How did devil’s dung come into my plate?
I came across a news article stating that scientists are training farmers to cultivate Hing in India. Coming from a traditional Gujarati Jain family where Hing is used as a staple ingredient, it comes as a surprise that the plant was never grown locally and was always exported from Iran and Afghanistan. This revelation is an existential crisis, as my Grandma’s secret recipes do not seem so authentic anymore!
Etymology
The English name for Hing is Asafoetida, which is derived from the combination of Pesian word Asa meaning “resin” and Latin word Fetid meaning “unpleasant smell”. Because of its pungent smell, it is also known as merde du Diable in French which literally means Devil’s dung. In India, the word Hing is derived from the Sanskrit word “han”, meaning to-kill [1]. So, how come this deadly spice from Afghanistan came into my everyday cuisine?
Cannot keep the Romans out of History
Asafoetida is endemic to Afghanistan and Iran and it thrives in dry and cold dessert conditions. The earliest record of Asafoetida goes all the way back to eight century BC, where the plant was listed in an inventory of gardens by the Babylonian King Marduk-apla-iddina II. It was also indexed in a catalogue of medicinal plants in the library of Assyrian King Ashurbanipal [2].
During Alexander’s expedition to the Hindu Kush mountains in Afghanistan in 4th Century BC, his Army found in Asafoetida the substitute to a very popular, but extinct plant called Silphium. Silphium was used for both medicinal purposes and as a spice. Since asafoetida belonged to the same genus, it prompted Romans to start importing the spice from Persia. The Roman trade route ran through Silk Road and this is where the spice might have exchanged hands and first reached the subcontinent.
The arrival of Isla brought the region where Asafoetida was grown into the Abbasid empire and hence the plant was introduced into the Arabic cuisines as well. Mongols had toppled Abbassids by the mid-13th Century, and now the plant was introduced into their culture as well. Mongols now controlled the Silk Road and it was around this time that the Europeans had christened the plant to its modern day name of “Asafoetida”.
How did it become so popular in India?
The Mughal empire stretched all the way to to Afghanistan and the arrival of Mughals proliferated the trade of several oriental spices into India. It is said that the court singers in Agra and Delhi would even eat Asafoetida to improve their voices. They would consume it with ghee, and practice at the banks of the river [2].
The Portugese Physician Garcua da Orta mentioned in his book “Colloquies on the Simples and Drugs of India” that the thing most used throughout India was Asafoetida and it was used in medicine as well as cookery. He also mentioned that for every Gentio (Hindu) who is able to buy it, will probably buy it to add flavor to its food. Asafoetida had the nastiest smell in the world for Orta, but perhaps its popularity can be credit itself to the pungent smell it emits.
Hing when heated with hot oil, releases a stench that replicates sautéd onions and garlic. This particular characteristic might have popularized hing in cultures where consuming onion and garlic is prohibited or selectively restricted and adding hing might just make the food more appetizing.
The ubiquitous white bottle
My fascination with hing stems from a small white bottle that I have seen everyday while growing up. It’s an air sealed Asafoetida container from this company called Laljee Ghodoo. I would see this bottle to whomsoever’s house I went to and that used to always make me wonder what is so special about this company? Why does it have such a strong brand identity that it is available in over 70% of Indian households?
How did the company start?
In 1890s, Laljee Godhoo was an entrepreneur who dabbled in multiple ventures like selling shares, imported cloves and camphor. He reportedly had a chance encounter with a Kabuliwala (a merchant from Afghanistan) in Mumbai, who presented himself with an excellent business opportunity to sell dry fruits and hing. In his spare room in Mumbai, he started selling his product by manually crushing and preparing lumps of hing. [3]
His son Khimjee Laljee setup a processing plant in Tamil Nadu in 1940s and introduced compounded Asafoetida in the southern markets. This skyrocketed sales and the company soon introduced machines to churn out 150 KG of hing a day by 1970s. Changing times called for changing processes and the company soon introduced powdered variant of the compounded asafoetida lumps in 1978. Convenience of using powdered hing resulted in widespread adoption of the LG brand across the country, and the rest they say is history.
Why does the company have monopoly?
LG group is a tightly run family business run by three promoter families, the Merchants (scions of Laljee Godhoo), the Vahalias and the Bhatts. The company definitely has a first mover advantage, but promoters attribute success of the LG brand to its quality, where they board the plane every month to Kazakhstan to inspect and purchase high quality hing [4]. Plus there is significant brand recall for it’s trademark white bottle, so much so that the company had to introduce QR codes on its bottles to deal with infringements and counterfeits [5].
Given how essential hing is to my staple diet and how prominent the LG brand has become, it’s no secret that I am going to keep seeing this white bottle for the foreseeable future. The company so far has thrived with minimal advertising, but the future is not going to be devoid of roadblocks as other big business houses have started foraying into selling compounded asafoetida. Would be interesting to see how the company adopts with changing times!
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References:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida
[2] https://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/200904/devil.s.dung-the.world.s.smelliest.spice.htm
[4] http://laljeegodhoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/The-Economic-Times-Mumbai-Feature_2703_CAP.pdf
[5] https://beastoftraal.com/2020/09/16/hung-up-on-genuine-hing/
