ˈkə-rē variants or less commonly currie. plural curries. : a food, dish, or sauce in Indian cuisine seasoned with a mixture of pungent spices. also : a food or dish seasoned with curry powder.
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What do the English mean by curry?
Sweet and murky: the British curry Four master chefs from Indian and Bangladeshi restaurants in Britain have travelled to Kolkata in India to showcase British curries at the 10-day Taste of Britain Festival. Reports say the dishes have gone down a storm for their novelty value.
- The TV cook and author Anjum Anand explains what differentiates British and Indian curries,
- The word “curry” is a very vague term in India because there are so many regions and cultures.
- Curry typically means “sauce”, though.
- The main difference between curries in India and Britain is that the British ones are a little bit sweeter and thicker.
In India, curries tend to have more sourness, mainly from the use of tomatoes, which is a traditional ingredient in the north. Nut pastes are more expensive to use in India, so they tend to be more prevalent in British curries. I’ve had some Indian friends staying with me recently and they said that they found British curries far too oily and didn’t want to eat them.
- Overall, I would say the flavours are murkier in British curries.
- British curry recipes have been restaurant led, whereas they typically come from the home in India.
- This means that the same sauces are used for different meats here, which is not the case in India where, say, chicken and lamb sauces would not be interchangeable.
The closest British curries come to anything you find in India is probably the north Indian style, typified by Punjabi cooking – lentils, potatoes, paneer with spinach and so on. But Indian food in Britain is evolving, too, with the increasing number of Keralan restaurants.
Britain’s favourite curry, chicken tikka masala, is based on the Indian dish commonly known as “butter chicken”. Chicken is marinated in yoghurt and spices, cooked in a tandoori oven, then covered in a creamy tomato sauce. The difference is the British version is slightly sweeter. Heat from chillies seems to be used in Britain to mask the taste.
A vindaloo in Britain is nothing like the true vindaloo you would be served in Goa. If you tried a restaurant dish in India it would have a medium heat. Indians wouldn’t comment on the heat of a dish really, just the taste. : Sweet and murky: the British curry
What does the word curry actually mean?
Curry is a word invented by the British back when they ruled India. It is the anglicized version of the Tamil word kari, meaning sauce and is now commonly used to describe almost any food of South Asian origin. I used to get really upset when people would use the word ‘curry’.
How did the word curry come about?
Indian chef Palak Patel explores the origins of the culturally significant cuisine. – Chef Palak traces the spread of India’s spice-laden dishes back to Portuguese, French and British colonization and shares a modern vindaloo curry recipe. The word curry always mystified me as an Indian, partially because I never made or ate curry growing up. I decided to research the origins, which led me to Simon Majumdar, a British food and travel writer and food historian. He has a very insightful perspective on curry because he was born to a Welsh mother and a Bengali father and lived in the UK. His insight about the intersection of British culture and Indian food was fascinating and a tremendous history lesson.
The origins of curry began before the British arrived in the subcontinent of India in 1608. In fact, to understand the full history, you have to go further back in the colonization timeline to when the Portuguese arrived in India in 1498 and introduced chili. Then came the Dutch in 1605, followed by the French who arrived in South India in 1664, and the new classification of Indian food for non-Indians was defined — it evolved and transformed throughout time.
Colonization not only played a critical role in transporting Indian food out of India, it reclassified classic dishes that took on their own cuisine. The Portuguese influence on curry has been the most lasting. The country’s explorers introduced pepper and vinegar to create a quintessential Portuguese-inspired dish called vindaloo in Goa.
The original vindaloo recipe had more than 20 types of peppers combined with pork, and the black pepper was mixed with tamarind water. When the coveted “black gold” was exported out of India, the Portuguese began to use red chiles instead of black pepper because they were more affordable. It’s also believed that the word curry comes from a word from the South Indian state of Tamil and means to blacken with spices.
The introduction of pepper into Indian cuisine was coupled with another significant moment in India’s history: Queen Elizabeth’s establishment of the British East India Company to counter the expansion of the Portuguese and Dutch companies. At the height of this, there were about 250,000 members of the British army residing in India, and after the 1857 Great Indian Mutiny, British bureaucrats came to India to live of their own will and were identified as Nabobs.
