Oeufs à la diable de Bengale (ডিমের ডেভিল): A tale of mixing cultures

It has been more than two and a half years since I wrote something on this blog. I would blame that on being busy on the professional front, arrival of a new member in the family, and my sheer talent at being lazy.

This piece would be about an observation about how cuisines interact, sometimes far far way from their homelands. But the definition of homeland changes. Just like humans migrated and still migrate all over the world, cuisine and language have flown all over the world. A deeper dive into something as commonplace and trivial as deviled eggs revives one's conviction that the world is indeed one place, and we all humans are indeed part of one family. Cuisines and languages carry memories of history and human interactions.

The goal is not to establish any historical facts or postulates. Instead, we make simple anecdotal  observations, take note of observations made by researchers, and stand and bask in the glory and awe of  global cultural fabric that those observations hint at.

Our journey starts with taking a careful look at an everyday snack in Bengal, especially Calcutta. It is called ডিমের ডেভিল, loosely translated as deviled eggs.

It is a hard boiled chicken/duck egg, halved and the complimented with a meat (usually mutton), breadcrumbs, and spiced potato mixture and brought back into an whole egg shape, breaded, and deep fried. Here is a picture that would describe the anatomy of a ডিমের ডেভিল, or "Oeufs à la diable de Bengale" as one would call it in French just to sound pretentious.

The picture above is taken from the blog of Jayeeta Basu.
(https://jayeetacha.wordpress.com/2014/03/20/egg-devil-or-dimer-chop/)

Now, one cannot help but notice the similarity of the Bengali nomenclature with that of a class of egg dishes called "deviled eggs".

Deviled eggs generally refers to a class of stuffed egg dishes. Most generic description of its anatomy would be: Hard boiled eggs, halved, yolks removed, mixed with spices, stuffed back into the the hollowed egg white half shells. Here is an example of a typical deviled eggs.

Deviled eggs. Chef: Your's truly

The history of stuffed eggs goes back at least as early as first century Rome. Satyricon written by Petronius in first century A.D. has references to stuffed peahen eggs featuring in a menu. By the middle of previous millennium stuffed eggs had spread almost all over Europe. 

In late eighteenth century, the mention of devil appears for the first time in the culinary context. The word devil was alluding to the heat of spices involved and the serving temperature. The allusion is obviously motivated by the heat of hell which is often associated with devil. 

Within the next few decades, the word devil becomes verb and the word deviling starts to mean the process of heavily spicing something up.

If we now compare that with the Bengal version of the deviled eggs, the similarity ends at halving a boiled egg and the spicy part of it. The breading and frying part is not common to most deviled eggs that we see in continental Europe today.

Now, we look at another popular dish called Scotch egg to join rest of the dots. About five decades before the word devil was being introduced in the culinary context, London supermarket Fortnum and Mason starts selling Scotch eggs.

Anatomically, a Scotch egg is a soft boiled egg wrapped in spicy sausage, breaded and deep fried. When done eight, the yolk still remains soft and creamy. Here is a depiction of the anatomy of a Scotch egg.

Chef: Heston Blumenthal
(http://www.sbs.com.au/food/recipes/heston-blumenthals-scotch-eggs)

Now that we have observed some possible influences and origins of Oeufs à la diable de Bengale, let us take a few steps back in history. One cannot help but observe that the Scotch egg bears an striking resemblance with Nargisi kebab/kofta, which is essentially a kebab that is constituted with minced meat wrapped around a boiled egg. Nargisi kofta has much older history than that of a Scotch egg.

Chef: Varun Inamdar
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY3HlJs_e0I)

Now we come to the nomenclature of nargisi kofta. A properly cooked nargisi kofta, when cut open, should look like the petals of daffodil: white petals with a yellow center. Daffodil is also known as the Narcissus (Nargis is Arabic) flower, named after the Greek mythological character. 

Source: https://www.theflowerexpert.com/content/mostpopularflowers/morepopularflowers/daffodil