🥔 The Great Vegetable Swap: How the Potato Quietly Replaced Raw Banana in Indian Cuisine

 

A forgotten culinary revolution from the 19th century

There are many famous turning points in Indian food history—the arrival of chillies from the Americas, tomatoes from South America, or the Mughal import of spices from the Silk Road.
But one of the most important (and least discussed) transformations is this:

In large parts of Eastern and Northern India, the humble potato quietly replaced raw banana (plantain) as the default “starchy” vegetable between 1800 and 1900.

It did not happen overnight.
It wasn’t planned.
Nobody fought a war about it.
And yet it permanently reshaped everyday Indian food—from koftas to kadhi, biryani to bhog khichuri, and even the masala tucked into a dosa.

This is the fascinating, little-known story of that change.

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🍌 Before the Potato: India’s Ancient Love Affair with Banana

To understand the shift, step back into an Indian kitchen around 1600 CE—before potatoes, before chillies, before tomatoes, before cauliflower.

In eastern and southern India, raw banana (kachakola, vazhakkai, aratikaya) was the backbone of the meal. It was:

• mild and starchy

• available year-round

• used in satvik and temple cuisine

• easy to grow

• versatile: fries, koftas, dry sabzi, rich gravies

Bengali and Odia cuisine in particular used raw banana in:

• kanchkolar kofta (precursor to aloo kofta)

• kachkolar ghonto (now often made as aloo ghonto)

• banana curry in posto (now overshadowed by aloo posto)

• mixed sabzis (ghonto, chorchori)

• temple-style dishes without root vegetables

South India tells a similar story—banana was a sacred plant, and the raw fruit formed:

• poriyals

• kootu

• mezhukkupuratti

• avial variants

• stir-fries

• chips

In short:

Raw banana was the original "neutral-tasting starchy base" that potato would later dominate.

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🚢 The Arrival of the Potato: A Foreign Stranger in Indian Kitchens

Potatoes arrived via Portuguese traders around 1610–1620, landing first in:

• Goa

• Daman

• Diu

• Surat

• The Malabar Coast

The Portuguese called it batata, a word still used in Maharashtra and Goa.

But early adoption was slow.
For nearly 150 years, potatoes lived as a curiosity, grown in gardens of Goa and eaten mainly by Portuguese settlers.

The true explosion of potato began under the British East India Company.

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📈 The British Push: Potato Becomes a Colonial Crop (1780–1850)

The turning point was 1777, when the British started potato trials in the hills near Calcutta.

By the early 1800s, the Company was aggressively promoting potato farming, especially in:

• Bengal

• Northwestern Provinces (modern UP)

• Bihar

• Punjab

• Kashmir & Himachal

• Nilgiri hills

Why?
Because potatoes were:

• high-yield

• dependable in poor soils

• easy to store

• cheap

• a familiar food for English administrators

• good famine relief crops

By 1820–1840, government bulletins and gazetteers from Bengal began recording:

“The potato is found most suitable to native cultivation and economical for the markets of Calcutta.”

By 1850, the potato was everywhere in the plains of Bengal and the bazaars of Benaras, Patna, and Lucknow.

And change was brewing in the kitchen.

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🔄 The Switch: How Potato Replaced Raw Banana

This change did not happen uniformly.
It followed regional patterns.

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🌾 1. Bengal & Odisha: The Most Dramatic Replacement

Here, raw banana was not just common—it was important.

And yet, between 1850 and 1900, potato made deep inroads. Why?

Reason 1: Potato became extremely cheap

Calcutta’s markets in the 1890s show:

• potato was cheaper than plantain

• it stored better

• vendors stocked it year-round

Reason 2: It cooked faster

Raw banana requires extensive prep: peeling, trimming, slicing. Potato was a dream for cooks used to long days.

Reason 3: It absorbed masala beautifully

Plantain has a strong identity. Potato is neutral and cooperative.

