Toddy

Toddy is the sap of palms, tapped from the flowering spathe and left to ferment, and it is among the oldest fermented drinks of the subcontinent, known on the southern and eastern coasts long before any written recipe for it. The palms are the coconut Cocos nucifera, the palmyra Borassus flabellifer and the date palm Phoenix sylvestris, and each region tends the one that grows best in its soil. The tapper, a hereditary calling in many coastal communities, carries the craft: he climbs the tree morning and evening and collects the sap in a pot tied beneath the cut. In Kerala the toddy shop, with its own kitchen of fish and tapioca, is a distinct institution of village life.

Fresh sap is sweet, clear and nearly without alcohol; within hours the wild yeasts already present in the pot turn it cloudy, faintly effervescent and sour, and it reaches a few per cent alcohol by the same day. Coconut toddy is milky and lightly sweet, palmyra toddy is more bitter and sharper, and date palm sap, tapped in the cold months of Bengal, is drunk fresh as sweet rasa or fermented. Unfermented sap, called neera in the south, is boiled down to jaggery, and the same sap is the base from which arrack is distilled. Toddy is drunk young and does not keep: by the second day it is vinegar, and in Kerala and Goa that vinegar is put to use in the kitchen, as is toddy itself in the batter of appam and the Goan sweet bread.

Toddy is drunk with strongly seasoned food, above all fried or curried fish, such as pearl spot Etroplus suratensis cooked in kudampuli Garcinia gummi-gutta, with tapioca, duck roast and beef fry. The structural reason is the drink's lightness, acidity and carbonation, which cut through chilli heat and the oil of frying and refresh the mouth between bites. Its low strength suits long, slow eating, and its sourness stands up to the tamarind and kokum of the same tables.