Eating With History: Ancient Trade-Influenced Cuisines of Kerala is an invaluable compendium of a culinary tradition and variety of food recipes that evolved out of Kerala’s kitchens. The food trail is extensive and as varied as it can get. The proximity to the sea and the natural beauty and resources of the state–especially the fragrant spices which grew in abundance–attracted inhabitants of foreign soils and inspired them to initiate overseas trade along what was later known as the Spice Route. In a state with fish, other sea food and vegetables dominating people’s food habits, the various kinds of meats, foreign cooking techniques and exotic flavours were curried to life from foreign trade influences and became significant foods. There are numerous recipes in each foreign-influenced community in Kerala, well represented in this book, in meticulous detail. These recipes were cherished by the families and handed down generations via cross-cultural interactions within Jews of the Paradesi and Malabari sects, Syrian Christians, Muslims, Anglo-Indians, Latin Catholics and others who mingled with and evolved from the local populace. The book provides a well-researched and rich cultural history of foreign food culture, tracing how the new elements adapted to local food traditions and evolved as a parallel line of foods, creating new textures, flavours and tastes.

This volume deals with the history of Kerala with special attention to selected historical personages who had played significant roles in shaping the history of Kerala through the ages.

Going well beyond the usual narratives on Kerala history, this study discusses the unique history of a statedescribed incolonial documents as being perpetually at war but, remarkably, whose people have been historically happy. Ever since its discovery, Kerala s political climate was characterized by a variety of Chinese, Arab, European, and local powers fighting each other for economic and military ascendancy. And yet, despite centuries of foreign contact and conflict, it continued to thrive and retain its independence. The influences Kerala absorbed were of its own choosing. This book hypothesizes that this remarkable achievement was a direct consequence of Kerala s unique military, diplomatic, social, and economic culture. A society by no means perfect, but fairly close, causing British administrators to record that society in Kerala had arrived close to fulfilling the utilitarian dictum of "the largest possible happiness of the largest numbers."

This work attempts to give a broad idea of the diverse aspects of the socio- cultural life of the people of Kerala in a historical perspective. Old traditions and new values in every sphere of human thought and activity have synthesized, assimilated and fused to form the history of Kerala.