RAS question
The 'Panchmel dal' served with Baati is made from a mixture of how many types of lentils?
Correct answer: (C) Five (Panch = five).
Panchmel dal served with baati is made from five types of lentils.
Explanation
Panchmel dal is built on the idea contained in its name: panch means five and mel means mixture. The five lentils are chana dal, moong dal, toor or arhar dal, masoor dal, and urad dal. Sanjeev Kapoor describes Panchmel Dal as five types of dals cooked together and lists split red lentils, split skinless black gram, split pigeon peas, split Bengal gram, and split skinless green gram among the ingredients. The dish is a Rajasthani speciality and is treated in the question as the essential dal served with baati, so the count being tested is five, not a broader category of mixed dal.
Why the other options are wrong
- (A) Two is too few because Panchmel is explicitly a five-dal mixture, not a pair of lentils.
- (B) Seven overstates the count; the recipe and the name Panchmel both point to five lentils.
- (D) Three misses the meaning of panch and leaves out two of the five lentils named for Panchmel dal.
Concept
This tests Rajasthan food culture, especially the dal-baati tradition and the meaning of region-specific culinary terms. Such questions recur in RAS because cuisine is part of the state's living art and culture syllabus.