Invention of British Curry

Classic British Curry is the sort of curry which was served by British memsahibs in colonial India in the 19th century. A cavalry officer named Colonel Arthur Kenney-Herbert, who on his eventual return to England, became a "celebrity chef" of his day. While he was in India he wrote a best selling cookery book under the pseudonym Wyvern entitled Culinary Jottings For Madras first published in 1878. Several chapters are devoted to "Curries."

The first recorded or published recipe for curry in Britain is by a woman known as Hannah Glasse. In her 1747 book The Art of Cookery which appeared in twenty editions throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, her initial recipe for 'currey' included the spices, coriander seeds and pepper. Then by the fourth edition of the book, she added ginger and turmeric. There was no mention of chilli because the chilli fruits had only been introduced to India around the late Fifteenth Century.

While Wyvern acknowledges that Indian curries are good to eat using traditional methods, they can, nevertheless, he writes, be improved upon using European methods and ingredients:

"Among other adjuncts that may be written down as indispensable are the ingredients needed to produce that suspicion of sweet-acid which it will be remembered, forms a salient feature of a superior curry. The natives of the south use a rough tamarind conserve worked, sometimes, with a very little jaggery or molasses, and a careful preparation of tamarind is decidedly valuable. Why, however, should we not improve upon this with red currant jelly and if further sharpness be needed, a little lime or lemon juice? In England, and I daresay in India also, chopped apple is sometimes used, and perhaps chopped mango, in the fool-days of the fruit, would be nice.

Curries cannot afford to dispense with the assistance of some stock or gravy. It is not uncommon to hear people say that they have eaten far better curries in England than in India, the chief reason being that Mary Jane will not undertake to make the disk without at least a breakfast-cupful and a half of good stock."

So in go red currant jelly and stock – two ingredients which could not be more remote from the cooking of south India. Wyvern's curries are made with a home-made curry powder, onions and garlic cooked in butter, a sweet-sour agent (his favourite was red currant jelly), coconut milk and meat stock. He uses additional aromatic spices like cloves, cinnamon and cardamoms and flavourings like fresh ginger and herbs to give each curry an individual flavour. Wyvern considers his curries to be on a par with the best British and French food. Here is Wyvern's recipe for Chicken Curry:

"I shall presently give a very valuable receipt for a stock household powder, one that was surrendered to me by an accomplished chatelaine, on the eve of her departure from India, as a token of the sincerest friendship. But for those who wish to avoid trouble and yet to have good curries, I strongly advocate the use of Barrie's Madras curry-powder and paste. I am not employed as an advertising medium. My advice is not the advice of a "gent" travelling for Messrs. Barrie and Co., it is the honest exhortation of one, my friends, who has the success of your curries very closely at heart.

4 lbs. of turmeric ... ... Hind, huldi.
8 lbs. of coriander-seed ... ,, dhunnia.
2 lbs. of cummin-seed ... ,, jeera.
1 lb. of poppy-seed... ... ,, khush-khush.
2 lbs. of fenugreek ... ... ,, maythi.
1 lb.. of dry-ginger... ... " sont.
1/2 lb. of mustard-seed ... ,,. rai.
1 lb. of dried chillies ... ,, sooka mirrch.
1 lb. of black pepper corns. ,, kala mirrch.

Do not be alarmed at the quantity, remembering my previous statement that curry-powder improves by keeping, if carefully secured. The amount when finally mixed will fill about half a dozen bottles of the size in which tart fruits are imported.

The coriander-seed and fenugreek must each be parched very carefully, i.e., roasted like coffee berries, before being pounded, and the other ingredients should be cleaned and dried, each separately, and, when pounded, should be well sifted.

In order to preserve the proportions after the seeds have been powdered and sifted, it is necessary to obtain much larger quantities of the various ingredients in the first instance. Coriander-seed, for example, is very oily and only a part of it will pass through the sieve; twenty-four ounces of the seed will not yield more than eight ounces of powder: eight ounces of turmeric root will give four of powder : cummin-seed loses about one-third of its original weight in the process of sifting, and dried chilli skin about half.

