Curry claims

It is widely thought that the word “curry” comes from the South Indian word “kari”, meaning sauce. In his exceptionally hefty tome Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson quotes this as fact with a reference to the accounts from a Dutch traveller in 1598 referring to a dish called “Carriel”. He also refers to a Portuguese cookery book from the seventeenth century called Atre do Cozinha, with chilli-based curry powder called “caril”.

On the other hand, Camellia Panjabi, in her book 50 Great Curries of India, says the word in today’s terms simply means "gravy". She also plumps for the Tamil word "kaari" or "kaaree" as the origin, but with some reservations, noting that in the north, where the English first landed in 1608 then 1612, a gravy dish is called "khadi".

Whatever the correct linguistic origin for the word “curry” (or to further complicate things, in cockney rhyming slang term - “Ruby murray”) may be, it’s not a term used regularly on the subcontinent. In fact some curries, including our beloved chicken tikka masala, bear no relation to everyday meals produced in India, although in a supreme example of 'coals-to-Newcastle'-style international trade, several British firms now sell CTM to India.

Nevertheless, it seems safe to say that chips ‘n’ curry might take a very long time to find itself a culinary home on the bustling streets of Calcutta or Mumbai!

Cultural roots

“Ninety nine per cent of Indians do not have a tandoor and so neither Tandoori Chicken nor Naan are part of India’s middle class cuisine. Ninety five per cent of Indians don’t know what a vindaloo, jhal farezi or, for that matter, a Madras curry is.” (Camellia Panjabi)

Since the days of the British Raj, we have, however, certainly adopted and coined the term “curry” to describe the various hot and spicy stews and soups of which there are thousands in India. Most of them contain the same basic ingredients such as garlic, chillies, cumin, ginger, turmeric, oil and onions. Yogurt, cream and groundnuts are also commonly used.

Ode to curry

The first known British recipe for modern ‘currey’ dates back to 1747 and was produced by Hannah Glasse for the Glasse’s Art of Cookery.  By 1773 at least one London coffee house had curry on the menu.

The first commercial curry powder appeared in 1780, and by 1846 curry’s fame was assured when William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863) penned a ‘Poem to Curry’ in his ‘ Kitchen Melodies’.

"Poem to Curry"

Three pounds of veal my darling girl prepares,

And chops it nicely into little squares;

Five onions next prures the little minx

(The biggest are the best, her Samiwel thinks),

And Epping butter nearly half a pound,

And stews them in a pan until they’re brown’d.

What’s next my dexterous little girl will do?

She pops the meat into the savoury stew,

With curry-powder table-spoonfuls three,

And milk a pint (the richest that may be),

And, when the dish has stewed for half an hour,

A lemon’s ready juice she’ll o’er it pour.

Then, bless her! Then she gives the luscious pot

A very gentle boil - and serves quite hot.

PS - Beef, mutton, rabbit, if you wish,

Lobsters, or prawns, or any kind fish,

Are fit to make a CURRY. ‘Tis, when done,

A dish for Emperors to feed upon.

Isabella Mary Mayson (1836-1865), universally known as Mrs Beeton got in on the act in 1861 by publishing no less than 14 curry recipes in her Book of Household Management.

Fusion food

There are various theories as to exactly who invented the dish chicken tikka masala, when and where. But it is widely thought that the decisive moment happened totally ad hoc – in a busy kitchen in either an Indian restaurant in Birmingham or Glasgow.

According to a 2007 Time magazine article, having tired of incessant questions about chicken tikka’s lack of sauce, a savvy British-based Indian chef decided to mix Campbell's tomato soup with some spices and be done with it. The gravy-like sauce he unwittingly created was a magical turning point, at least to British palates!

So the provenance of CTM is rather hazy, but on the whole chicken tikka masala is made with tikka meat, in other words, meat that has been marinated and cooked on skewers in a Tandoor oven. Chicken tikka is a traditional Indian dish. The masala is the curry sauce that the tikka meat is served in. The sauce (usually) consists of tomato, cream and yoghurt with lots of turmeric and cumin. However, living up to its hybrid history, CTM will often be cooked up from a wide range of variable ingredients - as a 1998 survey by the Real Curry Restaurant Guide testifies. Of 48 different CTMs tested and tasted in the survey, the only common ingredient was chicken.

But therein lies the beauty of CTM. It’s a mongrel dish, or to coin a more fashionable phrase – “fusion food” - delightful in its fuzzy origin and tampered-with authenticity. A fine example of Anglo/Asian cuisine, it is a blueprint for mixing up a little bit of this with a little bit of that, and coming up with something rather fabulous.

Most of us are well aware that the ubiquitous curry we enjoyed after the pub on Friday night with its prerequisite cans of lager, giant piles of poppadums and big plate of creamy CTM, is not a template for India’s finest, most authentic cuisine. But it is the result of years and years of two separate cultures being thrown into a big pot to simmer away, shifting and evolving, until something wholly unique and yet still representative of its initial (cultural) ingredients is created.

 

English food still gets bad press from our foreign neighbours and yet our cuisine is arguably one of the best in the world. One of its strongest qualities is the way it incorporates a feast of cultural influences, making our national cuisine literally a cultural hotpot. You can hop around the world through your palate in this country’s capital city alone - the pure range and diversity of food in this country is dazzling.

Whether this wonderful diversity is down to the British Empire causing so many of the world's disparate cooks to try their luck over here, or because they felt so sorry for the derisory state of British cuisine they simply had to open restaurants remains a culinary conundrum…

Either way, our love of Indian food seems especially fervent, so much so, we even went as far as to invent not only one spin-off dish all of our own, but two!

 
So, as we’ve discovered, chicken tikka masala is a by-product of astute, clever chefs adapting an original recipe to cater for their host market. But when exactly, and why, did we take curry to our bosom – making the dish a national obsession?  Did we just get really bored of our meat and two veg dinner and decide to spice up our lives - literally? Read on...