India, July 11 -- For Mumbai food writer Priyadarshini Chatterjee, 39, breakfast has always been the best meal of the day.

It irritated her when people called it a foreign import and argued that India's was traditionally a two-meal culture. But she didn't have enough information to settle such arguments.

So, she decided to do some digging.

What she found was a layered history of pre-dawn meals for fishermen; calorie-rich farmers' fare such as pinni, drizzled with ghee. Perhaps most remarkably, the meals were all still out there, even in the most bustling, cosmopolitan cities.

Over two years, Chatterjee travelled across 10 cities (see the story alongside for more on the specific morning meals she found), ate multiple breakfasts, combed...