Tari, a common Indian set meal, generally includes many kinds of sauces.

India is located in South Asia with a hot climate. In high temperature climate, food goes bad easily. In order to prevent deterioration, it is necessary to preserve food (kimchi) by pickling, or add a lot of spices in the cooking process (because spices often have antiseptic and bactericidal effects). On the other hand, high temperature reduces people's appetite, so it is necessary to use spices to enhance the flavor of food, or to enhance people's appetite through frying (people who have seen the video of Indian hawkers should be impressed by Indian frying).

Studies have shown that as early as 4,600 years ago, during the civilization of the Indian Valley, Indian ancestors began to add a lot of spices to their diet. In this natural environment, cooking food, making it into paste and adding a lot of spices can fully release the aroma of spices, kill bacteria, delay deterioration, improve the flavor of food and make it more suitable for eating. This is a very natural choice.

Injera in Ethiopia is a porous fermented pie, which is also eaten with sauce.

On the other hand, India's agriculture is underdeveloped, and people's diet is mainly bread, rice and other staple foods. These staple foods are tasteless, but the thick sauce can add a lot of color to the staple foods and make them serve. In fact, in ancient times when agriculture was underdeveloped, and in most countries where food was eaten by hand at present, paste (or sauce) was one of the most common foods, such as Ingella in Ethiopia, just like Tali in India. Limited solid paste can save food and feed more people.

Many European soups, such as the Salmorejo soup in the picture above, are very thick, and some of them are close to Indian paste in appearance.

Before the popularization of tableware and other tableware, and before the development of agricultural technology and living standards, the daily diet of ordinary people in Europe was often mushy porridge, soup and stew. Thick soup or stew similar to the above picture, plus porridge or bread (in fact, ancient bread is not common because the production process is relatively complicated, and porridge is a common civilian food), which is a meal for ordinary people.

Indian long-grain rice and biscuits, served with dal made of beans.

In addition, India is a country with a strong religious atmosphere. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, born in India, all emphasize not killing, so most Indians live on vegetarianism. It is not easy to make vegetarian food delicious (and not easy to go bad). The usual practice is to add a lot of spices to make a paste. Indians who lack meat need to supplement protein with chickpeas and other beans. Paste beans cooked with various seasonings can stimulate appetite and supplement protein. Therefore, this kind of bean paste called Dahl has become a very important Indian food.

Indian woman eats her hand.

Finally, in Indian food culture, people think that eating is a sensory activity and touch is an important part of experience. Charak Sanhita, the founder of Ayurveda, a traditional Indian medicine, believes that the process of eating needs to mobilize people's five senses, including listening, smelling, seeing, touching and tasting. You can feel the temperature and taste of food more directly through your own hands. So Indians are used to eating with their hands, and paste-like sauce is very suitable for dipping in pies or rice. If eating by hand was a last resort in ancient times, it can only be said that it is a cultural reason that people are still used to eating by hand in the 2 1 century.

Native American Yulok spoon

Interestingly, China is not only the birthplace of chopsticks, but also the earliest fork was born in China. Spoons were born at the end of the Neolithic Age, so it is really interesting that ancient India, with its splendid civilization, did not have the tradition of using tableware to assist eating.

However, not all Indian dishes are mushy. For example, samosa, a curry jiaozi, all kinds of pit-roasted meat, kimchi (yes, there are kimchi in India), Indian fragrant rice, all kinds of cakes in the staple food, and all kinds of fried snacks are not sloppy at all.

Shouldn't the obvious characteristics of Indian food be all kinds of spices? At least in the eyes of Indians themselves, India is one of the countries with the strongest dietary diversity in the world, because there are thousands of ways to mix hundreds of seasonings.