پلو

Pilaf — also spelled pilau, pilaw, pilav, or polo depending on which linguistic route the word followed — comes from the Persian polow, referring to a specific technique of cooking rice: the grains are soaked, briefly boiled in salted water, then drained and steamed in a pot with butter or fat, so that each grain remains distinct rather than clumping. The result is a loose, fragrant, glistening mound of rice in which individual grains are separate — what Persian cooks call dāne dāne (grain by grain). This technique, and the word for it, spread from the Persian culinary tradition through the Silk Road and the great empires that adopted Persian culture as their prestige model.

Rice cultivation in Persia dates from antiquity, and Persian courtly cuisine elevated rice preparation to a high culinary art. The Shahnameh of Ferdowsi (completed 1010 CE) mentions rice dishes in royal feasts. When the Mongol rulers of Persia and their successors adopted Persian culture wholesale, they adopted Persian court cuisine with it. When the Mughals established their empire in India (1526 CE), they brought Persian culinary culture to the subcontinent. The pilaf technique traveled both west (into the Ottoman Empire, where it became pilav, and from there into Balkans and Central Asian cuisines) and south (into the Indian subcontinent, where it became pulao and eventually gave rise to biryani).

European languages encountered the word through Ottoman Turkish (pilav), which English travelers and diplomats heard in Istanbul; through Hindi/Urdu pilau or pulāo encountered in India; and through other routes. The Oxford English Dictionary's earliest English citation is from 1609. By the time the word settled in British English as 'pilaf' or 'pilau,' it had traveled one of the wider circuits of food vocabulary: Persian palace kitchens to Mughal and Ottoman courts to colonial contacts to English dinner tables.