A South Indian meal is not divided into starter-main-dessert but served all at once on a banana leaf: a mound of white rice in the center, surrounded by small piles of vegetables, lentils, pickles, papad, and a sweet, all successively drizzled with sambar, rasam, and then curd. You eat with the fingers of your right hand, mixing each accompaniment with the rice. As a strict vegetarian Brahmin, Ramanujan followed this ritual order where food is also an offering.

Tamil cooking almost always begins with this gesture: making mustard seeds and lentils crackle in hot ghee, perfuming with asafoetida (hing) and fresh curry leaves. This fragrant cloud, essential in a Brahmin home, marks almost all of Ramanujan's dishes.