The history of Bengali dolma: A delicious journey of many miles

There's a story inside one of the most loved Bengali delicacies; Patol Dolma or Patoler Dolma (scooped and stuffed pointed gourd with a lightly spiced filling).

Made with loving energy from start to finish over an elaborate process, the pointed gourd dolma is very much a part of celebratory feasts in India's eastern state of West Bengal, as well as neighbouring Bangladesh.

Borrowing its name from the Turkish verb dolmak and noun dolma referring to an expansive range of stuffed recipes, the vegetable, or even fruit, that can be hollowed-out and packed with small fillings of meat, (minced or small pieces), onion, spiced rice, peas, spices, pistachios, walnuts and more.

Popular vegetables like ash gourd, eggplants, peppers, tomatoes, onions are often used, but so are fruits like melons, apples and cucumbers.

Unlike dolma from Ottoman cuisine, the Bengali dolma refers usually to a dish of stuffed pointed gourd and occasionally to stuffed eggplants, crabs, and cabbage leaves.

Food for the gods

An 18th-century sacred text about the Hindu deity Annada or Annapurna (the goddess of food and nutrition) first mentions dolma in the Bangla language, highlighting its early entry into Bengali cuisine.

"The mid-eighteenth century epic in narrative verse, Annada Mangal (in praise of the Goddess Annada), mentioned the cooking of qaliya, dolma, kebabs suchlike in Hindu households," writes scholar and historian Jayanta Sengupta in his essay Islam on the Table in Bengal in the anthology Forgotten Foods, Memories and Recipes from Muslim South Asia (Pan MacMillan, 2023).

The text Sengupta cited was written in 1752, during the rule of Nawab Nazim of Bengal - Alivardi Khan. Khan's ancestry connected him with the Afshar tribe of Iranian Turkic descent.

The next prominent mention of dolma popped up more than 100 years later in a Bengali culinary magazine named Pak Pranali (1883-84), authored by cookery writer Bipradas Mukhopadhyay.

Referenced as Patoler Batka, the detailed recipe included ingredients for stuffing that surprisingly didn't include minced meat or even a mix of shrimp and grated coconut, which are popular stuffings today, but instead peeled, chopped and roasted banana flower (mocha in Bangla).

Relevantly Mukhopadhyay is also the author of the first cookbook published in India. His readership included educated Hindu women keen to try new recipes.

Origin debate

By the mid-20th century, dolma recipes were included in most Bengali cookbooks, but the history and origin weren't discussed much, until recently. The current discourse has tagged dolma as an Armenian food influence, stringing its inroad into Bengali cuisine via Armenian settlers of Bengal.

But in food studies there are no straight answers, and the questions are always manifold; dolma in Bengal's context is no exception.

How did dolma, a delicious dish from Ottoman cuisine, land in Bengal? Did the Armenians bring it with them or was it Alivardi Khan's royal kitchen, known for its exquisite food?

One is reminded of Turkish scholar and historian Tülay Artan's remark, "As an item of consumption, food proves exceptionally complex." Artan is right, foodways are indeed complex.

Down the rabbit hole

Dolma is not limited to the gastronomy of present-day Turkiye, but includes many forms of stuffed dishes, with the inner filling being infused by local traditions from all over the Ottoman Empire, which lasted more than 600 years.

At its peak, the Ottoman Empire held its control over a vast territory from Southeast Europe, Central Europe, Western Asia Caucasus, East Europe and North Africa.

Variations some of which are inspired by the Ottoman legacy include the traditional stuffed vine leaves warak anab and cabbage rolls malfouf mahshi of the Levant.

Then there's sautéed seafood-filled bell peppers and even stuffed mussels found in Mediterranean coastal areas. In North Africa, Algerians prepare a meal of potatoes stuffed with roasted pieces of meat, also known as dolma.

"Ottoman cuisine reflects a format derived from aspects of the cultures belonging to this vast geography, yet shaped according to the Turkish subjects' cultural richness and habits," states academic and writer Arif Bigin.

