To the rural Hindi Bengali, rice is almost synonymous with Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and prosperity. Even today, many sophisticated urban Bengalis, who don’t directly participate in the cultivation or processing of rice, finds it irrationally difficult, to waste a single grain of rice. Even, when the portion of the plate is too much, they will try to finish it because wasting rice is almost tantament to insulting the goddess.

By medieval times, Bengalis literature began to contain elaborate description of available and cooked food, thus unfolding a picture of a leisurely lifestyle among a certain class who loved good food and devised many elaborate and subtle ways of cooking it. The noticeable thing was that most of them sweet-water or brackish-water fish, not any marine varieties – and the preference still remains.

The dual entity of rice – fish that is at the heart of Bengali cuisine is reflected in a thousand and one ways in the rituals and ceremonies of the Bengalis. Unhusked rice, called Dhan, is an inevitable part of any ceremonial offering to the gods. In parts of West Bengal there is a custom, that when a new bride drives with her husband to his house, she is welcomed with a platter of offerings containing dhan. For her part, she would have to hold a live fish in her left hand. This fish would later be released into the family fishpond to breed and multiply. During the ceremony of eating the shadh or derived foods, which takes place towards the end of pregnancy, probably based on the assumption that if the mother has no unsatisfied carvings left she will produce a healthy child, rice and fish are the compulsory items. From the preferences of living it is

not such a big transition to the preferences of the dead. The spirits of ancestors are appeased at funerals by a final offering called the pinda, cooked rice and fish mixed together in a lump.

Apart from rice and fish, Bengalis have always taken advantage of the green vegetables and tubers that grow all over the land. Historians, base their conclusions on a study of linguistics, think that modern vegetables like aubergines, several types of gourds and taro, as well as the bitters leaves of the jute plant, figured in the pre – Aryan Bengali diet. Even, the rice plant and the banana tree has strong mythical significance in Bengali life. A young specimen, is always placed outside the front door, together with a green coconut sitting a top an earthern pitcher, when a weeding or any other auspicious ceremony takes place.

But, one of the striking difference of staple between ancient and contemporary times is the absence of any kind of pulses in the food of ancient Bengal. The Charyapada, the earliest example of Bengali literature dating back approximately to the eleventh century, depict fishing and hunting for game, and mention rice, sugar-cane and many other crops. But there is no reference to the kind of dal. It is only in post-fifteenth-century literature that several kinds of dal, as well as ways of cooking them, begins to be mentioned. It seems that in this respect ancient Bengal had more in common with South-east Asia and China, where pulses are virtually unknown than the Bengal of today. Even now, most of dals consumed in West Bengal comes from other states in India.

Apart, from the natural cropping factor, the super abundant supply of fish made dal as a source of protein unnecessary.

A stable agricultural way of life also meant the presence of cattle. Milk and milk products become an important part of Bengali food from very early times. Apart, from being drunk by itself, milk was often served at the end of a simple meal, when it was mixed with a little cooked rice and white sugar or date palm sugar. In rural households nothing could be more welcome symbol of plenty than the cows standing in the bynes and the pitchers of foaming milk they produced.

Yogurt too, has been an important part of daily food, especially in the summer when the thought of aid the digestion. Aryan culture attributed auspiciousness to it. Well wishing mothers or sisters make a tikka or dot on the forehead with yoghurt whenever the child is setting out for an important undertaking. Unsweetened yoghurt was used in cooking from fairly early times. The Naishadhacharita, probably written before the Sena dynasty took over in Bengal, mentions a dish spiced with mustard and yogurt served at royal wedding. The Muslims later used yogurt as a wine substitute. They developed a drink called barhani, which is yogurt mixed water and whipped with salt and ground pepper. This continues to be served even today at Muslim feasts where a lot of rich meats and pulaos are supposed to be digested with the aid of the barhani. Many of their meat dishes require a little marinating in yogurt and the Korma and the nigella seeds of Bengal.

The long period of Muslim rule from the eleventh century to the demise of the Mughal Empire and the take-over by the British in the mid-eighteenth century firmly established Islam as the second most important religion of Bengal. Mass conversion took place and the lower castes of Hindu society whose members had been oppressed and exploited by the higher castes under the well-entrenched forces of orthodox Brahminism.The remnants of the Buddhist who had servived the tyranny of aggressive Hinduism under the Sena dynasty, were also tempted to accept the faith of the Muslim rulers. This process continued until, by the later half of the nineteenth century, Muslims contributed almost half the population of Bengal. In northern and eastern Bengal they were the majority, but they had little besides their strength of number. Land, power,

good education and professional opportunities were all mostly for the Hindus. This inequality and geographical concentration saved the seeds of discontent, which eventually led to East Bengal becoming East Pakistan, when the Indian subcontinent gained independence in 1947.

Culinarily , the impact of Muslim cooking was at first mostly to be seen among the leisured and affluent classes, especially the Nawabs who represented the Mughal empire in Bengal. But, however restricted initially, it led to development of a Bengali Muslim cuisine of Northern India and the Nizami cuisine of Hyderabad. It is less rich and subtler than both of them, tending to substitute yogurt and lemon juice for cream and solid kheer, of other Muslim cooking. Beef and chicken were also introduced into the diet; the former a bitter bone of contention even today, the latter becoming a part of the Hindu households, one of the best-known specialties developed by the Bengali Muslims is the Rezala made with Khasi(castrated goat), in which lemon, yogurt, milk and spices and chillies. Fragrant and sharp, the chillies produce an uplifting sensation for a potato cloyed with an excess of ghee or other ground spices.

The last Nawab of Bengal lost his throne and his life after the Battle of Plassey in June 1757. But the two centuries of British presence in Bengal not really made much difference to the way urban or rural Bengal continued to eat. In common with the rest of India, the colonial presence have resulted in an Anglo-Indian cuisine which remained confined by and large to the ruling race and the mixed breed of Anglo-Indians. The one noticeable contribution this had made to the everyday Bengali food is the inclusion of two extra ordinary misnomers, chop and cutlet.the English words, which have now become Bengali, were probably adopted by the cooks who worked in British households to denote their crossbreed. The chop today means a round or oval potato cake, with a fish or meat stuffing, which is dipped in egg and breadcrumbs, then fried crisply. The cutlet, which can meat, chicken or prawn, usually means one of those elements seasoned lightly and pounded to form a long flat,oval which is then coated and fried the same way. From the kitchen it did not take long for these two items to end up in urban eating joints, and there are many shops in Bengali towns that specializes in ‘chop-cutlet’ as a snack outlet. Mustard, that is inevitably served with these is not the Colman’s mustard favoured by the British; it is Bengali Kasundi, mixture of pungent mustard paste, mustard oil, lemon juice or sour green mango.