10 ms·

Curry Before Columbus

82 points by Thevet 6y ago

basicplus2 6y ago
Curry is curry due to it containing tumeric, and tumeric is native to India. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turmeric https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turmeric
- diroussel 6y ago
  Ginger and turmeric look very similar. It seems that ginger came from south-east Asia. https://www.motherearthliving.com/natural-health/know-your-spice-a-brief-history-of-ginger https://www.motherearthliving.com/natural-health/know-your-s... Interesting that it was not mentioned in the older recipes in the article.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  You may as well say curry is curry because it has cumin in it, and cumin is native to India. Curry is really just a word made up by non-Indians to describe spicy gravy, or depending on who you ask, it can be used to describe any sufficiently spiced food. If you google curry potatoes, you’ll find plenty of recipes. If you google jeera aloo (which literally just translates to cumin potato) you’ll find plenty of very similar recipes. You can also find plenty of recipes for Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian... curries, and the only thing they have in common with Indian curries is use of spice and a gravy textured sauce, but using completely different spice bases and cooking techniques.
- newyankee 6y ago
  yes, i think it is not used so much in other Asian cuisines
- esperent 6y ago
  Not so. It's named after the Tamil word kari which means a dish eaten with rice and flavored with curry leaves (kari patta).
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
miguel_rdp 6y ago
An ad hominem side note: the author should try probiotics
- 55555 6y ago
  They've had serious digestive problems since they were three years old and appear extremely well educated. They almost certainly have tried probiotics.
twoslide 6y ago
I've spent about 3 years in India, through a combination of work and family, and rarely see anything called "curry" on menus. Part of what this author seems to be getting at is that "curry" reflects a colonial viewpoint that homogenizes groups outsite the west. Thus, Indians, Thais and Japanese food has "curries" (even though these curries are very different from one another). In contrast Hungarians have "Goulash."
- karatinversion 6y ago
  Note though that the Japanese call their curry カレー ("karee"), and adopted it via the British, so it's not appropriate to call its name a colonial viewpoint.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    The Japanese Navy apparently acquired a "curry" tradition from the British Royal Navy https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-curry-history https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-curry-history NB Jared Diamond's book Upheaval mentions how Japan reacted to a crisis in the 19th century by going out and seeking the best sources to copy - for naval matters that happened to be the Royal Navy and curry came with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upheaval:_How_Nations_Cope_with_Crisis_and_Change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upheaval:_How_Nations_Cope_wit...
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      > Japan reacted to a crisis in the 19th century by going out and seeking the best sources to copy That would be the Meiji Restoration, where the Japanese decided they were tired of being kicked around and were going to reform and westernize on their terms. They chose to model their Navy off of the British, and their Army off of the Prussians (though in both cases they ended up with advisors from all over the place, like the US and Italy). No evidence that they copied the British tradition for Pussers and regular rum rations. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_ration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_ration
ggm 6y ago
... curry leaf gets a mention. So let's talk about curry leaf in the context of curry not being a 'thing' ... I have a curry leaf plant and we use it in our dal, and in rogan josh (a curry but also not a curry) and spinach and potato diahes
reactspa 6y ago
2 other potential sources of the word "curry" - kadhai (Indian wok) - Kari patta: a spicy leaf, staple in South Indian cuisine (and very tasty)
- twic 6y ago
  So no connection to "cury" then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury
  - stevula 6y ago
    According to Wiktionary, the existing Middle English word "cury" (= "cooking") may have influenced the word. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curry#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curry#Etymology_1
- chin7an 6y ago
  There's also kadhi[1], which interestingly is not the same dish as the Tamil 'kari'. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadhi
mrob 6y ago
Although I don't read medieval Persian, my guess is that "burned vegetable oil" would be better translated as "mustard oil heated to its smoke point". Mustard oil was (and still is) a common cooking oil in the region, and heating it to high temperature reduces the pungent taste.
patrickaljord 6y ago
I've lived in Peru which also has a very spicy cuisine (many chilis come from the Andes). However, you'd be surprised at the amount of locals who confessed to me they didn't like food that is too spicy (they like it mildly spiced, or white people spiced as the article says) or spicy at all. It wouldn't surprise me if these two combined would represent 50% of the population. Could be the same in India.
