| Quick Answer India has a documented history of oil pressing going back thousands of years. Every major oilseed-growing region developed its own pressing tradition, its own oil, and its own cuisine around that oil. Industrialisation in the mid-20th century disrupted these traditions, replacing regionally specific cold pressed oils with standardised refined products. The return to cold pressed oil today is partly a recovery of what that disruption removed. |
At a Glance
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The history of edible oils in India goes back thousands of years. Long before refined sunflower or soybean oil became common in Indian kitchens, households relied on locally available oilseeds and traditional methods of extraction.
Sesame, mustard, coconut and other oil-bearing crops became part of regional food cultures, while technologies such as the ghani, kolhu and chekku allowed oil to be extracted on a household or village scale.
Understanding the history of edible oils in India is not simply a story of old versus new. It is a story of changing technology, agriculture, trade and consumer habits—and of how those changes transformed the oils used in Indian kitchens.
History of Edible Oils in India: The Early Years
To understand the history of edible oils in India, it is important to look at the crops, technologies and regional food traditions that shaped their use.
Sesame, the oldest domesticated oilseed in the world, has been found at Harappan archaeological sites dating to 3500–3050 BCE and earlier. The Harappan civilisation cultivated sesame across the Indus Valley, and it appears in excavations at Mohenjo-daro and Harappa as both a food crop and an export commodity.
The Charaka Samhita, the foundational Ayurvedic text compiled over several centuries and substantially complete by around 400 CE, devotes considerable attention to oils. Sesame oil is described as the best among oils for both internal and external use. Mustard oil, coconut oil, and castor oil all appear with specific therapeutic and culinary applications documented.
Sanskrit texts from the Vedic period onward reference oil pressing as a household and community practice. The word ‘taila’ (oil) appears extensively in Vedic literature. The pressing of sesame for oil is documented in enough detail to confirm that the practice was widespread and systematised by at least 2000 BCE.
The Ghani Press and Its Regional Variants
The ghani is the technology that made regional oil production possible across India. A central wooden or stone shaft rotating within a mortar, driven by animal or human power, the ghani could be scaled from a household unit to a village-scale operation.
British colonial administration documented ghani operations comprehensively in agricultural surveys from the 1880s onward. What those surveys reveal is remarkable geographic specificity. In Punjab, Bihar, and Bengal, mustard oil ghani operations dominated. In Andhra and Tamil Nadu, groundnut and sesame oil ghanis were the standard. In Kerala and coastal Karnataka, coconut oil was pressed. In Rajasthan, sesame and mustard were pressed depending on the local crop.
These were not primitive operations. The ghani operators understood seed quality, pressing speed, seasonal variation, and storage. The oil they produced was matched to local cuisine because local cuisine had developed around local oil over centuries.
The terminology across regions reflects how embedded the practice was. Tamil Nadu had the chekku and marachekku (wooden press). Andhra and Telangana had the ganuga. Karnataka had the gaaniga. North India had the ghani and kolhu. Each term referred to the same fundamental technology adapted to local materials and traditions.
What Each Region Pressed and Why
The relationship between a region’s oilseed crop and its cuisine is direct and documented. Cuisines did not choose oils arbitrarily. They evolved around the oils that local pressing produced.
Mustard Belt: Punjab, Bihar, Bengal, Odisha, Rajasthan
Mustard grows well in the cooler climates of North and East India. The kachi ghani sarson tel that these regions produced had the full allyl isothiocyanate pungency that their cuisines were built around. Machher jhol, sarson da saag, litti chokha, shorshe ilish: none of these dishes make flavour sense with any other fat.
Groundnut Belt: Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Maharashtra
Groundnut cultivation expanded significantly in South and West India from the 19th century onward. Cold pressed groundnut oil became the primary cooking fat for these regions, creating the flavour base for gongura pachadi, chettinad preparations, Gujarati thalipeeth, and Maharashtrian everyday cooking.
Sesame Belt: Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Telangana, Karnataka
The chekku ennai tradition of Tamil Nadu is one of the most continuous oil pressing traditions in India. Cold pressed white sesame oil has been the foundational fat of Tamil cooking from documented history. The same applies to gingelly traditions in Andhra, Telangana, and Karnataka.
