Photo: Baghdadi Jewish Cemetery, Surat. Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Sweet and sour chicken in onion sauce is one of the most beloved dishes in the Baghdadi Jewish culinary repertoire, and its presence in the kitchens of Calcutta and Bombay speaks directly to the hybrid nature of this community’s cooking. The dish has clear roots in the sweet-sour preparations common across Middle Eastern Jewish cooking, where tamarind, dried lemon, or vinegar provide acidity balanced against sugar or dates, but in India the dish took on local character that made it unmistakably a product of the subcontinent.
The recipe begins with chicken pieces, either a whole cut-up bird or specific parts depending on family preference, browned in oil until golden. The onions are the heart of the dish: a large quantity of onions, sliced thin, are cooked down slowly until they become deeply caramelized and sweet, forming the base of the sauce. To this sweetness, souring agents are added. In the Iraqi Jewish original, this would typically be tamarind paste or dried lemon juice; in Calcutta, both tamarind and sometimes tomato were used, and Indian spices like cumin, coriander, and turmeric found their way into the sauce.
The resulting dish is a deep amber color, with a sauce that clings to the chicken and balances sweet, sour, and savory in proportions that vary by family. Some households make it quite tart; others lean toward sweetness. Some add raisins for additional sweetness and a textural contrast. A handful of families in Calcutta were known to add a small amount of jaggery, the unrefined Indian cane sugar, instead of white sugar, which gives the sauce a slightly molasses-tinged depth that is distinctly Indian.
The dish is traditionally served for Shabbat and festivals. It reheats beautifully and was often made on Friday and served over the course of the weekend, with the sauce deepening in flavor as it sat. Paired with plain basmati rice, it makes a complete and deeply satisfying meal.
Today, Baghdadi Jewish families in Israel, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere continue to make sweet and sour chicken in onion sauce, often from handwritten recipes passed down from grandmothers who grew up in Calcutta. It appears in community cookbooks and at cultural gatherings as one of the dishes most representative of what Baghdadi Jewish cooking means: the meeting of Middle Eastern Jewish tradition with the flavors and ingredients of India.
Source: Sweet and Sour Chicken in Onion Sauce: A Recipe from the Baghdadi Jews of India
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Chicken in the Indian Jewish Kitchen
Chicken has long held a central place in Indian Jewish cooking. In the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta and Bombay, chicken dishes became the cornerstone of Shabbat and holiday meals. The influence of regional Indian cooking is unmistakable — whole spices like cardamom, cloves, and cinnamon are toasted before being added to the pot, fresh ginger and garlic are ground into pastes, and coconut milk or tamarind may be introduced for depth and brightness. These are genuinely Indian dishes refined within Jewish households over centuries of culinary tradition.
What distinguishes Baghdadi Jewish chicken preparations is the careful attention to both flavor and kashrut. Kosher slaughter requirements were maintained throughout, and the spicing of the dish follows local Indian traditions rather than any pan-Jewish template. The result is food that is deeply embedded in a specific place and community — food that could only have emerged from centuries of Jewish life on the Indian subcontinent.
Preserving the Recipe, Preserving the Culture
The documentation of Indian Jewish recipes has become an urgent priority as the communities that created them continue to shrink. In 1948, before the establishment of the State of Israel, there were an estimated 30,000 Jews living in India. Today, fewer than 5,000 remain, most of them elderly. The younger generations have largely emigrated to Israel, where they maintain some connection to their Indian heritage while integrating into Israeli society.
Cookbooks, food blogs, and community archives have played a crucial role in preserving these recipes. Works like “Bene Appetit: The Cuisine of Indian Jews” and various community-produced recipe collections represent efforts by Indian Jewish families to document their culinary traditions before they are lost. Food writers and ethnographers have also contributed by interviewing elderly community members and recording not just the recipes but the stories and memories surrounding them.
For the Indian Jewish diaspora, cooking these dishes is an act of cultural maintenance — a way of honoring ancestors and transmitting identity to children who may have grown up in Tel Aviv, New York, or London, far from Mumbai, Cochin, or Kolkata where their grandparents lived. The food becomes a bridge between generations and across geographies, carrying the taste of a world that is gradually disappearing but whose flavors refuse to be forgotten.