- vishnugupta 6y ago
  There’s a tendency to conflate “spicy” flavor with “chilly” or “hot”. They are two orthogonal parameters, you could dial (up or down) them independent of each other. Most spices aren’t chilly, they add unique smell and flavor without burning the tongue. Coming to India, almost every cuisine is spicy for sure. At least I don’t know of one that is not. Indians grow up immersed in spicy food and can’t live without it. And to be honest once your palette gets used to spicy flavor it’s hard to go back to bland food. Anecdotally I’ve heard many westerns complain about blandness of their food once they are used to Indian flavor. Very few Indian cuisines dual up “hot” knob. Andhra Pradesh cuisine is an example of that. It’s almost at the limit of not killing the flavor. So to summarize about India, we almost universally love spicy food. Some of us like it hot too
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
    Hotness is relative though: they may not "dial it up" by Indian standards, but chili still makes its way into almost everything. A Russian colleague of mine visiting Delhi, not generally regarded as a hotbed of hotness, found virtually everything except dal makhani inedibly spicy -- because she was used to Russian food, where chilis traditionally don't feature at all. India is also one of the few places I've been to where chilis are regularly used for breakfast dishes and even drinks like aam ka panna (spicy green mango juice).
    - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
      Sure but did she find it spicy as in "having copious amounts of spice" or spicy as "a taste similar to food that is of a high temperature" or spicy as in "off-gassing something that irritates one's nasal passages" (I don't really consider this last one "spicy" or "hot" but many people do so I'm including it)? To reply that "hotness is relative" without clarifying which usage of the word you mean or implying that your friend in the anecdote even made that clarification is exactly what the person you are replying to is complaining about. This limitation of colloquial English where the word "spicy" is overloaded to refer to all three axis of "spicy" at the same time and hot is also (though less frequently) overloaded in the same manner is exactly what we're discussing. You can have something that's not very "hot" be very "spicy" on one of the other two axis. Try eating a tablespoon of cinnamon or that Chinese mustard that comes with takeout. European food that is "spicy" on one axis but nearly zero on the other two is rare hence why this overloading exists and isn't really a problem when discussing food from anywhere that doesn't have a rainy season.
BelleOfTheBall 6y ago
This is a bit of a rant but people who try one or two dishes from a foreign cuisine and claim to be great lovers of it and experts on it are one of my biggest pet peeves. I've had friends who visited Germany once, ate a Currywurst and a schnitzel and proceeded to bore everyone to death with their tales of how rich the cuisine is and how wonderfully varied it is, how deeply they've explored it. I'm glad when people find food that they like but it feels like many only take the base 5-10% of any cuisine (including their native one sometimes) and just build off of that, never digging deeper. I'm a pretty picky eater but I do my best to try different foods if only to actually understand a cuisine and see if I like it or if I'm just partial to the base level of street-food treats and "if you're a tourist, try this" meals.
sajithdilshan 6y ago
As Sri Lankans, "Curry" for us would be a dish made by mixing a variety of powdered spices with coconut milk and made into a sauce. If this sauce is cooked along with chicken it's called chicken curry and so on. But it has to be a dish made out of coconut milk and spices.
bogomipz 6y ago
Indeed the versatile tomato could almost be seen historically as a calling card from the Portuguese. In Brazil one can eat Moquecas which are a spicy tomato-based stew which sometimes resemble the the spicy fish curries in the South of India. And in the US red chowder which is often inexplicably called "Manhattan chowder" is actually Rhode Island clam chowder, Rhode Island being a state with a large Portuguese population. And in Portugal itself Refogado is tomato sauce that forms the basis of many wonderful stews, soups and rice dishes there.
Finnucane 6y ago
Just before the lockdown I threw away some hing that had been on my spice rack for a long time. Way longer than one should keep spices. So I went to the local spice shop to stock up on some items, including a fresh jar of asefetida. I had forgotten how pungent it is when fresh. Now when I open the cabinet it hits me.
- rob74 6y ago
  Interesting! I have never heard of this particular spice before, although I may have already eaten it at an Indian restaurant. As to the "pungent" part, it's already in the name: > The English name is derived from asa, a latinised form of Persian azā, meaning "resin", and Latin foetidus meaning "smelling, fetid", which refers to its strong sulfurous odour The German names are even less flattering: > Asant (Ferula assa-foetida), auch bekannt als Stinkasant oder Teufelsdreck - "stinking asant" or "devil's dirt"...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - subpixel 6y ago
    I only learned about it when attempting to cook Indian food via YouTube recipes. A game changer!
- frandroid 6y ago
  I keep my bottle of hing in another bottle.

