Curious case of veg cutlets: Is the crumb-fried Indian variant the secret influence behind American veggie burger?

By Vikram Doctor

An article in the New Yorker recently proclaimed: “There has never been a better time to eat a meatless hamburger.”

Because of the demand for vegan food, at least in New York, chefs were turning out veggie burgers made from mushrooms, beans, roast vegetables, quinoa, crushed nuts and many other ingredients. And reading this, Indians might wonder: why don’t they just try vegetable cutlets? Those cooked and mashed vegetables, formed into discs (or heart shapes if you want to be cool), bread-crumbed and fried are veggie burgers too. They are as ubiquitous in India as burgers in the US: staples of railway catering (the Deccan Queen is particularly famous for them), canteens and tea-time snacks for cooks who want to use up leftovers.


They have been decried, just as burgers have been accused of causing a health crisis in the US. In 2007, the University Grants Commission included cutlets among the unhealthy foods it suggested colleges ban. In 1996, The Times of India (ToI) wondered facetiously if vegetable cutlets served in Parliament’s canteen were affecting its working: “The oil-soaked cutlets making for a decided disinclination for vigorous movement, body or mind. Result: sparse post-lunch attendance, long speeches and few interruptions.”

Yoshi Yamada has noted the similarity. The Japanese-American chef worked in Mumbai for a while, where he became enamoured of the vada-pav, which the late Anthony Bourdain dubbed the Bombay Burger (after being presented one by ET’s photographer Bharat Chanda). Yamada has taken vada-pavs to the US, serving them first in Brooklyn, and now in Superkhana International, the Indian inspired restaurant he runs in Chicago.

Yamada notes that the American veggie burger goes back to the 1970s where it was part of the counter-culture part of the early environmental movement: “In this context, it is entirely possible they were influenced by Indian veg cutlets as seekers went to India and returned to America.” Yamada says the counter-culture link continued with the Grateful Dead, the cult band whose shows always had veggie burgers sold in the parking lots.

This also links to its more recent exponents, like Brooks Headley, whose Superiority Burger serves one of the best-rated veggie burgers in New York, but who has also been a punk rock drummer. “I have read that his interest in veggie burgers came out of his musical, DIY, clean living scene,” says Yamada. He has been developing one for Superkhana: “One of our early attempts was very much like a veg cutlet, shredded vegetables, fermented urad dal, and other things.”

Both burgers and cutlets also share somewhat curious origins, where they seem to have been developed as substitutes for better-known foods. The burger’s origin is much contested, but it was broadly created as an inexpensive and easier-to-serve alternative to steak. Where that required careful cutting and cooking, burgers were made simply by mincing whatever muscle cuts were available and then forming them into a disc for quick griddling or frying.

Cutlets took a more circuitous route, which involved entirely abandoning their original meaning which referred to a thin slice of meat from the ribs, or side of an animal — cote, in French, so cutlet implied a small piece. It had a part of the bone, which made it easy to pick and eat, and a fancy way to serve them was to put a paper frill on the bone end to prevent fingers being soiled. (Another name was chop, which would also become a term for cutlet in Bengal).

Cutlets were like kebabs, often served as a snack or appetiser, but which could become a main meal if served with a sauce. To ensure the meat was tender and flat, for quick cooking, the cook would beat it thin. And while initially just grilled, another tradition grew of dipping them in eggs and breadcrumbs, and frying for a crisp coating. These made for a quick to cook, light meal, which became particularly popular during the British Raj. The quality of meat in India rarely made for good steaks or roasts, but a cutlet was usually acceptable.

And at some point the term, and crumb-frying technique, was extended beyond the rib cuts. The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook, the popular book written by Flora Annie Steele and Grace Gardiner, shows how it could have happened. They give a recipe for “Cutlets (Plain) of Fresh Meat”, where they complain about how badly Indian cooks usually handle these, but immediately after is a recipe for “Cutlets of Cooked Meat”, which involves minced and spiced meat, formed into a flat cutlet like shape, crumbed and fried. “This is an excellent way of using cold meats,” they write, of what is essentially a burger, but made of cooked meat.

The Indian cooks employed to make these in British kitchens would then have taken the technique and applied it, with the ingenuity for which they were noted, to a number of other ingredients. Over the decades, ToI’s pages record cutlets made from oysters, fish, brains (probably the best way to treat their soft texture), liver, chicken and even horse, as well, of course, as standard vegetable cutlets.

Nut cutlets also feature — an early invention of the vegetarian movement — to supply the protein their diets often lacked. Mahatma Gandhi would remember eating nut cutlets as a young man in the vegetarian restaurants he frequented in London. The Time & Talents Club cookbook, a redoubtable Bombay institution even has a milk cutlet, where a savoury custard is baked till firm, then cut in squares and carefully crumbed and fried.

The rise of other kinds of fast foods have made cutlets less popular in India these days, and the same could be said of burgers in the US. Yet, both retain an essential, delicious and easy-to-eat appeal, and the rise of veggie burgers shows how they can be revived. Perhaps we need to experiment again with vegetable cutlets in India, to ensure we do not forget them, even as they are being discovered abroad.