Prof Amiya P Sen and Mr Nandan Dasgupta - MEMORIALIZING BENGALI LIVES, LEGENDS AND CULTURAL LONGINGS - ESSAYS IN HONOUR OF GHULAM MURSHID

Congratulations to

for collating and editing this book in memory of Ghulam Murshid — a tribute to an academic and a thinker whose vision straddled continents. This volume compelled me to finally wrap up my never-ending research on the European Impact on Bengali Cuisine — something that I had been working on, for quite a long time. In short — do you know that each one of these foods came from America and Europe and could find their way into our cuisine and into our lives only between the last 200 and 90 years? Potato, Green Chilli, Papaya, Guava, Pineapple, Tomato, Pea, Cauliflower, Cabbage, Carrot, Beet, Capsicum, Ole Kopi, Shalgom, Cocoa for chocolate, Peanut, Tobacco, , Rajma, Sopeda (Chikoo), Vanilla? We know bread, biscuit and tea were introduced by Europeans in India — but so were chop, cutlet, soup, stew, even chhana for our sweets. Dishes like lau chingri, shukto, potoler dorma were impacted by Europeans. Items like luchi, radhaballabhi, and maida-based foods were popularised in Bengal thanks to Western-technology flour mills.