What is curry?

Cuisine or construct? RUSHANI EPA retraces the history of the saucy, spicy dish across the Indian subcontinent and its diaspora.

What exactly is a curry? Curry can denote anything from a stew to a silky, saucy number, a viscous, gravy-based meal, a soup, or even a dry-fried spiced dish made by any culture from across the world, but most notably the Indian subcontinent.

The term could have originated from the Tamil word “kari” meaning spiced sauce but British food historian and writer Dr Elizabeth Collingham claimed it all began when the Portuguese colonised Goa on India’s west coast in the early 1500s. The Portuguese heard Goans saying the word “kari” or “caril” and adopted it. Later, the British claimed it as “curry” and spread it across the world. Used broadly, the unspecified use of the word can erase the unique names of dishes in their mother dialects, making these dishes more approachable to the West.

Back in the UK, high-end grocers stocked curry powders and chutneys based on flavours they thought resembled those found in Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. All the food across Madras, now known as Chennai, in India’s south, was distilled into one uniform curry powder, and Madras curry still populates menus to this day. The kicker is that it isn’t even Indian; it’s a British creation, just like the word “curry” itself.

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