New Delhi, Oct. 19 -- A bowl of kheer appears before me and Anuradha Joshi Medhora, chef and co-founder of The Silver Train restaurant, challenges me to identify the main ingredient. The silken kheer is sweet, of course, but there's a hint of savoury that I can't quite place. Medhora reveals that it's made with garlic.

"The waters of the Yamuna were quite polluted, so Jahangir's hakims prescribed garlic for his delicate stomach. The palace khansama came up with this bennami kheer recipe by boiling garlic in milk," she says. Other unusual dishes like kaleji ka raita (liver in yoghurt and mustard) and ande ka halwa (eggs folded into khoya, saffron, and sugar) also originate from the palace kitchens of Jaipur and Awadh respectively. Medhora...