Idli is from China? Riddle of Achaya's Kedli 发糕

Idli is a culinary icon and staple, especially in south India. It is a white fluffy rice cake with three defining elements - it is made of rice, fermented and cooked by steaming.

Idli is made with a fermented, thick smooth batter of rice, and urad dal (black gram bean). The fermented batter is flavoured with a pinch of salt, poured into cups and steamed into soft, puffy, fluffy, pillowy rice cakes which are eaten with chutney and sambar dips.

Opinions were divided especially in India, when renowned food historian KT Achaya (1923 - 2002) attributed the origin of the south Indian staple idli to Indonesia (in his book A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food published in 1998).

It's been 25 years but the debate hasn't been resolved.

Achaya theorised that Indonesian kings came to India between 700 - 1200 AD to seek for brides and palace chefs in their entourage brought a dish known as "kedli" which is the precursor of today's idli.

One of the key objections to Achaya's theory is, it is not clear what is the Indonesian kedli, the supposed precursor of the idli that Achaya was referring to. No one knows for sure what Achaya meant by kedli and the riddle remains unanswered to this day.

The nearest I could think of is keladi which is the Indonesian / Malay word for yam. There are yam dishes such as kueh talam keladi in Indonesia but they are nothing near idli in form and taste at all 🤷

However, there was an Indianised Hindu-Buddhist Kediri kingdom that existed on Indonesia's Java island from 1042 to 1222. It fits Achaya's timeframe of 700- 1200AD.

In Song dynasty official, traveller, and historian 赵汝适's travelogue 诸蕃志 A Description of Barbarian Nations written around 1200, he said there were two powerful empires ruling the Malay archipelago - the Srivijaya in the west on Sumatra island and Kediri in the east on Java island. 

Kediri's wealthy economy relied on rice and animal farming as well as the spice trade. 

The Kediri people also produced silk by farming silkworms, a technology originally from China. Silkworms feed on mulberry leaves. Indeed, the name Kediri could be derived from the Sanskrit word Khadri which means Indian mulberry.

Trade tied the Kediri kingdom, India and China closely together.

The Chinese have a steamed rice cake very similar to the Indian idli.

Chinese huat kueh 发糕 uses a thick, smooth batter made with rice, yeast, and sugar. The batter is poured into cups and allowed to ferment. It is then steamed to produce a puffy, spongy, fluffy sweet cake - like an idli! 

Rice, fermentation, steaming - the huat kueh and idli are almost identical. Except that unlike the idli, Chinese huat kueh is eaten as a sweet, often with tea and without any savoury spicy dips or side dishes.

The Indonesians have adopted the Chinese steamed rice cake and call it kue apem kukus tepung beras.

So...., what was Achaya's kedli?

I still have no answers, only more questions 😆 😅

Could the Chinese rice cake be the precursor of the Indian rice cake, idli? Judging by the presence of silkworm farming in Kediri, the kingdom must have a close relationship with China. Interestingly, the ancient process of producing silk involves steaming the silkworm cocoons before extracting the fibres.

Despite the obvious likeness between the Indian idli and Chinese huat kueh, I've not seen anyone make the connection between the two dishes 🤔

Could the Kediri kingdom be the kedli that Achaya was referring to? Was the meaning lost in translation?

Might a derivative of the huat kueh in the Kediri kingdom be the mysterious kedli? 

Did the Indians back in the 13th century called huat kueh kedli because it came from Kediri?

Tell us what you think in the comments 🙏

I get my idli fix in Singapore from MTR restaurant 👈 click

Idli 

A common breakfast food of south India, the idli is a white, spongy, swollen circlet about 10 cm across. Rice grits and urad dhal (in a 2:1 proportion) are ground together to a thick batter and left to ferment naturally overnight. Portions are placed on pieces of rtiuslin held in depressions on a metal tray, and steamed in a closed vessel till cooked. Idlis are eaten with a coconut chutney (q.v.), or with sambhar (q.v.), or with a spiced pulse-based gritty powder called molaga-podi, doused with ghee or oil. 

The first mention of the idli in literature seems to be as iddalige in the Vaddaradhane of Sivakoty-acharya, a work in Kannada in the year AD 920, where it figures as one of eighteen items served to a brahma-chari who visits the home of a lady. Thereafter it is a frequent item in Kannada literature down the centuries. In AD 1025 Chavundaraya describes it in some detail as urad dhal soaked in buttermilk, ground to a fine paste, mixed with the clear water of curd, spiced with cumin, coriander, pepper and asafoetida, and then shaped. The Sanskrit Mdnasolldsa written in AD 1130 describes the iddarika as made of fine urad flour fashioned into small balls and then spiced with pepper powder, cumin powder and asafoetida. In Karnataka, a century later, the idli is described as being ‘light, like coins of high value’. In Tamil the itali makes only a late appearance, in the Maccapurdnam of the seventeenth century AD.

In all these references, up to AD 1250, three elements of modem idli-making are missing: the use of rice grits along with urad dhal; the long fermentation of the mix; and the steaming of the batter to fluffiness. 

In AD 1485 and AD 1600, the idli is compared to the moon, which might suggest that rice was in use; yet urad dhal flour is itself off-white, and moreover there are references to other moon-like products made only from urad flour. The Andhra area still has cakes of steamed urad flour called vasina-polu. The Indonesians ferment a variety of products (soy­ beans, groundnuts, fish) and have a product very similar to the idli, called kedli. It has been suggested that the cooks who accompanied the Hindu kings of Indonesia during their visits home (often enough to look for brides) between the eight and twelfth centuries AD, brought innovative fermentation techniques to south India. Perhaps the use of rice along with the dhal was an essential part of the fermentation step which requires mixed microflora from both grains to be effective. Yeasts have enzymes which break down starch to simpler forms, and bacteria (which dominate the idli fermentation) carry enzymes for souring and leavening through the formation of carbon dioxide gas. 

Xuan Zang was categorical in stating that in the seventh century AD India did not have a steaming vessel. But steaming can be achieved by such simple means as tying a thin cloth bearing the material to be cooked over the mouth of a vessel in which water is boiled, the antiquity of which would be im­possible to establish. 

Some idli variations have developed. The Kanchipuram idli served at the Devarajaswami temple is a huge (1.5 kg) preparation of ground rice spiced with pepper, cumin, ginger and asafoetida, and fermented using curds before it is steamed. Idlis that use wheat ravs (grits) in place of rice arealso often spiced and contain cashewnuts. The kadubu (q.v.) is related to the idli, but has a denser texture.

Excerpt from A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food by KT Achaya.

Another widely cited origin theory is by food historian Lizzie Collingham, who theorised based on references from Al-Azhar University library in Cairo, that it was Arab traders who brought the idli to south India. The Arab traders / settlers brought rice balls, flatten them and ate them with coconut paste. However, there was no mention of whether the rice was fermented or how it was cooked.

A steaming vessel from China's Warring States period (481 - 221 BC).

Written by Tony Boey on 10 Sep 2023

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