Photo: Magen David Synagogue entrance, Calcutta. Wikimedia Commons
The Baghdadi Jewish community that settled in India beginning in the late 18th century brought with them the culinary traditions of Iraq, Syria, and Iran, but the food they made in Calcutta and Bombay was something different from what their grandparents had cooked in Baghdad. Over generations of living in India, Baghdadi Jewish cooking absorbed local ingredients, spices, and techniques, producing dishes that have no direct equivalent either in Middle Eastern Jewish cooking or in mainstream Indian cuisine. These hybrid dishes are among the most interesting artifacts of the community’s long presence in India.
One of the most characteristic Baghdadi-Indian Jewish dishes is alloo makalla, a preparation of whole potatoes fried until they form a crispy crust and then simmered in a tangy, spiced sauce. The dish has roots in Iraqi Jewish cooking, where potatoes were prepared in a similar fashion, but in India the sauce evolved to include tamarind, a souring agent native to the subcontinent, along with Indian spices like cumin seeds, mustard seeds, and curry leaves that would never have appeared in the Baghdad original. The result is a dish that tastes unmistakably like neither Iraqi nor Indian food alone.
Another quintessentially Baghdadi-Indian creation is the community’s version of rice with lentils, known in Arabic as mujaddara. The basic combination of rice, lentils, and caramelized onions is the same as in the Middle Eastern original, but the Calcutta version often includes whole spices fried in oil at the start — mustard seeds, dried red chilies, curry leaves — that are entirely South Asian in character. The dish is comfort food for Baghdadi Jewish families everywhere, and the Indian inflection is strong enough that families who grew up in Calcutta immediately recognize it as distinct from the versions their relatives in Israel or London might make.
The creation of these dishes reflects the broader story of the Baghdadi Jewish community in India: a community that maintained its distinct Jewish identity and cultural memory while becoming genuinely and deeply Indian over the course of several generations. The food they made is one of the clearest expressions of that dual identity, and it deserves to be better known beyond the community itself.
Source: The Baghdadi Jewish Dish that was Created in Mumbai and Kolkata
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A Living Culinary Heritage
Food has served as one of the most durable carriers of Indian Jewish identity across centuries of diaspora and migration. As communities moved from India to Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, they carried their recipes with them — adjusting for ingredient availability but preserving the essential character of dishes refined over generations.
In the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta and Bombay, the act of cooking traditional dishes is understood as a form of cultural continuity. It connects the present generation to grandmothers who stood at similar stoves, worked with similar spices, and fed families who observed the same Shabbat and celebrated the same holidays. The kitchen becomes a space of memory and identity, where the full complexity of Indian Jewish experience can be tasted in a single dish.
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.