A royal banquet to remember from 1897

A century-old dinner menu, dated 31 January 1897, from Vadodara’s Laxmi Vilas Palace, caused a stir when Gurugram-based food historian Neha Vermani shared it online in February. The menu was for a dinner hosted by Maharaja Sayajirao Gaekwad III of Baroda for Maharaja Madhavrao Scindia of Gwalior, two of the most powerful kings in colonial India. And yet, what they ate that evening reads like something from a European dining room: potage d’amandes, braised fish with mayonnaise, chicken cream soup with truffles, lamb cutlets “àl’Italienne”, roast partridge with peas. A vegetable curry with rice makes an appearance, but almost quietly, folded into a sequence of French courses. Dessert was apples with cream and pistachio ice cream.

“These kinds of menus were fairly common in princely India,” Vermani says. Having worked extensively with archival material on food practices across South Asia, she wasn’t surprised by the document, or even by the language. She explains that French and English menus were part of a larger pattern, reflecting not just colonial presence but sustained interaction between Indian courts and the wider world. “They tell us as much about cultural exchange as they do about food,” says. “But it’s important to remember that this lifestyle was limited to a very small elite.”

Just two days before the dinner at Laxmi Vilas, another banquet was hosted at Makarpura Palace. Its menu, part of the New York Digital Library collection, also in French, moves across a similar arc—fish, game, roasts, desserts, including a dish of prawns with curry and rice. At the bottom, a Marathi verse reworks the entire menu in a classical metre, echoing the French above it in a different register.

For Vadodara-based historian Chandrakant Patil, this sensibility reveals the kind of state Baroda was under Sayajirao. His reign (1875-1939) is often remembered for its reforms and patronage of the arts, but was also marked by cosmopolitanism. It’s not surprising then that the dining table became an extension of statecraft.

Banquets were rarely just social occasions. They were staged—for kings, colonial officials, scholars, and travellers. Inside the palace, this translated into an obsessive attention to detail. Radhikaraje Gaekwad, a member of the erstwhile royal family, describes a world where nothing was left to chance. “There were books that explained how to announce dishes, how to pronounce them, which cutlery to use,” she says. “Even when a fish knife should be used and when it shouldn’t. There was a proper way of doing everything.”

The reason was practical as much as aesthetic. The princely state was hosting guests from across the world, and the expectation was that they would be received in a manner they recognised, even if they were far from home. European cuisine became part of a shared language of hospitality.

What’s striking, though, is that this didn’t remain confined to formal occasions. “A lot of this trickled down into everyday life,” Gaekwad says. Even today, dinners in the family are often continental, with dishes drawn from old palace recipes such as chicken cutlets and almond soup. But the rhythm of the day still carries an older logic. “Lunch is always desi, typically roti, sabzi, dal and chawal,” she says.

The pattern extends beyond Vadodara. Gaekwad points to Wankaner, the princely state she comes from, where similar practices were part of everyday life. “We had the same kind of dinners—continental with the same cutlery, labels, crockery. Many princely states had this mix of both cultures.”

Back then, across princely India, courts were engaging with global influences. In Jaipur, Maharani Gayatri Devi, Sayajirao’s granddaughter and one of India’s most recognised royals, would later become known for her legendary gatherings. Trained at a finishing school in Lausanne, Switzerland, she entertained with ease: curated guest lists, themed evenings, and a blend of Indian and European sensibilities.

Her cookbook, The Gourmet’s Gateway, published in 1969, documented fragments of that world. The Vadodara connection runs deep here. Gayatri Devi’s mother, Indira-raje, was Sayajirao’s only daughter, and by all accounts an exceptional hostess herself.

Elsewhere in Gujarat, too, royal kitchens evolved along comparable lines. In Gondal, for instance, palace recipes closely guarded for decades found themselves in cookbooks such as Recipes of a Maharani (2022) by Kumud Kumari, and part of heritage dining initiatives.

What sets Baroda apart, however, is the extent to which its culinary world was documented. The Laxmi Vilas Palace archives include cookery books compiled under Sayajirao’s reign by Narayan Kadam, who oversaw the royal kitchens. They go far beyond recipes. There are menus for banquets of a 1,000 guests and solitary diners; meal plans that run for an entire month without repetition; instructions for festive and medicinal cooking; and meticulous notes on kitchen administration.

Ceremonial dining hasn’t entirely disappeared. Within royal families, printed menus, multi-course meals, and heirloom crockery still surface on special occasions. Beyond palace walls, too, there’s a quiet revival: through cookbooks, hotel collaborations, and curated dining experiences.

And yet, what lingers most is something far simpler: a menu. A single sheet of paper, printed in French in a Maratha palace, moves from Norway to Italy to England, before returning to curry and rice, and then to a sweet ending: custard-based pistachio pudding, frozen dessert, and a fruit medley in a clear jelly. The same meal finds voice in Marathi verse on that very menu. A clear indication that India’s princely courts weren’t just observing the world, but engaging with it on their own terms.

Teja Lele writes on travel and lifestyle.