Their love for Indian food, access to spices and adaptation of local dishes altered to fit their palates gave birth to the modern style curry dishes that we know today. Kajeri, a popular British egg dish of rice and smoked salmon turned into a vegetarian dish made with lentils and rice, called kitchari,
Mulligantany, a Tamil word meaning pepper water, was originally used to cure digestion issues and then adopted by Indian cooks for a soup with vegetables and spices for the British. These were some of the trademark dishes that were served at elegant dinner parties.
- As the Nabobs moved around India, they took their cooks with them and spread the Indian-inspired dishes fit for British flavor profiles.
- This is how “curry cuisine” evolved.
- At the end of the 18th century, the British officially formalized spice blends known as curry powders to recreate their favorite dishes consistently in the absence of their cooks.
The first recipes for curry powder appeared in print in an English cookbook by Hannah Glasse. The availability of curry powder led to a homogenization of 20 to 30 dishes in the newly formed curry cuisine. As the Nabobs completed their posts in India and moved back to Britain, they brought this cuisine back.
- After the coronation of Queen Victoria, India sent a servant to the queen as a gift, which influenced her apparent love for curry.
- A fascination with mimicking what the queen ate led to the explosion of Indian food across Britain.
- In the late 1700s, the first Indian restaurant opened in Britain, called Hindustani Coffee House, to appease expats that returned from India.
The global expansion of this curry cuisine is a result of trade and the migrant workers in Sylhet, modern-day Bengal, many of whom jumped ship at the ports in London due to adverse conditions. Bricklane was a community center created to house and care for these workers that parlayed into Sylhette men working at Indian restaurants in London.
Where did curry come from originally?
Curry, (from Tamil kari: ‘sauce’), in Western usage, a dish composed with a sauce or gravy seasoned with a mixture of ground spices that is thought to have originated in India and has since spread to many regions of the world. The foundation of many Indian curries is a mixture of onion, ginger, and garlic.
What does curry mean in Latin?
Etymology 1 – 1747 (as currey, first published recipe for the dish in English ), from Tamil கறி ( kaṟi ), influenced by existing Middle English cury ( ” cooking ” ), from Middle French cuyre ( ” to cook ” ) (from which also cuisine ), from Vulgar Latin cocere, from Latin coquere, present active infinitive of coquō,
What does curry mean in Irish?
Curry Family History – The Curry ancient family history was found in the irishsurnames.com archives, Meaning ‘at the corrie’, Curry is a locational name from the lands of Corrie now included in the Parish of Hutton-Currie, Dumfriesshire. Variants include Corry, Corrie, Cory, Currie and Currey.
- This name is of Scottish descent spreading to Ireland, England and Wales in early times and is found in many mediaeval manuscripts throughout these countries.
- Examples of such are a Hugh de Corrie who witnessed a charter of a fishery in Torduf, in the year 1194, and a Radulph de Corry who witnessed a charter by Henry de Grahame in the year 1200.
In Ireland this name is often of immigrant origin, especially in Ulster Province, but it is also derived from the Gaelic O’Comhraidhe septs of Thomond and Moygoish.The Curry family crest (or coat of arms) came into existence many centuries ago. The process of creating these coats of arms began as early as the eleventh century although a form of Proto-Heraldry may have existed in some countries prior to this, including Ireland.
Who originally invented curry?
Sri Lankan Fish and Tomato Curry Curry is as popular today in the UK as ever. For many, a trip to a local British Indian restaurant is still a regular treat. However, more of us are now cooking curry at home. Not just the old favourites from our local British Indian restaurant.
But something we may have experienced on our travels, perhaps to Southeast Asia or the Caribbean. Curry is an important part of the cuisines of several regions around the world. It links the histories of many countries. It tells the story of early travel around the globe and of the many important trade routes.
But surprisingly curry is a term not generally used in India, despite its common use worldwide. But mainly in parts with past colonial connections. And a few without.
What is curry?
Definition of curry Where does the word curry come from?
A brief history of curry
The British in India Curry travels the world
A brief history of curry in the UK
Curry arrives in Britain The British Indian restaurant is born Curry becomes the UK’s favourite food Curry in the UK today
British Indian restaurant food
How it all started British Indian restaurant menus
Curries around the world
How did curry travel around the world? Where did curry go?
World spice blends Conclusion
What is Curry? Curry may be thought of as any Indian or Indian-style dish, usually with a sauce. But it is not a concept well recognised in India despite many Indian dishes fitting this description. It really began with the British, resident in India during the 18 th and 19 th centuries.