Coconut Belt: Kerala, Coastal Karnataka, Coastal Tamil Nadu
Coconut oil pressing in Kerala has documentation going back to ancient trade records. Velichenna was the cooking fat, the medicinal oil, and the ceremonial oil of Kerala. The cuisine that developed around it, avial to payasam, assumes the oil’s flavour as a given ingredient.
What Industrialisation Changed
Large-scale oil refining arrived in India from the 1950s onward, accelerating through the Green Revolution period and expanding dramatically through economic liberalisation in the 1990s.
The economic logic was straightforward. Industrial extraction using heat and chemical solvents yielded significantly more oil per kilogram of seed than cold pressing. Standardised refined oil could be produced, stored, and transported at scale. Price per litre fell substantially.
What was lost was less immediately visible but more lasting. The regional specificity of Indian cooking oil disappeared from most urban markets within a generation. A household in Chennai that had used chekku ennai from a neighbourhood press for generations switched to refined sunflower from a national brand. A family in Bihar that had used kachi ghani sarson tel switched to refined palmolein.
The food cooked in these substituted oils tasted different. The difference was attributed to many things. It was largely the oil.
The Documentation Gap
One consequence of the industrial transition is that the detailed knowledge of regional pressing traditions was not systematically documented before it became marginal. The ghani operators who understood seed quality, pressing speed, and seasonal variation passed that knowledge through practice, not text.
Food historians working on Indian culinary history in the late 20th century found that specific regional oil traditions were already difficult to document in detail because the practitioners were few and aging.
What was documented in colonial-era surveys represents our clearest window into what these traditions looked like at scale. The Watt Dictionary of Economic Products (1889-1896), various district gazetteers, and agricultural survey records from the 1880s through the 1930s capture the geographic specificity and technical detail of Indian oil pressing traditions in ways that later sources do not.
What the Return to Cold Pressed Actually Means
The growing market for cold pressed oil in India today is not people discovering something new. It is people recovering something that was normal until recently.
When a family in Tamil Nadu buys marachekku gingelly oil from a small producer and uses it for sambar tadka, they are participating in a practice that was unbroken in their region for thousands of years and was only interrupted for two or three decades by the economics of industrial refining.
When a family in Bihar or Bengal returns to kachi ghani sarson tel, they are recovering the specific flavour identity of their regional cooking that refined oil removed.
The history of edible oils in India is not a story of primitive practices that modernisation improved. It is a story of sophisticated regional traditions that industrialisation standardised away, and that are now being recovered by people who have learned what was lost.
Shop 100% Cold Pressed Oil at Standard Cold Pressed Oil
Pressed on wooden ghanis, below 45°C, with nothing added — groundnut, mustard, sesame, and coconut oil for your kitchen.
Related Reading
- Kachi Ghani Oil: The Traditional Indian Method Still Worth Using [Blog 4, Month 1]
- Why More Indian Families Are Switching Back to Traditional Oils [Blog 15, Month 1]
- Our Oils, Our Process [Blog 16, Month 3]
Frequently Asked Questions
How old is oil pressing in India?
Sesame oil pressing is documented at Harappan sites dating to 3000 BCE and earlier. References to oil pressing appear throughout Vedic literature. The Charaka Samhita, compiled by around 400 CE, documents oils extensively. Oil pressing is one of the oldest continuous food production practices in India.
What is the oldest cooking oil used in India?
Sesame oil has the longest documented history of culinary use in India, with evidence from Harappan civilisation sites and extensive references in ancient texts. Mustard oil, coconut oil, and castor oil also have ancient histories. Groundnut oil is more recent, becoming widespread after the 19th century.
When did refined oil become common in India?
Large-scale refined oil production began in India in the 1950s. It expanded significantly through the 1970s and 1980s, and became dominant in urban markets through economic liberalisation in the 1990s. The transition from regional cold pressed oils to standardised refined oils largely occurred within one to two generations.
Is cold pressed oil traditional in India?
Cold pressed oil is not just traditional in India, it is the original form of cooking oil in India. Every regional cooking tradition in India was built around locally cold pressed oil. Refined oil is the recent development, not cold pressed oil.
What did Indians cook in before sunflower oil?
Before refined sunflower oil became widely available in the 1990s, Indian cooking was regionally specific. North and East India cooked primarily in mustard oil. South India used sesame (gingelly) and groundnut oil. Kerala and coastal South India used coconut oil. These regional oils remain the appropriate fats for those regional cuisines.
