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Although the book is as much about the influence of other cuisines on Indian food, and vice versa, as it is about Indian food itself, it quickly becomes apparent that "Indian food" has been mutable for much of recorded history. Thus we learn of the Portuguese, then dominant in the rich spice trade, introducing to India the Scotch bonnets discovered by the Italian Columbus in the Caribbean while he was looking for a new passage to India. The Portuguese method of cooking meat in vinegar was also adopted by Goan cooks and thus were dishes like vindaloo born.

The Persian influence on Indian food, following the invasion of the north, was huge and led to the Mughlai cuisine still in evidence today. The green and red grains that decorate your pulao today are the hangover from a time when emperors, in a bid to impress, would serve whole plates of red rice, or rice washed in salt water to make it sparkle like diamonds, or create mock biriyanis from sugar in a foreshadowing of the tricks employed by the gastro scientists of the 21st century.

We learn of the horrors inflicted upon Indian food by the British (who don't come out of this story looking particularly good), who reduced a hugely varied food culture, unrecognisable from one region of the subcontinent to another, to a standard curry dish prepared by making a roux of curry powder (an alien concept to native cooks) and flour, then cooking meat in it before adding "swollen sultanas", apples, gherkins etc. We learn that the British invention kedgeree evolved from the staple khichari, a simple rice and lentil dish, and that curry, or the British idea of curry, underwent changing fortunes as it was deemed first an exotic indicator of class, then an interference to the spread of proper Britishness throughout the uncivilised colonies. And we learn how the vast majority of British Indian restaurants today are run by people from one district of Bangladesh, Sylhet, who left their homeland en masse, found work as sailors and later jumped ship in places like Southampton.

If you're looking for a comprehensive regional guide to the intricacies of Indian food, this isn't quite it. But it is a fascinating, sympathetic history of its development and spread which should be enjoyed by anyone with a deeper interest in Indian food than "How spicy can you make my phaal?" The book also contains many recipes, both modern and old, from authentic Mughal kormas to 1800's British "Madras" curries, which might make for some absorbing culinary experimentation for those so inclined.