History of curry dish in England

A taste for curried food has a long history in United Kingdom. Curry was introduced to England as an Indian dish, and the culinary representation of Britain’s colonization of India.

It was a foodstuff that was practically synonymous with East India Company culture. Curry was the daily meal for East India Company members in India and when they returned to England, they recreated that experience in coffeehouse steeped in nostalgia.

As early as 1747, Hannah Glasse produced the first known English recipe to make ‘a currey in the Indian Way,’ in her book.

In 1861 Isabella Beeton published Book of Household Management contained a recipe for curry powder which contained coriander, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne, mustard, ginger, allspice and fenugreek, though she also noted that ready-made curry powder could be bought at any respectable shop.

On 27 March 1811, an advert appeared in the Times that announced to the retired East India Company officials of London that they would now be able to enjoy ‘Indian dishes in the highest perfection’ at the newly opened Hindostanee Coffee House.

The Indian proprietor, Sake Dean Mahomed, assured his customers that the spices, oils and herbs, for curries were all specially procured in India.

Curry moved out of London coffeehouses and onto grocery shelves, where the commercialization of ready-made curry powder helped to cultivate and polarize the taste for curry in the English culinary landscape.

While the origin of curry powders are unknown, it was said that the curry powder was invented in the 17th century as an export commodity for East India Company employees to take or send back to England.

But curry powder moved out of East India Company circles, and was gradually incorporated into English cuisine. By the late nineteenth century, curry powder had become a familiar ingredient in English kitchens.

Curries preparation became standardized after the series of world’s fairs and exhibitions, including the 1895–1896 Empire of India Exhibition in Earl’s Court, where a Curry House offered visitors ‘Eastern dishes’.
History of curry dish in England

History of curry dish in India

Definition of curry is any dish, wet or dry, flavored with curry powder – a ready-made mixture that generally includes turmeric, cumin seed, coriander seed, chilies and fenugreek.

Henry Yule and A.C Burnell, in Hobson-Jobson (1886) explained that ‘curry’ was a savory dish made up of ‘meat, fish, fruit or vegetables cooked with a quantity of bruised spices and turmeric’ served to flavor the two staple foods of the east – bread and rice.

The Tamil word ‘kari’ means a spiced sauce, one of the sorts of dressing taken in South India with rice and soupy in consistency.

The traditional South Indian ‘kari’ does not have a fixed set of ingredients, but a typical mixture was: curry leaf, coriander, cumin and mustard seeds; red and black pepper; fenugreek; turmeric; and less certainly cinnamon, cloves, cardamom.

Curries are an integral part of the cuisine of South-East Asia and Indonesia. As early as the third century BC, Indian traders and Buddhist missionaries brought tamarind, garlic, shallots, ginger, turmeric and pepper to the region.

The oldest indication of Indian curry was cited by Athenaeus from Megasthenes:
Among the Indians, at a banquet, a table is set before each individual and on the table is placed a golden dish on which they throw, first of all boiled rice and then they add many sorts of meat dressed after the India fashion.

According to the historians curry powder was invented in the 17th century as an export commodity for East India Company employees to take or send back to England. Normally curry dish mixture always freshly prepared in India. The British becoming accustomed to it and wishing to have it available in Britain, created commercial ready-mixed curry powder.
History of curry dish in India  

History of Curry Powder

Food History
By 3000 B.C. turmeric, cardamom, pepper and mustard were harvested in India. The Harappans who occupied Harappa and Mohenjodero in the Indus Valley, were of mixed stock, somewhat larger in stature than either the Sumerians or Egyptians denying theories that they were an extension of those communities. They had club wheat, barley, sheep and goats from the Iranian Plateau and cotton from Southern Arabia or North East Africa but were held back by their reliance on flood waters due to general lack of knowledge of irrigation.

Sumer had trade links with the Indus Valley via Hindu Kush by 3000 B.C. and by sea from 2500 B.C., thus linking the Harappans with both Sumerians and Egyptians, where cumin, anise and cinnamon were used for embalming by 2500 B.C.

By 1750 B.C., the Harappan civilization had disappeared, probably due to floods and tectonic shifts, to be replaced by the Aryans who invaded via Hindu Kush by 1500 B.C. The Aryans had considerable contact with Babylon from whence the original flood legend arose to be adopted by both the Aryans and the Hebrews and several other civilizations.

In Britain the term ‘curry’ has come to mean almost any Indian dish, whilst most people from the [Indian] sub-continent would say it is not a word they use, but if they did it would mean a meat, vegetable or fish dish with spicy sauce and rice or bread.

The earliest known recipe for meat in spicy sauce with bread appeared on tablets found near Babylon in Mesopotamia, written in cuniform text as discovered by the Sumerians, and dated around 1700 B.C., probably as an offering to the god Marduk.

In Richard II’s reign (1377-1399) the first real English cookery book was written. Richard employed 200 cooks and they, plus others including philosophers, produced a work with 196 recipes in 1390 called ‘The Forme of Cury’. ‘Cury’ was the Old English word for cooking derived from the French ‘cuire’ - to cook, boil, grill - hence cuisine.

Many supporters of the Tamil word kari as the basis for curry, use the definition from the excellent Hobson-Jobson Anglo English Dictionary, first published in 1886. The book quotes a passage from the Mahavanso (c A.D. 477) which says “he partook of rice dressed in butter with its full accompaniment of curries.” The important thing, however, is the note that this is Turnour’s translation of the original Pali which used the word “supa” not the word curry. Indeed Hobson -Jobson even accepts that there is a possibility that “the kind of curry used by Europeans and Mohommedans is not of purely Indian origin, but has come down from the spiced cookery of medieval Europe and Western Asia.”
Food History