Weights having been tested, then the whole of the powders should be mixed, a quarter of a bottle of salt being sprinkled in by degrees during the process. The bottles, thoroughly cleansed and dried in the sun, may now be filled and corked tightly down, the tops being securely waxed over.

This is a stock powder, the flavour of which can be varied by the use of certain spices, and green leaves, garlic, onions, green ginger, almond, cocoanut, etc., at the time of cooking the curry.

The spices, which should be used according to taste and discretion, are these:- cloves (laoong), mace (jawatri), cinnamon (kulmi darchini), nutmeg (jaephal), cardamoms (eelachi), and allspice (seetul ckini gach). A salt-spoonful of one, or at most of two, of these aromatic powders blended, will suffice for a large curry.

The green leaves that are often useful when judiciously introduced are:- fennel (souf), "maythi bajee" lemon-grass (uggea-ghas), bay-leaves (tajipatha), " karay-panic," "kotemear" leaves (green coriander), etc.

When green ginger is used it should be sliced very fine, and pounded to a paste; a dessert-spoonful being sufficient for one curry.

The indispensably necessary suspicion of sweet-acid can be produced most readily by a dessert-spoonful of powdered or moist sugar and the juice of a lime, or a spoonful of vinegar. A table-spoonful of sweet chutney and the juice of a lime make a good substitute; but a table-spoonful of red currant jelly, with one of chutney, and a little vinegar of lime juice, form to my mind the nicest combination for dark curries.

I strongly advocate the very capital plan of making a fresh paste of some of the above adjuncts, in sufficient quantity for the curry in hand, and blending it with the stock powder when cooking the latter. Here is a reliable recipe :- One small onion, one clove of garlic, one dessertspoonful of turmeric, one of freshly-roasted coriander-seed, one of poppy-seed, a tea-spoonful of Nepaul pepper, one of sugar, one of salt, and one of grated green ginger. Pound all these with sufficient good salad oil to make a paste. Also pound twelve almonds, and one ounce of cocoanut, with a little lime juice to assist the operation, Then mix the two pastes, and stir into them a salt-spoonful of cinnamon or clove-powder. A heaped up table-spoonful of this paste to one of the stock powder will produce a very excellent result. Additional heat can be obtained by those who like very hot curries if red chilli powder be added to the above ingredients according to taste. This paste will keep if put away carefully and covered up.

Having satisfied ourselves as to the composition of our powder and paste,

We may now work out, step by step, the process to be followed in cooking a chicken curry.

Choose a nice young chicken - and here let me point out that large chickens nearly full grown ought never to be used in curries - and having cut it up neatly as for a fricassee, place the pieces aside, and dredge over them a little flour. Next take all the trimmings, neck, pinions, leg bones, feet, head, etc., with any scraps of meat that can be spared, and cast them into a sauce-pan with an onion sliced, a carrot sliced, half a dozen pepper corns, a bit of celery, a pinch of salt and one of sugar, cover them with cold water and make the best broth you can. When ready, strain the contents of the sauce-pan into a bowl, and skim it clean. A good breakfast-cupful of weak stock should thus be obtained. Lastly, make a breakfast-cupful of milk of cocoanut, or almond.

Now take your stew-pan, and having sliced up six good shallots, or two small white onions, cast the rings into it, with two ounces of Denmark, Normandy, or other good tinned butter; add a finely-minced clove of garlic, and fry till the onions turn a nice yellow brown. Then add a heaped-up table-spoonful of the stock powder, and one of the paste, or, if you have not made the latter, two table-spoonfuls of the powder. Cook the curry-stuff with the onions and butter for a minute or two. slowly, adding by degrees a wine-glassful of the cocoanut milk, and then also by degrees the breakfast-cupful of broth. The effect of this when simmered for a quarter of an hour will be a rich, thick, curry gravy, or sauce. The stew-pan should now be placed en bain-marie while we proceed to prepare the chicken.

