Key Points
This isn't - yet - the butter chicken battle between Moti Mahal and Daryaganj restaurants, but an oddly similar culinary court case that began 90 years ago in Vienna...
In Monish Gujral's book Moti Mahal's Tandoori Trail, he tells a similar story of his grandfather, Kundan Lal Gujral inventing tandoori chicken when "his master, Mukha Singh, requested a light and dry chicken dish for dinner.".
In recent years Mohit Gujral has worked to reclaim his grandfather's legacy, while Kundan Lal Jaggi's grandson Raghav Jaggi launched the Daryaganj chain of restaurants, with the claim that it was from the inventors of butter chicken which lead to the lawsuit from the Gujrals...
Michael Krondl in his book Sweet Invention: the History of Dessert, writes that "the court made the Solomonic decision that, although the cake originally sold at the Hotel Sacher had indeed had only one layer... the hotel had the right to keep calling their version the 'original'.".
In an era before pressure cookers making dals required long slow cooking, so his grandfather kick-started the process by using the residual heat from the cooling tandoors: "Kundan Lal started putting dal soaked in water overnight in the tandoor, so that by morning the dal was soft and partially cooked.".
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