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Chapter 1: The Confusion
The troubles begin with definition. What is a chutney? Since Wikipedia is everyone’s quick-and-dirty first-stop-shop, let’s start there. We learn that “chutney” is an Anglicization of the Sanskrit caṭnī, meaning to lick. True, chutneys are definitely lickable. But what precisely is it that I’d be licking? No answers here.
Oh, wait, now I’m reading in a history of chutneys that caṭnī means crushed. Actually, that makes more sense. Traditional Indian chutneys are ground–either on a stone (what in Tamil we call an ammikkal), or these days more easily in a little food processor. And they’re made fresh, so they do not rely on vinegar or lemon for preservation–though lemon or tamarind often add sourness to taste. That seems easy enough. Get it? Chutneys are ground fresh. Perishable.
But then, forms like “Major Grey’s Chutney” make absolutely no sense. This chunky-jammy hyper-commodified stuff is the antithesis of anything I’ve known as “chutney.” Heck, even Smuckers markets a version. But it captures the apocryphal lore of Colonial India: a General in the Indian army, whose personal concoction of mangoes, vinegar, lemon juice, and tamarind (y.i.k.e.s.), and spices revolutionized relish.
Somewhere around the time that the Major was pickling his chutney, the Royal British Navy was mandating that sailors consume a daily ration of pickled citrus fruit (limes or lemons) to keep scurvy-free. I suppose it makes perfect sense that the “chutney” had to undergo a pickling in order to be exported–and commodified. But it also adds to the massive chutney confusion which I shall clear up thusly: in India, chutney is lickable, fresh ground, usually the accompaniment to dosas but also rices and rotis; elsewhere it’s jammy, chunky bottled stuff, usually an accompaniment to meats (or a treatment for scurvy). Makes all sorts of historical and contextual sense, no?
All this would lead us to believe that chutneys are chutneys and pickles are pickles, ne’er the twain shall meet. But that’s not the case either. Sure, at one end there’s the chutney, and at the other there’s the oorugai (in the Southern states) or the achaar (in the Northern ones): full-blown chilli-based pickles.
Nothing in India is that simple, however. There are no binaries here. Instead, there appear a cast of other characters, each wedging in between the classic chutney and the classic pickle, clamoring for status and complicating everything. There are: more-and-less cooked thogaiyals (or thuvaiyals, depending on what sort of Tamil you speak), thokkus (also Tamil, emphatically non-coconut based), kasundis (Bengali in origin, but incredibly popular in Australia and New Zealand–where it’s called a “relish”), pachchadis (Tamil and Telugu–here we introduce yogurt, which make these impossible to distinguish from raitas, which are salads, strictly speaking), gojjus (Kannada–the sometimes drier, sometimes saucy base for vegetables which make it impossible to distinguish from curries–which are a confusion unto themselves). And I’m sure there are other regional variants I’m sure I’ve not yet discovered.
The point is not just that there’s this Indian condiment called a “chutney” which has all these wonderful regional variants with evocative distinguishing ingredients. The point is also that each regional variant–and there can be several in each state, sometimes overlapping with other states–can also pass as a pickle, or as a salad (raita), or even as a curry (as with the gojju), depending on the ingredients used and the mode of preparation. Mangai thokku (mango thokku), for example, is much more a pickle than its tomato counterpart, which gets called a chutney instead (thakkali chutney).
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Next Chapter: The Clarification
Absolutely wonderful essay on the mystery of “chutney”! “Chutney” displays the lovely tension between India’s almost Germanic love of naming and its studied cavalierness to the use of those names in practice. Combine that psycho-linguistic conflict with the ambiguities inherent in its internal diversity — and those created deliberately in chauvinistic displays of difference — and its small wonder that we all talk past each-other.
Loved it! :-D!
I would also add our particular quirks for the word Chutney/ Chammanthi.
Folks from South Malabar would use the tern ‘Sammanthi’. If it is a ‘thick-non-watery texture’ it would be ‘Unda-Sammanthi’. Not dry but acheiving that balance in moistness which gives ‘shape’. Whereas ”Thekkaru’ ( Southerners ) would use the term with “Ch’!!!! :-D!
And for the Pacchadi’s there is also an in between version, the ‘Parekku’/ ‘Parukku’. This version usually adds a pinch of mustard. In doing so, it highlights the freshness and the fact that it will not ‘keep’ for long. This will be an uncooked version without any tempering.
Whereas the Pacchadi can be with cooked or raw vegetables folded into the coconut based sammanthi. It also has tempering.
I LOVE the coconut graters! Both of them. And this discourse on chutney is fascinating and enlightening. And revealing. Language, understanding, history, and the amendment of them all by travel, colonisation, memory….
You’ll have to come shopping with me sometime on the East Coast road where traders make fortunes off our collective nostalgia. We’ll rummage and find you one of those old graters to sharpen and put into use again 🙂
Deal!
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I spent an entire hour late in the afternoon relishing your chutney series, Deepa! I was posting moringa leaves rasam on my blog and wanted to link to your blog for some rasam definitions, because for me you’re my rasam guru! And what were the odds that I ended up on your chutney essays! I just saw “How do you chutney”, and that was enough inclination for me to jump into the boat and sail into chutney land. I’ve forever been trying to unravel chutneys, and the more I’ve read, honestly the more confused I’ve been and still got more intrigued! Is it serendipity that writing one such essay has crossed my mind often? Blessed to know you. 🙂
Soooo nice to find you’ve been on here, Lopa! No surprise at all that the task of writing such an investigative and elucidatory essay on chutney crossed your mind, too — we’re interested in food categories, aren’t we? I wonder if you’d be interested in a collaboration on this. I mean, my own knowledge has widened and lord knows my pictures here need some updating… I was taking new photos of the same chutneys and having similar thoughts this weekend — now that’s more than serendipity, that’s the universe sending signs! xoxx
A collaboration sounds utterly fabulous!
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My parents migrated to Trinidad and Tobago during the latter part of the 19th century from what was then called the United Province (I think it’s now part of present-day Uttar Pradesh and spoke Bhojpuri…sad to say I can’t speak any of it). My mom made coconut chutney to go with khichari, during the ‘dry season’.
She first roasted the coconut in the chulha (clay oven) and then crushed, and ground it on the ‘Sill and Lorrha’ (not sure if that’s the right spelling but it’s the hand-grinding stone…I think it’s called an Ammikkallu in the South). She’d then the other ingredients: chilli peppers, garlic, onion, culantro, Cuban oregano, and salt, and mix it all together.
Yes, I know the silbatta (it goes by other names, too) and the amikkal, which are still used here though less and less (blenders are common). Your mum’s recipe sounds lovely, especially the cuban oregano/ karpooravalli addition if I got that right. That must have made it very distinctive. I shall have to try! Thanks so much for taking the time to comment and share!
Thank you. I came across your blog quite by accident and am glad I did…the recipes are quite an eye-opener as, being so far from India, both in time and distance, the ingredients used in the cooking back home were very basic.
But there’s magic from those basic ingredients, as I’m sure you know well. After that of course the edible world and human creativity are vast, but what people often managed with simple daily things continues to strike me as remarkable!
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