipes encoded beliefs about vitality, spirit, and nourishment. Combining archaeological, textual, and anthropological analysis, he explores the intersection of food, ritual, and social life across the Eurasian world.

FURTHER READING

Buell, Paul D and Eugene N Anderson (2013). Soup for the Qan. Milton Park: Routledge.

Hu, Sihui (1994). Yinshan zhengyao sanjuan 飲膳正要三卷. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe.

Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 欽定四庫全書總目提要 (1997). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju.

NOTES

[1] YSZY 1994, juan 1, 27A. My translation: measurements have been adjusted for broader audience.

[2] Qinding Siku quanshu zongmu tiyao 欽定四庫全書總目提要 1997, 9026. My translation.

[3] YSZY 1994, 1A

[4] This text is printed and reprinted even up until the modern day, with critical editions being consistently produced at a regular basis. The impact of the text on the Ming is hard to measure but its official promulgation is evidence for an interest and investment into its recipes.

[5] Buell and Anderson 2013, 42.

[6] ibid., 272, footnote.

[7] Bal-Po Stew in the “Proper and Essential Things for the Emperor’s Diet,” figure scanned by CADAL from the Peking University Library displayed as part of the Open Source Chinese Text Project.

Nun Chai: A Story from Trade Routes to Survival

Namkeen Chai at pastoralists meadow also called Dhok in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir. Image courtesy of the author.
Namkeen Chai at pastoralists meadow also called Dhok in Poonch, Jammu and Kashmir. Image courtesy of the author.

By Garima Sudhan

The popular understanding of Kashmir is heavily anchored in its selective portrayal of cultural symbols, wherein its food and clothing practices are used as bait to increase tourism attraction. Kashmir’s tea culture is no stranger to this trend. Upon entering Kashmir, the spectacle of commodification is at play for consumable experiences of tourists, often washing away the histories behind these practices. Prominent commodities in this case would be the Kashmir tea and Kehwa. Kashmiri salt tea or nun chai is well renowned.  It is a hot, salty beverage with a pink colour that is quite different to sweet tea varieties prevalent throughout South Asia. Prepared with a thorough brewing of green tea leaves and a little bit of salt, it is known as nun chai or namkeen chai  in Kashmir. The tea leaves and preparation are different from Indian chai. At present, it is also made quickly with the addition of soda powder that accelerates its color and preparation. This method is widely used in households today as it is less time consuming

Traditionally brewed in a Samovar, nun chai holds cultural and political significance. The Samovar was introduced in Kashmir during the early modern period via trade contact with Persian and Central Asia. Samovars are a staple in a Russian tea culture that gradually made its way to Asia.  In Kashmir, tea is brewed in a copper vessel with intricate motifs, finished with a lustrous nickel coating (qalai), making it both a work of art and a household essential.

Preparation of Kashmiri tea has significant components: the method of brewing, the right aroma, and, most importantly colour. The way of presenting it also sets it apart from what is usually served in other parts of South Asia. There are various regional variants of Kashmiri tea as well.  In the Kashmir valley it is called nun chai or salt tea, but in the mountains of Kashmir, it is also known as namkeen chai, sabz chai. The pastoralists of Kashmir often prepare tea with a little bit of sugar and corn flour. This preparation is popular in Azad Jammu and Kashmir.  From Ladakh’s “Gur Gur chai” (butter tea) with yak butter, the pink tea has evolved into variants across the region. The preparation of this tea has evolved with time and has been contingent to the trade scenario, especially tea bricks and the salt trade. Sources like the Tarikh-i-Kashmir by Hasan Bin Ali Kashmiri from the early modern period (Mughal rule) give us an idea of the tea trade and its consumption patterns in Kashmir. The many ways of making and consuming salt tea  reflect its historical variation across the region, which was dictated by local ingredient availability and trade.

The undivided region of Kashmir has served as a crucial gateway to Central Asia, Yarkand, and Tibet, especially due to its geographical proximity to silk routes. Here, Kashmir refers to the political entity under Dogra rule, comprising Ladakh and Gilgit-Baltistan. The Mughal occupation of Kashmir in 1586 not only created favourable conditions for trade with Central Asia but also gave a push to Kashmir’s trade with other neighbouring regions. There were two famous trade routes to Central Asia. One was through Gilgit and Kashgar, and the other, from Skardu to Yarkand, crossing the Baltoro glacier. During the early modern period, Kashmiri products like saffron, shawls, and fruits were imported to the rest of the Mughal empire. Furthermore, the Pashmina wool and tea trade flourished. ​

Nun chai with local Kashmiri breads (baqerkhani and girde). Image courtesy of the author.
Nun chai with local Kashmiri breads (baqerkhani and girde). Image courtesy of the author.