Do Indians call their food curry?
No Indian language uses the term, and the closest-sounding words usually just mean “sauce.” 
Simon Dawson / Reuters Curry is, supposedly, Indian. But there is no such word in any of the country’s many official languages. So what is curry? This episode takes us to India, Britain, and Japan on a quest to understand how a variety of spicy, saucy dishes ended up being lumped together under one name—and then transformed into something completely different as they were transported around the world.
- From a post-pub vindaloo in Leeds to comforting kare raisu in Kyoto, we explore the stories and flavors of curry—a dish that’s from nowhere and yet eaten nearly everywhere.
- According to Lizzie Collingham, a food historian and the author of Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors, to trace the origins of curry, we need to go back to when the Portuguese first captured Goa, India, in the early 1500s.
“And they’d say, Oooh, what are you eating?” said Collingham, “and the Indians replied using a word like khari or caril,” At the time, Collingham explained, those words likely referred to a particular spice blend, as well as the finished dish it was used in; the same words are still in use, but usually refer to a type of sauce or gravy.
Today, that’s Raghavan Iyer’s definition: He wrote a doorstop of a cookbook titled 660 Curries, and he uses curry to refer to “anything that has a sauce or gravy—it can be with or without spices.” Read: In the future, everything will be made of chickpeas But how did India’s many and varied ragouts and stews all come to be known, in some places, as curry? For that, we have to look to the British.
With Collingham’s help, Gastropod teases out the origins of dishes such as biryani and vindaloo, tracing their journey from complex, regional specialties to simplified, curry-house classics, thanks to a combination of colonialism, empire, and immigrant entrepreneurialism.
- Along the way, we pinpoint the rise of curry powder, trace curry’s global diaspora, and spend some time with Mr. Bean.
- We even get to the bottom of why the Japanese—a nation whose cuisine is defined by its exquisite aesthetic—love their own brown, gloppy version.
- Listen in now to discover the world of curry.
This post appears courtesy of Gastropod,
Is Indian food just curry?
Curries are important to Indian cuisine in an international market. Northern Indian curries are thick, usually with a tomato base so they can be scooped up by bread. Southern Indian curries are often thinner because they are served over rice. If you are looking for vegetarian options, you will probably favor the cuisine of South India, which is predominantly vegetarian.
- In contrast, the North has an extensive menu of foods that are meat based, including curries.
- The truth is, Indian food is an umbrella name for the many different cuisines of a country that has been largely reduced, in the Western mind, to curries.
- In the United States, if you ask anyone what a good Indian recipe is, you’ll probably get something that has to do with a curry or Chicken Tikka Masala.
Great Britain has even named Chicken Tikka Masala a national dish. Chicken Tikka Masala is like nothing you would find being served in India, since it is a concoction thought up by the British craving the flavors of India. Indian food is disproportionally unpopular in the United States when compared to other Asian cuisines.
This is partially because Indian food is perceived as complicated to make coupled with the fact that there is this common misconception that Indian food is simply curries. This is an unfair generalization. Indian food is complex, with even the simplest dishes having quite a few ingredients. In India, flavor is so important that spices and seasonings are found in everything from the first bite of breakfast to the final bite of dessert.
Even simple street foods are colored by one of the most expensive spices in the world, saffron, It is hard to ignore the sheer variety and amount of attention that goes into the details of every dish in India, and not just the curries.
Is curry a Western word?
Intro To Origin of Curry: – Curry originated in the Indian subcontinent and the word comes from the Indian Tamil word “Kari”meaning a sauce or soup to be eaten with rice. It consists of a mix of spices of which coriander, turmeric, cumin, and red chilies are almost always a constant. 
The four basic spices. Curries can be divided into “dry” and wet curries, according to the amount of sauce created. Dry curries resemble more spicy stir-fries. In India for example, the spices are usually tempered, meaning roasted or fried in oil before being inserted in the food, whereas in Thailand, they are usually blended together raw before being used. 
Silk Trading route, Sikkim India
What did saucy mean in Old English?
Old-fashioned. /ˈsɑː.si/ uk. /ˈsɔː.si/ rude and showing no respect, or referring to sex, especially in a humorous way : a saucy remark/manner/look.
