From dried peas soup to gin cocktails, appetising food items inspired by London's fog

In the 19th century, when London was infamous for suffocating fogs, a term used for them was “pea-souper”. This referred to a thick soup of dried peas, rather like dal, which was a staple food for the poor.

In Christine L Corton’s book London Fog: A Biography, she explains how “its thickness, substance and carbon smell gave it the tangible quality of food, but always food associated with poverty”. Another term for fog was “London particular”, which may have taken its name from a murky Madeira wine which was made for the English market and known by that name.

‘London particular’ survives today as the name for a soup made by cooking dried green peas in the strongly flavoured water left over from boiling bacon or ham. The combination of pork flavour and mushy pea texture is very satisfying, and its dank green colour recalls the fogs that anti-pollution measures have now made a thing of the past.

That fog has also inspired two drinks: A London Fog latte is made by mixing the citrus-floral tang of Earl Grey tea with steamed milk and vanilla syrup. A London Fog cocktail combines gin with Pernod, the aniseed-flavoured drink that turns whitish when added to another liquid. The drink is a cloudy grey-green, the colour of the fog, though happily not its taste.

An earlier column in this series described an Indian effort to give our terrible urban air an edible form. While teaching in a design school in Bengaluru, Zack Denfield got his students to stand at the worst polluted traffic junctions and whip egg whites for meringues. The air forms a foam with the whites that is then solidified with sugar and hardened into the brittle sweetness of meringues, but with the dirty look, and perhaps, a taste of the air that went into their making.

Delhi’s extreme pollution feels like it should be commemorated in food form, and as it happens, the city has the perfect seasonal speciality for it. 'Daulat ki chaat' is made in the old city by letting rich, full-cream milk chill in the winter night air and then, very early in the morning, it is whipped intensely and at length till a thick foam forms. This is skimmed off and sold.

The foam is surprisingly stable, lasting for hours as the seller scoops out bowlfuls on which he sprinkles flaked nuts, powdered sugar, sometimes cardamom, and finally a few crumbs of 'khoya', the solidified residue of boiling milk for hours. In Lucknow, the same sweet is called 'nimmish' and Parsis in Mumbai call it 'dudh na puff', but what is common to all is the dreamy look that those who have tried it get as they recall its exquisite fleeting taste.

This airy confection could be adapted to the reality of Delhi today. A sprinkle of charcoal, made of burned rice stalks, some dust from building sites and diesel fumes will give us a 'daulat ki chaat' that is sadly suited for today.