82 points by Thevet 6y ago

Curry is curry due to it containing tumeric, and tumeric is native to India. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turmeric https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turmeric

diroussel 6y ago
Ginger and turmeric look very similar. It seems that ginger came from south-east Asia. https://www.motherearthliving.com/natural-health/know-your-spice-a-brief-history-of-ginger https://www.motherearthliving.com/natural-health/know-your-s... Interesting that it was not mentioned in the older recipes in the article.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
You may as well say curry is curry because it has cumin in it, and cumin is native to India. Curry is really just a word made up by non-Indians to describe spicy gravy, or depending on who you ask, it can be used to describe any sufficiently spiced food. If you google curry potatoes, you’ll find plenty of recipes. If you google jeera aloo (which literally just translates to cumin potato) you’ll find plenty of very similar recipes. You can also find plenty of recipes for Thai, Indonesian, Malaysian... curries, and the only thing they have in common with Indian curries is use of spice and a gravy textured sauce, but using completely different spice bases and cooking techniques.
newyankee 6y ago
yes, i think it is not used so much in other Asian cuisines
esperent 6y ago
Not so. It's named after the Tamil word kari which means a dish eaten with rice and flavored with curry leaves (kari patta).

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

miguel_rdp 6y ago

An ad hominem side note: the author should try probiotics

55555 6y ago
They've had serious digestive problems since they were three years old and appear extremely well educated. They almost certainly have tried probiotics.

twoslide 6y ago

I've spent about 3 years in India, through a combination of work and family, and rarely see anything called "curry" on menus. Part of what this author seems to be getting at is that "curry" reflects a colonial viewpoint that homogenizes groups outsite the west. Thus, Indians, Thais and Japanese food has "curries" (even though these curries are very different from one another). In contrast Hungarians have "Goulash."

karatinversion 6y ago
Note though that the Japanese call their curry カレー ("karee"), and adopted it via the British, so it's not appropriate to call its name a colonial viewpoint.
- arethuza 6y ago
  The Japanese Navy apparently acquired a "curry" tradition from the British Royal Navy https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-curry-history https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-curry-history NB Jared Diamond's book Upheaval mentions how Japan reacted to a crisis in the 19th century by going out and seeking the best sources to copy - for naval matters that happened to be the Royal Navy and curry came with that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upheaval:_How_Nations_Cope_with_Crisis_and_Change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upheaval:_How_Nations_Cope_wit...
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    > Japan reacted to a crisis in the 19th century by going out and seeking the best sources to copy That would be the Meiji Restoration, where the Japanese decided they were tired of being kicked around and were going to reform and westernize on their terms. They chose to model their Navy off of the British, and their Army off of the Prussians (though in both cases they ended up with advisors from all over the place, like the US and Italy). No evidence that they copied the British tradition for Pussers and regular rum rations. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_Restoration and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_ration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rum_ration

ggm 6y ago

... curry leaf gets a mention. So let's talk about curry leaf in the context of curry not being a 'thing' ... I have a curry leaf plant and we use it in our dal, and in rogan josh (a curry but also not a curry) and spinach and potato diahes

reactspa 6y ago

2 other potential sources of the word "curry" - kadhai (Indian wok) - Kari patta: a spicy leaf, staple in South Indian cuisine (and very tasty)

twic 6y ago
So no connection to "cury" then: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forme_of_Cury
- stevula 6y ago
  According to Wiktionary, the existing Middle English word "cury" (= "cooking") may have influenced the word. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curry#Etymology_1 https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curry#Etymology_1
chin7an 6y ago
There's also kadhi[1], which interestingly is not the same dish as the Tamil 'kari'. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kadhi

mrob 6y ago

Although I don't read medieval Persian, my guess is that "burned vegetable oil" would be better translated as "mustard oil heated to its smoke point". Mustard oil was (and still is) a common cooking oil in the region, and heating it to high temperature reduces the pungent taste.

patrickaljord 6y ago

I've lived in Peru which also has a very spicy cuisine (many chilis come from the Andes). However, you'd be surprised at the amount of locals who confessed to me they didn't like food that is too spicy (they like it mildly spiced, or white people spiced as the article says) or spicy at all. It wouldn't surprise me if these two combined would represent 50% of the population. Could be the same in India.

