Kerala cuisine is a culinary style originated in the Kerala, a state on the southwestern Malabar Coast of India. Kerala cuisine offers a multitude of both vegetarian and non-vegetarian dishes prepared using fish, poultry and red meat with rice as a typical accompaniment. Chillies, curry leaves, coconut, mustard seeds, turmeric, tamarind, asafoetida and other spices are also used in the preparation. Kerala is known as the "Land of Spices" because it traded spices with Europe as well as with many ancient civilizations with the oldest historical records of the Sumerians from 3000 BCE.