Hook, line and sinker

Fried fish is a local favourite in Japan and India, Britain’s national dish, anda taco filling in Mexico. Who invented it? The answer swims around the globe

- VIR SANGHVI

If you are a non-vegetarian, here is a dish that I am sure you have tried at least once, even though it is not necessarily a part of Indian cuisine. It is now so ubiquitous that it turns up on many restaurant menus and nearly every hotel room-service menu. No matter which country you go to, its ubiquity will follow you.

That dish is fried fish and is notable for many reasons.

First of all, many countries lay claim to it and yet none can claim convincingly to have solely invented it. And secondly, it is possibly the only dish that is regarded as a local food in England, Japan and even India, where northern and southern fried fish dishes jostle for favour.

Let's start by demolishing the greatest myth around it: That it was invented in England, where it is a source of national culinary pride on par with, well, Spotted Dick and Chicken Tikka Masala.

The dish did get to the UK, but it was the creation of immigrants rather like the current British ‘national dish’, Chicken Tikka Masala. (The Brits can treat Spotted Dick as their own creation; nobody else wants it.)