New Delhi, Sept. 22 -- In one of my favourite stories, Emperor Akbar sits down to a sumptuous lunch with his ministers and voices appreciation of the dish of eggplants that he is eating. As a modern chronicler of food, I continue to draw upon possibly apocryphal stories, that frame memorable windows to human taste and preference. Birbal concurs with Akbar on the deliciousness of the vegetable and draws attention to its shape, remarking that of all the vegetables, it is the brinjal alone that wears a crown.

Birbal was not really a trained botanist, else he would have known that many vegetables wear crowns of a sort, including the tomato and the capsicum, close botanical cousins of the vegetable in question, although the far more elaborate...