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Rude Food by Vir Sanghvi: Hook, line and sinker
Fried fish is a local favourite in Japan and India, Britain’s national dish, and a taco filling in Mexico. But who invented it? The answer swims all round the globe
If you are a non-vegetarian, here is a dish that I am sure you have tried at least once, even though it is not necessarily a part of Indian cuisine. It is now so ubiquitous that it turns up on many restaurant menus and nearly every hotel room-service menu. No matter which country you go to, its ubiquity will follow you.
That dish is fried fish and is notable for many reasons.
First of all, many countries lay claim to it and yet none can claim convincingly to have solely invented it. And secondly, it is possibly the only dish that is regarded as a local food in England, Japan and even India, where northern and southern fried fish dishes jostle for favour.
Let’s start by demolishing the greatest myth around it: That it was invented in England, where it is a source of national culinary pride on par with, well, Spotted Dick and Chicken Tikka Masala.
The dish did get to the UK, but it was the creation of immigrants rather like the current British ‘national dish’, Chicken Tikka Masala. (The Brits can treat Spotted Dick as their own creation; nobody else wants it.)
It travelled to Britain at the end of a long journey that began in North Africa. The earliest recorded recipe for battered fish appears in the 13th century cookbook, Manuscrito Anonimo, which was written by the Moors. In popular history, the term Moor is used as shorthand for ‘Muslims who overran Europe in the Middle Ages’. In fact the term has a more specific origin: It comes from the Latin Mauri, meaning the residents of ancient Mauritania, a region that included today’s Morocco and Algeria. So yes, they were Muslims, but from North Africa, not Arab West Asia. The Moors brought civilisation to Europe and taught Europeans mathematics and astronomy, which they had learned from India.
They also transformed the food of the region, introducing new ingredients (many from India) and techniques. They taught Europeans to use ‘flour or breadcrumbs with egg, pepper, coriander, cinnamon and spikenard’ for a batter. This encased the fresh fish, which was fried in hot oil. It was served with a vinegar sauce. The Moors taught the Portuguese how to make the dish and the Portuguese took it to Spain. Christians enjoyed it during Lent, when meat was banned, and Jews soon began to treat it as their own.
When the Spanish threw out the Jews, some Sephardic Jews sought refuge in England. They began selling fried fish as a snack, and because the original vinegar sauce was too complicated to make, the Brits served it with plain malt vinegar, a practice that persists to this day.
But who else did the Spanish and the Portuguese teach it to? Western historians say they took it to Japan. Because Portuguese Christians treated fried fish as part of their Lent diet, it was one of the Quattor Tempura celebrated four times a year. That’s probably the origin of the name tempura. The Japanese then exported their tempura around the world. In 1920 Japanese fishermen were brought to the Mexican town of Ensenada, where they taught the locals how to batter fry fish and helped create the fish taco.
Did India have a role in this story?
Well, it’s controversial, but there are at least two places where India fits in. The recipes in the Manuscrito Anonimo take their inspiration from various international cuisines that the Moors came across, and given that their fried fish recipe depends on spices from India, it is not hard to see some Indian influences. But historians can be West-focused and Indian math (including the invention of the Zero) is credited to Arabs and Moors, who brought it to the West. Even so-called Arab numerals are actually Indian numerals.
Is this true of Indian influences on food too? Almost certainly. But without historical research, we cannot be more specific.
There is another controversial claim advanced by some Indian food historians. We know that the Portuguese took a version of tempura to Japan. But which version was it? Portuguese fried fish does not look very much like Japanese tempura, and in any case, fish is not a major constituent of tempura, with the exception of prawns. In fact, any well travelled person who looks at tempura will be drawn to an obvious conclusion: These are Japanese pakoras.
But how could pakoras have reached Japan? That’s easy. The Portuguese ships to Japan sailed from India and used Indian kitchen staff. So could it have been Indian cooks who taught the Japanese to make pakoras? The name may have come from the Portuguese, but the dish was Indian.
India has its own fried fish tradition, but it’s hard to say how much of it is indigenous. The famous fried fish of Amritsar is probably a relatively recent invention, though it has inspired many other dishes including Sion Koliwada Fish in Mumbai.
The more important question relates to south Indian and coastal food, where batter fried fish dishes do appear. According to Shri Bala, the food historian and chef, there are no real batter-fried fish dishes in Tamil Sangam literature. But in Karwar and other coastal regions, frying in rawa (semolina) is common. Did these dishes grow out of interactions with foreigners or were they their own?
Without adequate research into textual sources this is hard to establish. On the other hand, if we did know how to make pakoras, why would residents of coastal areas not have extended that technique to fish?
So, fried fish is not just a ubiquitous menu staple. It is a universally loved dish, whose journey takes in continents and cultures and reflects the history of the world.
From HT Brunch, November 29, 2025
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