Interesting article.
Sweetness in savoury cooking can be so regional. Amongst Bengalis, the community originating in West Bengal (called Ghoti, colloquially) are known for the sweet profile of their savoury cooking. In contrast, the community originating in East Bengal (in what is now Bangladesh, and known as Bangal colloquially) absolutely do not add sugar to their savoury dishes. It might originate in the relative deprivation of the East Bengal folk - they probably didn’t have the economic means to access a lot of sugar and their cooking is very much the ‘cucina povera’ of Bengal.
I’m a Bangal who married into a Ghoti family. I find my mother-in-law’s cooking too sweet. My father-in-law was a Ghoti who was brought up in (then as was called) Burma and cooks with a completely different ‘hand’ - much less sweet.
