Kababs, yes, but khandvi too

Mughlai cuisine has as many vegetarian dishes as meaty ones. A new translation of a 16th century manuscript shows how we ate, and why modern labels are pointless

Few Indian food terms are as misused as Mughlai. Wikipedia tells us that Mughlai refers to the food of the Mughals, but the entry brackets so-called Mughal dishes with food from the Delhi Sultanate, which predated the Mughals, and specialties from the Awadh court, which developed a cuisine quite distinct from the food of the Mughals in Delhi.

Even that definition is far more exacting than the way in which the term is usually used these days: To describe any rich non-vegetarian dish associated in the public mind with the Muslim community. The food of India's Muslims is hardly monolithic; any attempt to generalise is a doomed enterprise.

Many people regard all non-vegetarian food as being of Mughal origin and believe that Hindus were vegetarians before the Mughals got here. In fact, the non-vegetarian tradition in Hindu communities dates all the way back to our earliest recorded history. The Mauryas celebrated non-vegetarian dishes and their cuisine went all the way from birds to frogs.

And even during the Middle Ages, the dishes that came to us from West Asia ceased to be exclusively Hindu or Muslim. Take the samosa. It is West Asian in origin but is no longer regarded as a so-called Muslim dish, perhaps because the majority of samosas sold in India are vegetarian. Or take the jalebi. This is a sweet you will still find all over the Middle East and West Asia.

But it is so popular in India that we forget that its origins lie outside of our borders.