How Indian food curried favour with the British, and vice versa

In 2021 California-based Instagram food blogger Chaheti Bansal made a heartfelt plea on social media to “cancel the word curry” in a post viewed by millions.

Curry, said the young Indian-American, was an “umbrella term popularised by white people who couldn’t be bothered to learn the actual names of our dishes”.

Chaheti Bansal, a food blogger who claimed the word ‘curry’ should be banned because it is a hangover from British colonialism. Photo: Handout

Whether you agree or not, it is certainly true that food is a combination of geography, history and cultural influences. After the arrival of the British in hot and humid India in the 1600s, they had to learn to adapt to the spicy concoctions of Indian cooks and often yearned for food back home.

“British food was incredibly bland and they thought pepper was the beginning and end of spice,” said food anthropologist Kurush Dalal. “They came to India not for the empire initially, as many think, but for trade and its spices. Like all colonisers and diaspora, they adapted to the country where they set up home and discovered a world of flavours and spices.”

A Suez Canal opening celebration in 1869. File photo: SCMP magazine

Before the Suez Canal opened in 1869, reducing the travelling distance between India and Britain by around 4,500 miles, British women often stayed at home to avoid the arduous journey.

One side-effect of this was that their husbands, whether troops or officials, often formed attachments, or even set up households, with native women. After the canal was built, though, many wives started travelling to India. Whereas they tended not to enjoy the spicy food they encountered, their men were often by now not happy eating simply-prepared roast beef and potatoes.

A traditional British roast beef Sunday lunch. British troops and officials in India during colonial rule began to alter their eating habits after tucking into Indian cuisine. File photo: Courtesy of Jimmy’s Kitchen.

Indian spices were thus gradually introduced into British food and a tasty culinary crossover emerged. The British “memsahibs” – married white women of “high” status – learned from their Indian cooks and shared with them the finer aspects of British food, leading to a mixed Anglo-Indian cuisine.

That said, it was not simply culinary delights all the way from then on. Colleen Taylor Sen in her book ‘Feasts and Fasts: A history of Food in India’ said: “The official and social dinners held by the British still served multiple courses of bland food, with legs of lamb, boiled chicken and saddles of mutton.”

Cookbooks written for British memsahibs “to make their life easier in India had mostly British and European dishes, and recipes for Indian food were relegated to separate chapters and often referred to in derogatory terms”.

Authors including Bridget White Kumar have documented Anglo Indian cooking such as Yellow Rice and Chicken Curry. Photo: Bridget White Kumar

The greatest Indian legacy on British cooking was undoubtedly curry, the word derived from the Tamil Kari, a thin sauce on rice. Historians believe the iconic dish was developed by the British and their Indian cooks in the 18th century. Curries came into favour with the British initially as a way to use up leftover meat, influenced by the northern Indian Mughal style of cooking using spices, dried fruit and nuts.

Indians did not really use the generic word “curry” and had many other names including kurma or salan whereas “the British called any dish of vegetables or meat doused with a spicy sauce, a curry,” said Rakesh Raghunathan, a food historian and TV host.

Soon curry was making mouths water around the world. “Indian merchants started making a powdered version like a garam masala so the British could take it to Europe. British companies also started manufacturing curry powders and selling them to colonial subjects in other colonies.”

Pickles for sale at a market in Old Delhi. File photo: Rakesh Kumar

Meanwhile khichdi, a protein-rich rice and lentils breakfast dish and comfort food for many Indians, was eaten by British troops posted to the coast of southern India. They were soon devouring their own version, lentils omitted, which then arrived in England as a breakfast called kedgeree with rice, fish pieces and hard-boiled eggs, served with butter or cream.

Chutneys (derived from the Hindi word for licking) was another Indian spin-off, evolved from the preservation technique used for pickles over centuries. When the British came to India they realised these chutneys and preserves, made with the likes of fruit, onions, brown sugar and spices, could add verve and vigour to their own unexciting fare. So they took them back home too, as well as to other colonies.

Another slice of history is the Chicken Dak Bungalow curry. During the British Raj (1858-1947), letters were sent via horseback to the different post offices. The dak (postal house) bungalows built so riders and their horses could rest became rest houses for travellers, their namesake curry evolving when cooks in far-off outposts improvised using whatever they had.

Similarly, when British officers travelled by train their cooks went too. One dish invented on a long journey by resourceful chefs was the Railway Mutton curry using English and Indian spices, coconut milk and potatoes, and served with dinner rolls.

An Indian family enjoy a picnic by the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, India. The museum, built with “voluntary contributions” from Indian princes and the local elite, was completed in 1921 at the start of the decline of the British Raj. File photo: Marion Lloyd

Indian cooks in British households were also taught to make desserts and cakes for high teas and dinner parties while the British introduced India to tea drinking. Afternoon tea with cake, sandwiches and Indian samosas became a colonial staple.

While Anglo Indian cuisine was influenced by various European settlements in India, like the Portuguese, the strongest influence was undoubtedly the British. “Bread puddings and custard are standard Indian comfort food today,” said Dalal.

The British left India more than seven decades ago but are still very much present in the food, just as Indian influences are vital ingredients in modern British kitchens. After all, cuisines are but platters of assimilation, with different cultures and heritages perfectly uniting in ways politics can only hope to replicate.