Birthday brinjal 🍆

On the vegetable's etymological gymnastics + a favourite recipe

Illustration of an eggplant/aubergine/brinjal from the Japanese agricultural encyclopedia Seikei Zusetzu, licensed under CC BY 4.0

I had a specific craving for my birthday lunch a few years back: varan bhat (tuvar dal and rice) spiced with asafoetida, cumin, and lemon; nellikkai pachadi (gooseberry ground with coconut and curd) tempered with mustard in coconut oil; podi kathrikkai (brinjal stuffed with powdered lentils and spices); and roast seppankizhangu (fried taro root).

I’m partial to taro over potato, especially when it’s boiled/steamed beforehand, left to cool, mixed with red chilli, turmeric, besan, salt, sambar powder, and rice flour, and then deep-fried. The Sindhi arbi tuk, where the taro is twice-fried and smothered in spices, is more addictive than double-cooked chips. Few vegetables like the taro stand up well to many forms of cooking.

Brinjal is equally (if not more) versatile, finding itself in recipes that call for frying, roasting, mashing, sauteing, baking, steaming, pureeing, and mixing in with other vegetables. It has a particular affinity with the tomato — whether that’s baingan bharta, moussaka, zaalouk, caponata, or the ratatouille niçoise — which isn’t surprising, given that they belong to the same Solanaceae family that also includes potatoes, chillies, and bell peppers, all of which go hand in hand with brinjal. 

Little is known about how Solanum melongena evolved, the species that is grown worldwide for consumption. While the domestication and lineage of the brinjal is still a puzzle, what remains important is that it’s one of the most economically important solanaceous crops worldwide. 

Why the name eggplant came about isn’t a mystery — white ovalish cultivars of the plant resembled hen’s eggs and therefore the name stuck. But aubergine and brinjal, along with bizarre names such as mad apple and brown jolly, have a much more serpentine history to them, connecting with themselves and other languages along the way, and sharing a common ancestor.

Brinjal derives from the Portuguese beringela, which eventually gave rise to many versions around the world because of their colonial expansion. When it reached the Caribbean, it transformed into brinjalle, and ultimately became brown jolly thanks to English speakers¹. Beringela itself entered the Portuguese dictionary because of the Arab conquest of Iberia. Arab conquests in the 7th century brought about significant movement and exchange between the Iranian plateau and the Mediterranean. The ensuing occupation linked the Iranian plateau from Transoxania² to the western Islamic lands, which led to an east-west transfer of foods and crops, including citrus, sorghum, and brinjal (al-badhinjan in Arabic) from India to the western Islamic region via Iran³. In Spain, it was popular among the Sephardic Jews, who fleeing from the Spanish Inquisition “helped to popularise the eggplant, bringing it and numerous eggplant dishes to northern Italy and much of the Mediterranean.”⁴

The Arabic word for brinjal is a loan from the Persian badenjan, which in turn draws from the Sanskrit vatin-gana⁵. The Sanskrit word is probably derived from the Tamil and Malayalam words, varutunai and varutina, both belonging to the Dravidian family of languages. Today, the most common way that the brinjal is referred to in Tamil is katthari-kkai, where katthari can take on different meanings from scissors/shears and a species of snake to a period of year that is the hottest. Another word for the brinjal in Tamil, which I suspect is the closest remaining cousin to varutunai, is vazhuthalankai, which refers to the long green species.

Additionally, KT Achaya writes that the Sanskrit words vrntaka and vartaka may be of Munda origin, and that the brinjal may have “originated from a wild ancestor in India by human selection for reduced spiciness and bitterness, bigger fruit size and annual habit”. It is also wholly possible that vrntaka and vartaka might have given rise to the Tamil and Malayalam words.

Aubergine has a similar story. Although borrowed from the French but not native to Europe, it acquired its name from the Catalan alberenjena. Loan words have fascinating backstories and the brinjal/aubergine is testament to this. Most loanwords in Spanish with an ‘al-’ (sometimes ‘a’) prefix usually point to an Arabic influence. Hence almohada (from al-ma-khad-dah) meaning pillow, alcandía (from qatniyya) meaning sorghum, alcázar (from al-qasr) meaning citadel, and alberenjena (from badenjan) meaning aubergine. This brings us back to the Arab conquest of Iberia, which brings us back to the Persian loanword, to the Sanskrit, and to the Dravidian languages, coming full circle. So the English brinjal may have entered the Indian-English dictionary as a result of Portuguese colonisation. But it is also equally (or more) likely that most of the plant’s regional names (baingan and begun) are derived from Sanskrit.

Clockwise from top: taro roast, gooseberry pachadi, varan bhat on rice, and podi-stuffed brinjal

Quite understandable, then, why the Hobson-Jobson⁶ entry for brinjaul notes that “probably there is no word of the kind which has undergone such [an] extraordinary variety of modifications, whilst retaining the same meaning, as this”.

