Makhana and machli are a deadly combo: Why fish farming is complementary with growing fox nuts

Pag pag pokhari maach makhan, saras boli muski mukh paan” is a Maithili saying that describes how the land has ponds at almost every step full of fish and the prickly water plants that produce makhana, whose popped seeds are becoming big business.

In Greek mythology, Euryale was a Gorgon, a beautiful woman with monstrous features like the snakes for hair of her better-known sister Medusa. When a British botanist came across what looked like a beautiful water lily with menacing spikes on its stalks and leaves, he invoked the Gorgon in its scientific name, adding ferox, or ferocious, for emphasis. Euryale ferox seeds are sometimes called Gorgon nuts.

The name was appropriate for another reason. Euryale means ‘far-roaming’ and the prickly plants grow across much of eastern Asia, probably distributed by migratory waterfowl. In 'Soup for the Qan', a translation of a 14th century CE dietary manual for China’s Mongol Emperor, many dishes are made with Euryale seed flour. These are clearly distinguished from the seeds of that other aquatic plant, the lotus, but in time this distinction became blurred. Makhana is often called lotus seed but in Chinese cuisine, actual lotus seeds are now more popular.

Makhana remained popular in India. As a starchy non-cereal, it was suitable for fasts when regular grains were avoided. An 1896 volume of The Agricultural Ledger, a government publication, noted that the flour was consumed “in the form of cakes made with gur or plantain called gurchita, and by others in the form of chapati.”