Take a frying-pan: melt in it an ounce of butter, or clarified beef suet, add a shallot cut up small, and fry for a couple of minutes. Next put the pieces of chicken into the saute-pan, and lightly fry them. As soon as slightly coloured, the pieces of chicken should be transferred to the stew-pan in which they should rest for at least half an hour, marinading, as it were, in the curry gravy. After that, the stew-pan should be placed over a gentle fire, and if the liquid be found insufficient to cover the pieces of chicken, stock, if available, or water, should be added. A gentle simmering process should now be encouraged, during which the bay-leaf, chutney, and sweet-acid should be added. If powder without fresh paste has been used, the pounded almond and cocoanut must now be put in, with a little spice and grated green ginger. The curry gravy should at this period be tasted, and if a little more acid or sweet be found necessary, the proper correction should be made. As soon as the pieces of chicken have become tender, thoroughly stewed, that is to say, a coffee-cupful of cocoanut "milk," (the infusion I previously mentioned), should be stirred in, and in three minutes the operation will be complete.

If a semi-dry or dry curry be required, the gravy must be still further reduced by simmering with the lid off, the pieces of meat being continually stirred about with a wooden spoon to prevent their catching at the bottom of the pan. When the proper amount of absorption has been attained, remove the pan and serve. . .

These directions will be found practicable with most ordinary meat curries. Those made of fresh fish, prawns, and shellfish, require a somewhat different process while those of minced cooked meat, tinned or cooked fish, dressed vegetables, and hard-boiled eggs, merely require to be gently heated up in a carefully made curry gravy."

Several other recipes follow including one for The Malay or "Ceylon curry," which is milder in heat and uses the juice of the coconut. Wyvern also devotes some space to mulligatawny, a soup which seems to have originated in Victorian Madras when Indian cooks were asked to invent a soup for their British employers. They based it on the Tamil molo tunny, or pepper water, a medicinal preparation for curing stomach ailments. To the original recipe of water, black pepper, chillies, and tamarind were added the inevitable chicken stock, fried onions, chicken, and, depending on taste, rice. This mulligatawny was, as Lizzie Collingham notes in Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors (2005), one of the first examples of a hybrid Anglo-Indian cuisine which developed in British settlements in the subcontinent. Others include kedgeree and new versions of curry – which were not only exported to Britain, but spread around India.

Curry recipes were commonly taken home by returning colonials but in Britain the fresh ingredients were either hard to find or were too expensive for ordinary households in Britain. The lack of fresh curry ingredients fuelled a huge demand for curry powder. Curry powder was one of the most important products to emerge from this new Anglo-Indian cooking. The idea of 'curry powder' is a British one. In south Asia, garam masala is a mix of spices which differs across regions, shops, and households. There is no single, correct recipe for it. Curry powder is a product blended by businesses for mass consumption. Wyvern believed strongly that the basis for any good curry was a good curry powder. The first British-produced curry powder was marketed at the end of the eighteenth century, and local as well as imported brands jostled for attention on the shelves of grocers around Britain by the late 1800s. These were blander and less fiery than Indian garam masala, but found an enthusiastic audience in Britain.

Mrs Beeton includes the recipes for a dozen curries in her famous Book of Household Management of 1861 and the sauces are all made with curry powder, thickened with flour and can include some chopped apple for a sweet-sour flavour. Her main ingredient is often re-heated meat or fish left over from other meals. Even though Mrs Beeton's curries would all taste much the same they were economical to make and became extremely popular in Britain as away of using up meat from the traditional Sunday roast dinner. This type of recipe became the Classic British Curry for the next 100 years.

The decline in popularity of the traditional roast dinner and the relative affluence of a society that doesn't need to make the most of leftovers has meant that the Classic British Curry has steadily fallen out of favour since the early 1970's. Curries are now made in the style of the Indian restaurants which spread throughout Britain in the 1970's and 80's and have gone back to being more like Wyvern's version rather than Mrs Beeton's.