The Philosophy of Curry

Introduction Curry is strongly associated with Indian food – so much
so that as an Indian I can barely talk to a stranger without
being asked about curry ingredients and recipes. However,
Indian curries don’t even appear to be that popular any
more. In a 2021 poll curry doesn’t feature in the nation’s
top fifty-seven dishes, although in another questionnaire
from the same year, Indian was the second most-loved takeaway
after Chinese, above fish and chips. In a worldwide
survey of twenty-four countries in 2019, Indian was only the
fourth cuisine of choice in Britain after British, Italian and
Chinese. And chicken tikka masala is no longer Britain’s
top curry – a 2016 vote put chicken korma at number one.1
Moreover, in a CNN Travel survey of the World’s Fifty
Best Foods updated in 2021,2 there are three curries to be
found, but none are Indian: South Africa’s bunny chow,
Indonesian rendang and Thai massaman, which came in at
number one. I know these ballots can be arbitrary and only a
tiny population of the world votes in them, but they can also
be a useful barometer of changing tastes. The Indian dishes
on the CNN list are in fact masala dosa and garlic butter crab,
which would surely please the ‘curry deniers’ no end.
Curry deniers are Indians, often from the diaspora, who
hate the term ‘curry’. During the writing of this book a controversy
erupted when an American-Indian ‘influencer’
urged people to ‘cancel the word because of its association
with colonialism’. It was a clumsily worded statement, but
it reflects a growing resentment of the use of the word. ‘But
there’s no such thing as curry!’ was a common response
when some Indian acquaintances heard I was writing this
book. One even helpfully suggested I drop the word ‘curry’
from the title and write a book on philosophy instead.
Perhaps it was Madhur Jaffrey who fired the first shot by
writing in 1973’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking:
To me the word ‘curry’ is as degrading to India’s great cuisine
as the term ‘chop suey’ was to China’s … ‘Curry’ is
just a vague, inaccurate word which the world has picked
up from the British, who, in turn, got it mistakenly from
us… If ‘curry’ is an oversimplified name for an ancient
cuisine, then ‘curry powder’ attempts to oversimplify (and
destroy) the cuisine itself.
Jaffrey later changed her mind because she went on to write
the Ultimate Curry Bible, and other cookbooks with the
word ‘curry’ in their title.
The argument is that the word dumbs down a hugely
complex and varied cuisine into one catch-all term thatdoesn’t reflect regional diversity. There’s so much more
to Indian food than curries: dumplings, pancakes, stirfries,
noodles, fritters, savoury porridges and an enormous
variety of snacks and street foods. Additionally curry is
only one of many genres of dishes in a thali, comprising
flatbreads, rice, dal or another legume, meat or another protein,
vegetables, pickles and relishes.
In ancient India rice was the main dish: it was piled up
high on a plate, and the savoury accompaniments – no
distinction was made between sauced dishes and pickles
– were only eaten in tiny quantities like relishes. Then
Europeans came along, turning the rice:relish ratio the
other way around and, it seems, randomly singling out
one category of dishes for special attention. They could
have chosen dal, a staple in every Indian household, or rice
– which was cooked in increasingly clever, complex and
competitive ways in Mughlai kitchens – but instead they
shone a light on curry. One reason they did so is because
they were used to eating meat cooked in a different way –
roasted, boiled or baked – and they found the method of
cooking small pieces of meat on a stove top fascinating.
Many Indians are also keen to distance themselves
from what they regard as ‘downmarket Bangladeshi curry
houses’, which they associate with greasy curries and use of
food colouring, with some expressing anger about restaurants
misrepresenting ‘real Indian home cooking’.
But it is curry’s association with colonialism that is the
biggest problem. One curry denier asked me recently: ‘Why
should I call a dish curry just because a British coloniser
called Mr Curry loved Indian food so much that someone
decided to name it after him?’ Although curry does
have an association with colonialism, this speculation is
incorrect.
For others it brings back painful memories of being told
by other schoolchildren in the playground that they smell
of curry – the kind of racism that persists even today for
adults living in apartment blocks in some European cities,
who’ve been told not to cook curry in case the smell offends
their neighbours.
But here’s the thing. For every Indian who says they
didn’t grow up using the word curry or buying curry powder
there are many others who did. Each Indian person’s
experience is limited to that within their own family, so generalisations
about the widely varying food habits of other
communities are pointless.
In India curries are often called ‘gravy’ or ‘masala’, and
may be referred to as ‘restaurant-style’ or ‘hotel-style’. The
word has South Indian origins, as we’ll see in the next chapter,
but the most common type of restaurant food in India
is Punjabi or Mughlai (South Indian restaurants have a different
history based on temple food and the mass feeding
of pilgrims).
So in India curry frequently refers to North Indian
dishes, often cooked in a tomato and onion-based gravy.
Regional curries are known by specific names like sabzi,shaak,
salna, salan, palya, poriyal, fry, jhol, rassa, kuzhambu,
saagu, erissery, gassi, pulusu and so on. These are all varieties
of curries named after ingredient, consistency, texture
or technique.

32 b/w photos

Helpful advice on which oils to use, how to temper spices and where to find those all-important mouth-watering recipes.

Continues a growing British Library series of popular food & drink-related Philosophies on cheese, tea, beer and gin.

Various food historians have claimed over the centuries that curry comes from the Tamil word kari, which means either black pepper, spices generally, a spiced accompaniment to rice, a sauce, sautéed meat and vegetable dishes, or ‘to eat by biting’, depending on who you ask. They have also claimed that the word has roots not only in Tamil, but also in the Kannada and Malayalam languages.

Medieval European food was heavily influenced by Arab cookery. Arab traders controlled the spice trade, but the high prices were becoming prohibitive, leading to a need for Europeans to find a direct route. With its ideal location between east and west, the port of Venice became the centre of a thriving trade for centuries, from where spices were exported overland to the rest of Europe via the Silk Road

Despite never having visited India, Queen Victoria was fascinated by the country and loved hearing about it. She had a few Indian servants and was particularly fond of one named Abdul Karim, who grew to be influential. Instead of having them wait on her, she asked them to cook chicken curries, which she loved, and ordered curries to be on the menu of her Isle of Wight retreat, Osborne House.

During the Second World War, army cooks were given monthly supplies of curry powder and shown how to make curries using raisins, tropical fruit and a roux made of curry powder and plain flour. Many British men who’d never eaten a curry before got their first taste in the army or navy.

The first curry recipes appeared in a regional American cookbook, The Virginia Housewife, or Methodical Cook(1824) by Mary Randolph (1762–1828), which lists chicken curry ‘after the East India manner’, catfish curry and curry powder. Like Anglo-Indian curries, early American curries contained apples, bananas and sultanas. I have even seen modern recipes that include fresh or evaporated milk, salted peanuts, bacon bits, cranberries and Coca-Cola.

Introduction 1
What Is Curry? 7
Earliest Indian Curries 11
Indian Food: From Prehistoric Times to
the Colonial Era 17
Anglo-Indian and British Curries 31
Curry Powder 51
How Curry Came to Britain 55
Popular Indian Restaurant Curries 71
Korma 71
Tikka Masala 72
Vindaloo 73
Madras 74
Jalfrezi 75
Dopiaza 76
Rogan Josh 77
Dhansak 77
Pasanda 78
Phall 78
Curries Around the World 81
Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore 82
Thailand 86
Japan 87
Mauritius 90
South Africa 90
Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Jamaica 92
America 93
Last Words 97
Notes 101
Further Reading 103
List of Illustrations 105