In today's episode of Engines of our ingenuity Prof. John Lienhard traces the history of Doughnut. While capturing its history, he mentions our Vadai as one of the fore runners of the modern day doughnut. It had never occured to me why there is a hole in the middle of vadai or for that matter in doughnut, but today I got a reasonable answer when he explained the origin of doughnut.
A problem with those otherwise delicious cakes was that their centers were seldom fully cooked. In 1847, Gregory punched out the center of a cake. Now all the dough lay near the cooked surface, and he got a far more uniformly cooked doughnut.That makes lot of sense. There is also mention of poori in the episode. You can hear it here .
Friday, January 06, 2006
Vadai and Doughnut
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3 comments:
Have you tried Ethiopian cuisine? Many dishes on the menu revolve around the Injera (sp?) bread. The only thing that differentiates this from our dosai is the color. Everything else - taste, smell, texture is exactly the same. Apparently the color is due to either the ulluttam paruppu or rice having a higher iron content.
-- G
Dear G,
I haven't tried Ethiopian Cusine? I don't eat anything other than vegetarian indian food, save for bagels, bread, doughnuts and maggi.
With Regards
Narasimhan
There are some theories that migration of peoples followed the coastline of the Arabian Sea, from Africa towards Australia via India and in that sense origins of food and customs makes for interesting study and comparison. There was also a related study thru genealogy that talked about how the various peoples of the world are related. I never got a chance to dig in more deeply...
This post is to clarify the context for my original post to mitigate possible incredulity. :)
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