The punctilious protocols and perilous of pairing

Whether it is food and wine you want to pair or Scotch and soda, have no fear and pair with eclectic elan

- Jug Suraiya

In Ian Fleming’s From Russia With Love, James Bond twigs on that the English gent who is his fellow traveller on the overnight train is not as kosher as he seems, when the fellow commits the vinous solecism of ordering red wine with the fish course in the dining car.

Bond’s suspicions are confirmed when the assassin-in-masquerade, a Russian agent, attempts to terminate 007 with extreme prejudice while the British spy is seemingly asleep in his bunk bed.

But Bond, his suspicions aroused by the Russian’s libational faux pas over dinner, is prepared, and despatches his would-be killer by shooting him with a firearm artfully disguised as a book, possibly a lethal edition of War and Peace.

In today’s more permissive climate in matters of aristology, with culinary fusion having come into fashion, we can with impunity thumb our collective nose at bibulous tradition and, without risk of inviting mayhem, quaff Cab Sauv or even — mirabile dictu! — a Mendoza Malbec with our bhekti.

However, while pairing, selecting a particular potable companion to a particular dish is no longer a mortal hazard, punctilious protocols were in observance in the India of yesteryear.