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This attracted more men from Europe to visit the subcontinent. When visiting Europeans went back home after years of weary travel, they spoke of India as nothing less than an enchanted land, full of secrets, spices, colours (and, of course) elephants. Accounts of foreigners visiting the Indian subcontinent go as far back as the fifth and sixth centuries BC. Popular history has us believe that it was the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama, who, on his visit to India around AD 1498, opened the gates of Indo-European trade and travel but this is far from the truth. Perhaps what miso, gochujang and truffle oil are for us now is what cinnamon, rose and pineapple were for Indians back then. Understanding the role of merchants was important for me to determine how the Indian pantry gained access to foreign ingredients. Although the chilli per se is an ancient crop, with accounts of it dating as far back as 7500 BC in South America (which predates the Indus Valley civilisation), it was only thousands of years later that it made it to India. Take the example of the chilli: To think of it not as our own but as something that was imported only a little over 450 years ago is both shocking and humbling.īut the truth remains that even an ingredient that is so widely assumed to be Indian only made an appearance in Indian kitchens around 1542 in the Malabar region, thanks to foreign travellers or traders. The routes they chose for trading impacted the social, political and culinary histories of their reign, and of the regions in which they traded. Historically, travellers and merchants spurred a greater production and availability of resources. Watch: JNU security guard dances to Bollywood song, social media users love it.PM Modi’s Twitter account ‘briefly compromised’, says his office after Bitcoin link shared.How well prepared is India to detect the spread of Omicron?.As China’s pillars of growth wobble, it is rethinking its whole economy.Five years after BJP’s UP sweep: In Basti, Dalits upset over inflation but grateful for free rations.Watch: CDS Bipin Rawat’s pre-recorded message played posthumously at 50th anniversary of 1971 war.‘Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui’ review: A thoughtful drama about a bodybuilder’s love for a trans woman.