This counterpoint is possible because of how smoke works as a flavouring. As Harold McGee, the food scientist notes, it is not a herb or a spice, yet contains similar chemicals. Wood is made of three materials which when burned break down into flavour molecules like those found in food: “The sugars of cellulose and hemicellulose break into the same molecules found in caramel, with sweet, fruity, flowery and bready aromas. And the interlocked phenolic rings of lignin break into smaller, volatile phenolics… which have the specific aromas of vanilla and clove as well as a generic spiciness, sweetness and pungency.”

It all adds up to quite a bouquet of flavours which, with light smoking, are deposited on the food rather than entirely integrated. This is what allows it to contrast with the flavours of the food, both reminiscent and different. Smoking was originally done to preserve foods, since the same phenolics are microbicides and antioxidants. This was particularly useful in damp Northern climates with no hot sun to dry foods; this is why the most famous smoked foods are northern European. But today refrigeration means that really deep smoking is not needed; instead it can be done only till the food is just cooked and has fine flavouring.

Our hot climate in India meant that we never really needed to develop smoking for preservation. The only product I know which uses it is the rather odd, and perhaps Portuguese inspired, Daccai paneer sometimes available in New Market in Kolkata. It comes as small, desiccated balls of cheese which must be placed in water to swell up and can then be eaten, tasting pretty much of smoke and nothing else. (Is this is the same as the famous Bandel cheese?

If any readers know please write in.) But if we don’t preserve with smoke, we do use the same principle of slightly charring a dish to highlight taste. Baingan bharta, for example, has the aubergines first roasted on an open flame for this, and Bengalis have their delectable chachcharis, dry vegetable dishes that are allowed to burn slightly before the burned portions are mixed back in.

In his splendid Tandoor book, Ranjit Rai notes that a particular type of smoking happens in a tandoor oven as the juices of the foods being cooked in it splash down on the hot coals to be converted into savoury vapours that infuse back into the food. Avadhi food from Lucknow is famous for dhungar, a quick way to add a subtle smokiness to kebabs and dhals. A glowing hot coal is put on an onion skin and placed on the food and sprinkled with ghee and aromatic spices.