vishnugupta 6y ago
There’s a tendency to conflate “spicy” flavor with “chilly” or “hot”. They are two orthogonal parameters, you could dial (up or down) them independent of each other. Most spices aren’t chilly, they add unique smell and flavor without burning the tongue. Coming to India, almost every cuisine is spicy for sure. At least I don’t know of one that is not. Indians grow up immersed in spicy food and can’t live without it. And to be honest once your palette gets used to spicy flavor it’s hard to go back to bland food. Anecdotally I’ve heard many westerns complain about blandness of their food once they are used to Indian flavor. Very few Indian cuisines dual up “hot” knob. Andhra Pradesh cuisine is an example of that. It’s almost at the limit of not killing the flavor. So to summarize about India, we almost universally love spicy food. Some of us like it hot too
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  Hotness is relative though: they may not "dial it up" by Indian standards, but chili still makes its way into almost everything. A Russian colleague of mine visiting Delhi, not generally regarded as a hotbed of hotness, found virtually everything except dal makhani inedibly spicy -- because she was used to Russian food, where chilis traditionally don't feature at all. India is also one of the few places I've been to where chilis are regularly used for breakfast dishes and even drinks like aam ka panna (spicy green mango juice).
  - throwaway0a5e 6y ago
    Sure but did she find it spicy as in "having copious amounts of spice" or spicy as "a taste similar to food that is of a high temperature" or spicy as in "off-gassing something that irritates one's nasal passages" (I don't really consider this last one "spicy" or "hot" but many people do so I'm including it)? To reply that "hotness is relative" without clarifying which usage of the word you mean or implying that your friend in the anecdote even made that clarification is exactly what the person you are replying to is complaining about. This limitation of colloquial English where the word "spicy" is overloaded to refer to all three axis of "spicy" at the same time and hot is also (though less frequently) overloaded in the same manner is exactly what we're discussing. You can have something that's not very "hot" be very "spicy" on one of the other two axis. Try eating a tablespoon of cinnamon or that Chinese mustard that comes with takeout. European food that is "spicy" on one axis but nearly zero on the other two is rare hence why this overloading exists and isn't really a problem when discussing food from anywhere that doesn't have a rainy season.

BelleOfTheBall 6y ago

This is a bit of a rant but people who try one or two dishes from a foreign cuisine and claim to be great lovers of it and experts on it are one of my biggest pet peeves. I've had friends who visited Germany once, ate a Currywurst and a schnitzel and proceeded to bore everyone to death with their tales of how rich the cuisine is and how wonderfully varied it is, how deeply they've explored it. I'm glad when people find food that they like but it feels like many only take the base 5-10% of any cuisine (including their native one sometimes) and just build off of that, never digging deeper. I'm a pretty picky eater but I do my best to try different foods if only to actually understand a cuisine and see if I like it or if I'm just partial to the base level of street-food treats and "if you're a tourist, try this" meals.

sajithdilshan 6y ago

As Sri Lankans, "Curry" for us would be a dish made by mixing a variety of powdered spices with coconut milk and made into a sauce. If this sauce is cooked along with chicken it's called chicken curry and so on. But it has to be a dish made out of coconut milk and spices.

bogomipz 6y ago

Indeed the versatile tomato could almost be seen historically as a calling card from the Portuguese. In Brazil one can eat Moquecas which are a spicy tomato-based stew which sometimes resemble the the spicy fish curries in the South of India. And in the US red chowder which is often inexplicably called "Manhattan chowder" is actually Rhode Island clam chowder, Rhode Island being a state with a large Portuguese population. And in Portugal itself Refogado is tomato sauce that forms the basis of many wonderful stews, soups and rice dishes there.

Finnucane 6y ago

Just before the lockdown I threw away some hing that had been on my spice rack for a long time. Way longer than one should keep spices. So I went to the local spice shop to stock up on some items, including a fresh jar of asefetida. I had forgotten how pungent it is when fresh. Now when I open the cabinet it hits me.

rob74 6y ago
Interesting! I have never heard of this particular spice before, although I may have already eaten it at an Indian restaurant. As to the "pungent" part, it's already in the name: > The English name is derived from asa, a latinised form of Persian azā, meaning "resin", and Latin foetidus meaning "smelling, fetid", which refers to its strong sulfurous odour The German names are even less flattering: > Asant (Ferula assa-foetida), auch bekannt als Stinkasant oder Teufelsdreck - "stinking asant" or "devil's dirt"...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- subpixel 6y ago
  I only learned about it when attempting to cook Indian food via YouTube recipes. A game changer!
frandroid 6y ago
I keep my bottle of hing in another bottle.