Ladakh and Tibet maintained a close trade relationship through official missions, regulated by the Treaty of Tingmosgang, signed in 1684, under which Ladakh got the monopoly over shawl-wool in Tibet, and the Tibetans acquired the exclusive right to the brick-tea trade with Ladakh . These missions continued with some interruptions under Dogra rule until 1946 and came to a complete halt with the annexation of Tibet. The Lapchak, a triennial mission from Leh to Lhasa led by a senior monk and a Muslim merchant, carried presents and was viewed by Tibet as a tribute mission. In return, the annual Chapba (tea man) mission traveled from Lhasa to Leh, bringing Chinese brick tea for sale. The most vital commodity was Pashmina wool. Ladakh held a monopoly on this wool trade, constituting up to half of its trade, which it supplied to Kashmiri weavers. In the late 1840s, merchandise valued at about seven and a half lakh rupees was exchanged in Ladakh.​

Nun chai with local Kashmiri breads (baqerkhani and girde). Image courtesy of the author.
Nun chai with local Kashmiri breads (baqerkhani and girde). Image courtesy of the author.

Arjun Appadurai and Anne Allison argue that food is a political and cultural signifier, but they analyse it with different social scales. Appadurai, in his concept of gastro-politics, argues that food is socially condensed. For him, the politics of food are embedded in the routine practices that define social belonging. 

Cultural anthropologist Anne Allison examines the macro-level of state ideology and social structures. She argues that food preparation and aesthetics are mobilized as an ideological state apparatus to reinforce political agendas. Borrowing from these arguments, one can study the evolution and survival of Kashmiri tea across centuries of foreign rule. Under severe militarisation and violent historical ruptures, Kashmiri tea has been an important identity marker of Kashmiris in different parts of the world. Even under constraints like curfew, warlike situation, military crackdowns, Kashmiris seek nun chai as opposed to the more affordable Indian chai (known as Lipton chai). Kashmir has been a melting pot of cultures – under the Dogras and after its partition, Kashmir has witnessed a violent history of integration and control. Therefore, understanding Kashmiri food culture requires recognising its precarious political realities, wherein culinary traditions have contributed in  strengthening  solidarities and identity preservation. 

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Garima Sudan is a graduate student in the Department of History and Archaeology at Shiv Nadar University, New Delhi.  Their work is based on understanding social histories in post partitioned Kashmir, especially through concepts of space and belonging. They like to learn new languages and when not working, they spend time in the mountains of Kashmir. They aspire to bridge the gap between academic practice and community work.

References

​Appadurai, A. (1981). Gastro‐politics in Hindu South Asia. American Ethnologist.

Allison, Anne. (1991). Lunchbox as Ideological State. Anthropological Quarterly.  

Huttenback, Robert A.(1961). Gulab Singh and the Creation of the Dogra State of Jammu,

Kashmir and Ladakh. Journal of Asian Studies.

Karim, Afsar. (1994). Kashmir: The Troubled Frontiers. New Delhi: Lancer Publishers.

Keay, John. (1977). When Men and Mountains Meet: The Explorers of the Western Himalayas

Lamb, Alastair. (1960). The Road to Lhasa.London.

Lawrence, Walter.(1895). The Valley of Kashmir. London.

Noble, Christina. (1991). At Home in the Himalayas. London: Fontana

Rai, Mridu. (2004).  Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir. Permanent Black.

Rizvi, J. (1996). Ladakh: Crossroads of High Asia. Oxford University Press.

Rizvi, Janet. (1999). A Self-Reliant Economy: The Role of Trade in Pre- Independence Ladakh. Ladakh Studies

Rizvi, Janet. (1999). Trans-Himalayan Caravans, Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in

Ladakh. Oxford University Press.

Torrens, H.D. 1863). Travels in Ladakh, Tartary and Kashmir. London: Saunders Otley.

Vigne, G.T. 1842. Travels in Kashmir, Ladak, Iskardo etc. London: Henry Colburn.

Van Beek, M, & Pirie, F. (2008). Modern Ladakh : anthropological perspectives on continuity and change.