Reason 4: Colonial cookbooks pushed potato into Bengali homes

Bengal’s earliest printed cookbooks (mid–late 1800s):

📗 Pak-Pranali (1830s, manuscript tradition)

Mentions mostly raw banana, yam, pumpkin, greens.

📘 Byanjan Ratnakar (1870)

Potato appears as an alternative to banana in several recipes.

📙 Brahmo household cookbooks (1890s)

Potato becomes a staple.

📗 Pragyasundari Devi’s Aamish O Niramish Rannabanna (1902)

A pivotal moment:
potato appears in dozens of dishes that earlier used banana.

This textual trail shows a clear substitution trajectory.

Examples of substitutions

Earlier dish	Modern form
Kanchkolar kofta	Aloo kofta
Raw banana posto	Aloo posto
Kachkolar ghonto	Aloo ghonto
Plantain curry with poppy seeds	Aloo-phulkopi or aloo-patal
Plantain peel stir-fry	Aloo-potol chorchori

Plantain didn’t disappear, but its daily frequency collapsed.

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🍛 2. North India: Potato Replaces Arbi/Yam, Not Banana

Raw banana was never a major vegetable in:

• UP

• Punjab

• Haryana

• Rajasthan

• Kashmir

Here, potato slipped into the role previously played by arbi (colocasia) and yam.

Notable changes:

• early 19th-century Banaras cookbooks barely mention potato

• by 1900, aloo-tamatar, aloo-methi, aloo-jeera had become daily dishes

• Mughal kitchens adopted potato into biryanis and kormas surprisingly early (mid–1800s)

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🍃 3. South India: Banana Holds Strong, Potato Coexists

South India loves plantain too deeply to replace it.

But potato still carved roles:

• masala dosa (late 19th century invention—earlier versions used plantain, yam, or local tubers)

• aloo roast in Tamil/Nadu households

• aloo masala in Karnataka/Andhra marriages

• inclusion in avial in some urban kitchens

Yet plantain remained culturally “older,” especially in temple and satvik cooking.

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📝 Historical Cookbooks & Sources Supporting the Story

Here are the key kinds of sources (paraphrased as per copyright rules):

1. British agricultural reports (1800–1900)

Describe potato expansion in Bengal, UP, and hill stations.
They document yield trials, market reports, and farmer adoption.

2. Bengali cookbooks (1850–1930)

You can trace the rising number of potato recipes with each decade.

3. Travelogues

European travelers in Calcutta and Madras note the sudden popularity of potatoes in Indian bazaars.

4. Market price reports

Colonial gazetteers often list food prices.
Potato steadily becomes cheaper than raw banana by the 1880s.

5. Oral history / food memory literature

Food historians like Chitrita Banerji and K.T. Achaya mention this shift clearly.

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🧭 Why Didn’t Banana Survive as the Default Vegetable?

Because potato was:

• easier

• cheaper

• faster

• more neutral

• better with spices

• better for urban cooking

• available year-round

Urbanization—especially in Calcutta, Bombay, Madras—favored potato.

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🥔 A Culinary Revolution Without a Hero

There is no single chef, recipe, or moment responsible.

It was:

• the colonial state (introducing the crop)

• the bazaar economy (making it cheap)

• urban lifestyles (demanding convenience)

• cooking logic itself (potato works with EVERYTHING)

In the end, potato didn’t conquer Indian cuisine by force.
It slipped in gently, took on every role offered, and quietly replaced ingredients that had held those positions for centuries.

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🎯 Conclusion: A Silent But Profound Shift

Today, it’s almost impossible to imagine Indian food without potato:

• samosa filling

• dosa masala

• pav bhaji

• aloo jeera

• aloo posto

• aloo paratha

• biryani with aloo

• bhog khichuri with aloo

But go back just 200 years, and these dishes either didn’t exist or looked completely different—built around banana, yam, or colocasia.

Potato rewrote Indian everyday cooking more dramatically than almost any other imported crop.

And yet it did so silently, without the fanfare granted to chilli or tomato.