With the migration of Turkic people in and out of the territories of the Ottoman Empire, it's hard to ascertain at which point dolma emerged in Turkish cuisine. One common thought is that in its modern form, dolma appeared on the Ottoman culinary scene after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.

Another is that the technique of stuffing was known to earlier cultures like the Greeks.

Ottoman rule credits itself for spreading dolma far through interlinking kitchen cultures, adding a robust range of vegetables and fruits to its making. So, one has a Patoler Dolma in South Asia’s Bengal and a kåldolmar, or cabbage rolls as far as Sweden.

Fascinatingly, Swedes celebrate kåldolmar day on November 30 each year on the death anniversary of Charles XII, a man credited for introducing the cabbage rolls to Sweden.

Some also say dolma joined the food palette of the Turks during the rule of the 15th-century Emperor Sultan Mehmed II, the ruler responsible for the rise of the Ottoman Empire. In the next hundred years, the Ottoman Empire was at the height of expanding territories. Consequently, human movement was continuous and so were food cultures.

During these migrations, some Turkmen settled in Azerbaijan, and a sizable section of Armenians in Persia. What is interconnected and significant is modern-day Azerbaijan and Armenian both have been recognised for their dolma traditions with Azerbaijani dolma making, denoted as one of its greatest intangible heritages by UNESCO.

Jewellery, silk and dolma

But then how did Bengal get its dolma?

In the late 16th century, Armenian merchants were invited by Mughal emperor Akbar to settle in the capital city of Agra. The imperial decree even exempted them from paying taxes as they traded in jewellery, precious stones, cotton, silk and saltpetre.

In the next decades Armenians thrived, having settled all over Mughal India in Surat, Bombay, Bengal (Murshidabad, Chandan Nagore, Hughli, Dhaka), Madras and Lahore.

By far the most happening settlement of the Armenian merchants was in Bengal, notes Sushil Chowdhury in his book on Armenians.

"Among the Armenians in Bengal, however, it was Khoja Wajid who played the most significant role in the commercial economy and political life of Bengal in the mid-18th century.

Wajid was one of the three merchant princes - the others being Jagat Seth and Umichand - who collectively dominated commercial life and hence, to a great extent, the economy of Bengal in the last three decades of the first half of the 18th century," Sushil Chowdhury added.

The three princes were integral to Nawab Alivardi Khan’s reign (1740 –1751), as his court in Bengal served as a cultural exchange of sorts, writes Tilottama Mukherjee in her essay, "The Coordinating State and the Economy: The Nizamat in Eighteenth-Century Bengal."

According to both Mukherjee and contemporary historian Syed Gholam Hussain Khan, Alivardi Khan was a connosseuir of fine things and loved many aspects of Turkish culture (perhaps owing to his ancestral connection with the Afsar clan).

He strictly drank Turkish coffee and hired his gourmet chefs from all over the Muslim world including Turkiye, Persia and Baghdad.

It's possible that dolma was first cooked by the Turkish chefs in the royal kitchen of Alivardi Khan or the culinary delicacy could have emerged from the kitchens of Armenian settlers from nearby Saidabad, particularly from the cooking space of a wealthy businessman like Khoja Wajid.

Notably, there were also Hindu mansabdars (civil and military officials) at the Murshidabad court working as scribes and accountants. Dolma was likely cherished by them too, as it was mentioned in the "Annada Mangal" literary epic of the times.

The eulogy literature was penned by a bard called Bharatchandra Raigunakar, court poet of Maharaja Krishna Chandra Ray, a powerful princely ruler under Bengal Nizamat. The text not only cited dolma, but also kebabs, and qaliya, a spiced mutton dish.

The takeaways in food discourse are never simplistic, but it's seemingly clear that it wasn't only the Armenians who can be singularly credited for introducing dolma to Bengali cuisine.

It may have been an outcome of Khan’s fondness for Turkish food or a palace chef's experimentation to recreate the cherished dolmades of Ottoman cuisine, an attempt to please the food aficionado ruler of Bengal with one of the readily available vegetables that can be hollowed out smoothly.