So where does that leave the other words for brinjal, like the mad apple for instance? Since it was the Arabs who spread and cultivated the brinjal in the West, the clue lies in the Arabic word. Greece took to badhinjan as a result of the early Muslim conquests, replacing the ‘b’ with ‘m’ since the language lacked the ‘b’ sound. Moreover, the cultivar that made its way into Greece became associated with the word dark, i.e. melas. The brinjal, came to be known as melitzana in Greek, was in turn borrowed in medieval Latin as melongena, and melanzana in Italian. The prefix here didn’t denote darkness, it meant apple instead. So melanzana was reinterpreted as mela insana aka insane apple or mad apple. This gave rise to the tradition that brinjals could cause insanity, which doesn’t seem as far-fetched since some members of the nightshade family are indeed highly toxic.

Pharmacological toxicity aside, brinjal’s consumption evokes such unpleasant and completely contrasting reactions, either of extreme disgust or deep reverence — there is no in between. I find it’s the texture that can put people off, because pureeing and mashing can leave it a seedy, slimy mess unless it’s mixed in with a fat of some kind like tahini or thick yoghurt. Besides, nothing lends itself better to a mash than tubers.

As whole slices and segments, the brinjal is much more fleshy and meatier. Fried in oil they are creamy and unctuous, and are great when marinated as the flesh can absorb fats, spices, and sauces and burst with a rich savoury flavour. The Bengali begun bhaja, where thick slices of spiced brinjal are deep-fried, can rival thick-cut fries. While yuxiang qiezi, the Sichuan fish-fragrant eggplants, where the seasonings of traditional fish dishes are paired with this vegetable transform it into a ‘buttery tenderness’ as Fuschia Dunlop writes⁷.

I’ve come to love brinjals⁸ late in my life, probably because of how it used to be prepared at home, thrown into sambar and stir-fries, and mushed up beyond recognition. It took cooking a moussaka at midnight with a former flatmate, soaking brinjals in buttermilk and drying them into vathals with my mother, and eating lamb and aubergine kavurma in London to consider the vegetable for a birthday lunch. And, later, to make into a tradition.

Podi-stuffed kathirikkai
5-6 small brinjals (preferably the white and purple striped ones)
1-1.5 tbsp tamarind paste + 3 tbsp water to dilute
2 tbsp oil + more (I used sesame, but any vegetable oil will do in a pinch)
1 tsp mustard seeds
5-6 curry leaves
salt to taste
1 scant teaspoon of sugar

For the powdered stuffing
2 tbsp roasted peanuts
2 tbsp white sesame
1.5-2 tbsp grated coconut (bring to room temp if frozen)
3 tbsp coriander seeds
1/4 tsp fenugreek seeds
1.5 tbsp chana dal
5-6 dried red chillies (a mix of Kashmiri and spicy round ones)
1 tsp fennel seeds
2 cloves
1 small cinnamon stick

Dry roast the sesame seeds until they splutter and set it aside. Do the same with the coconut until it’s golden brown. Add a scant teaspoon of oil to a pan and add the chana dal, red chillies, fenugreek and fennel seeds, cloves, cinnamon, and coriander at the end. Fry till fragrant and the dal turns golden brown. Once everything has cooled down, grind to a coarse powder along with the peanuts. Add in a teaspoon of salt to the powder.

Wash the brinjals and pat them dry. Slit them vertically one way, and then another just until the stalk so they aren’t four separate pieces and are still held together. Stuff the brinjals with the powder. Any leftover powder can be used for mixing with hot rice or veggie stir-fries.

In a wide pan (preferably heavy-bottomed), add oil. Once it’s hot, add the mustard seeds and once they splutter, toss in the curry leaves. Place the brinjals around the pan, making sure they’re not crowded. Cook for about 10 minutes on a low flame, until the brinjals have changed colour and their skins have wrinkled. Mix the tamarind paste with water, a teaspoon of salt and sugar, and add it to the pan slowly. Cover with a lid and cook for five minutes until the brinjals are soft. Serve with hot rice.

This newsletter has been edited by Susanna Myrtle Lazarus.

1. Morph, the University of Surrey blog, about languages and linguistic history, which I relied on (among other sources) for research.

2. One of the satrapies of the Achaemenid Empire of Persia. It is the Latin name for a region located in Central Asia, between the rivers which roughly corresponds to eastern Uzbekistan, western Tajikistan, parts of southern Kazakhstan, parts of Turkmenistan and southern Kyrgyzstan.

3. In Cuisine and Empire Cooking in World History, Rachel Laudan points to the expansion of Perso-Islamic cuisine between 700-1250, which included plants such as sorghum, Asian rice, sugarcane, citrus, watermelon, spinach, artichoke, and eggplant that were transferred westward from India and north and south across the Sahara.

4. Gil Marks, Encyclopaedia of Jewish Food.

5. The OED notes that vatin-gana denoted that which removes windy humour (here, humour refers to Ayurvedia), and therefore eating brinjals were said to cure flatulence.

6. Also known as Hobson-Jobson: A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive. First published in 1886, it contains words and terms from Indian languages that came into use during the British rule in India.

7. From The Food of Sichuan.

8. This poem by Ibn Sara.