NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 3 Activity 3.3: Let us interact and find out — How have cooking practices changed over time?
Book page 38 & 39 Updated on2026-09-05
Q1.
Have our food habits and cooking practices changed over time?
Answer
Yes, both have changed a great deal — and the change has been fastest in the last fifty years.
Food habits: earlier, families ate mostly what was grown nearby and what was in season. Today, a Delhi home may eat idli for breakfast and a Chennai home may eat rajma, and fruits of every season are available all year.
Cooking practices: the fuel, the vessels and the tools have all changed — chulha to gas stove, sil-batta to electric grinder, earthen pot to pressure cooker.
Time: cooking that once took hours now takes minutes, so more people cook after coming home from work.
Try This: Ask at home which one dish is still made exactly the way your great-grandmother made it. In most families it is a festival dish — and that is a good clue about which practices change slowly.
Q2.
Prepare a list of questions for gathering information from elderly people about their food habits and cooking practices. Conduct interviews with some elderly people based on the questions prepared.
Answer
Prepare the questions before you go, keep them short, and write the answers down as the person speaks. Use the three sample questions from your book and add your own.
The book's sample questions:
What kind of food do you still eat and what is new?
What are the changes in cooking practices over time?
What has caused these changes?
More questions you can add:
On what did you cook when you were my age — chulha, angeethi, stove or gas?
Which fuel was used — wood, cow-dung cakes, coal or kerosene?
How were masalas ground, and how long did it take?
Where did the vegetables and grain come from — your own field, a shop or a weekly market?
How was food kept fresh without a refrigerator?
Which dish was made only in one season, and why?
Which food that you ate daily is rarely cooked now?
Do you think the old food was healthier? Why?
How to conduct the interview: ask permission first, interview at least two people, do not interrupt, and read the answers back to check that you noted them correctly. Then write a half-page report with the person's name, age and village or town.
Q3.
What are your findings from the interviews you conducted?
Answer
Write the findings as a comparison, because that is what makes the change visible.
Earlier (as told by elders)
Now
Stove
Chulha burning wood or cow-dung cakes
Gas stove, induction plate
Grinding
Sil-batta and hand chakki, done every morning
Electric mixer-grinder; packet masala
Vessels
Earthen and iron vessels, slow cooking
Pressure cooker, non-stick pan, microwave
Where food came from
Own field, kitchen garden, weekly haat
Shops, supermarkets, home delivery
Storing
Pickling, drying in the sun, storing in bins of grain
Refrigerator, sealed packets
What was eaten
Millets, coarse grains, seasonal vegetables
Polished rice, maida products, packaged snacks; millets returning now
The finding in one line: cooking has become much faster and easier, but part of the old wisdom — millets, seasonal vegetables, freshly ground masala — is being rediscovered because it was healthier.
Q4.
Find out what were the other ways of cooking and grinding.
Answer
Besides the chulha and the sil-batta shown in Fig. 3.1, many other tools were used — and several are still in use in Indian homes.
Purpose
Traditional tool
How it worked
Cooking
Angeethi / sigri
Burnt coal or charcoal; used for slow cooking and for warmth
Tandoor
A clay oven heated with wood; rotis are stuck to the hot wall
Bhatti and earthen handi
Slow cooking (dum) with a sealed lid
Steaming in leaves
Food wrapped in banana or turmeric leaves and steamed — patra, patoli, pitha
Grinding and pounding
Chakki (hand mill of two stones)
Grain was ground into flour by turning the upper stone
Okhli and musal (mortar and pestle)
Paddy was pounded to remove husk; spices were crushed
Ammi kal / attukal (south India)
Flat stone and roller for idli-dosa batter and chutney
Ghani (bullock-driven oil press)
Mustard, sesame or groundnut was crushed to get oil
Did you know? Wood-fired cooking gives a smoky flavour that no gas stove can copy — which is why tandoori roti and bhatti dal are still cooked the old way in dhabas.
Q5.
Why have these culinary practices changed over time?
Answer
The book gives three main causes, and each of them can be seen in any Indian town.
Technological development. The gas connection, the electric grinder, the pressure cooker and the refrigerator were invented and became affordable. Work that took an hour now takes five minutes.
Improved transportation. Trucks, trains and cold storage bring apples from Himachal to Kanyakumari and fish from the coast to inland towns, so people cook things that never grew near them.
Better communication. Television, mobile phones and the internet spread recipes across the country, so a family in Bihar now makes dosa and a family in Kerala makes chhole.
Two more reasons the elders will mention:
Less time — when both parents work outside the home, quick cooking wins.
Less firewood and more smoke-free kitchens — an LPG stove does not fill the kitchen with smoke, which is much better for health.
What has not changed: the body's requirement. Whatever the stove, the food still has to supply carbohydrates, fats, proteins, vitamins, minerals, roughage and water.