Indian cuisine sits at spice 95 in this atlas. Biryani and Masala dosa show the range better than a single heat number. Chili is late (16th century) and now structural in many kitchens. Heat here outruns Thailand only because black pepper, mustard seed and chili stack; many dishes stay fragrant rather than red.
Restaurant Indian cuisine is one register. Home pots and market stalls are others. Authenticity is a marketing word; technique is not. Status still splits between the industrial version of Tadka and the household or workshop version no chain quite copies.
Pick the room and the heat. The instruction changes. The plate, the pantry and the atlas spice number stay the ones for this cuisine.
Teaching marks from the atlas, not a reservation or a food-safety certificate.
Indian cuisine sits at spice 95 in this atlas. Biryani and Masala dosa show the range better than a single heat number. Chili is late (16th century) and now structural in many kitchens. Heat here outruns Thailand only because black pepper, mustard seed and chili stack; many dishes stay fragrant rather than red.
Restaurant Indian cuisine is one register. Home pots and market stalls are others. Authenticity is a marketing word; technique is not. Status still splits between the industrial version of Tadka and the household or workshop version no chain quite copies.
Indian cuisine did not arrive as a single national plate. Its older structure is visible in Biryani, Tadka and the regional kitchens that still disagree. Court, village and street cooked on different clocks. The ten-point timeline below keeps those clocks in view rather than flattening them into a brand story.
Indian cuisines are plural: Dravidian rice-and-tamarind, Indo-Gangetic breads, Mughal rice-and-meat, and Portuguese chili on the west coast. "Curry" is a British-Portuguese flattening of tadka, masala and gravy.
This is a reading check for the atlas, not personal advice, a live price, or a booking. It does not replace the full topic page.
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