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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

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
leg100 6y ago
It's rather trite to go on about how the word "curry" is a crude term that glosses over the rich variety of regional cuisines between and within various countries. Anyone who wants to engage in oneupmanship know-it-all will stress its inauthenticity. Yet it is a useful term - as someone else has mentioned - to refer to meat/veg in spicy gravy sauce associated with certain countries. Just because it's a word developed outside of India doesn't mean it isn't meaningful.
AmericanChopper 6y ago
To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. The more relevant criticism of the word boils down to the facts that it doesn’t really mean anything to Indians, and that it’s meaning is so poorly defined that it barely means anything at all. The word can be used to refer to pretty much any Indian food, which is simply a poor categorization, and that use would wind up a lot of Indian people. The other use case is pretty much anything that has a spiced gravy. But a ragu uses spiced gravy as much as a butter chicken does, and most people wouldn’t call a ragu a curry. So it must be a spiced gravey with Asian ingredients, but a Japanese curry has more ingredients in common with a ragu than it does a saag paneer, also a lamb tagine dish uses a spiced gravy with Asian ingredients, and people wouldn’t call that a curry either. Basically it’s a word that has no definition that would describe all of its different use cases.
- DanBC 6y ago
  > To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. A group of British outsiders who were in India because of the British Empire?
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    There’s absolutely nothing uniquely colonial about coming up with words to describe things that are new to you. It’s simply a result of one culture coming into contact with another. To say using language to describe new things is colonial is frankly ridiculous.
    - pinkfoot 6y ago
      Yes, but its a whole new vein of offence to be mined.
    - bregma 6y ago
      But it brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the sturm und drang of everyday life for the hoi polloi.
55555 6y ago
idk. in Thai, the name for each curry is literally the color or flavor of the curry plus the word "curry", like how we (Europeans and Americans) mostly do with sandwiches and soups. This is self-inflicted but I hesitate to use that word as it overstates the graveness.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
  The Thai word is แกง kaeng, which is etymologically unrelated to English or Tamil, and encompasses a range of dishes varying from what we'd call curries (the famous red, green etc) to distinctly soup-like dishes like kaeng khae. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaeng_khae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaeng_khae
beojan 6y ago
I'll just quote Wikipedia: "Curry is an anglicised form of the Tamil word kaṟi meaning 'sauce' or 'relish for rice' that uses the leaves of the curry tree (Murraya koenigii)."
- vardhanw 6y ago
  Interesting to see the list of English words of Indian origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Indian_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_India...
SllX 6y ago
Japanese-style curry is more or less a Meiji-era British import and wasn’t popular within Japan until the 1960s. For that matter the British weren’t one to homogenize groups; they made extensive investigations of the local cultures and power dynamics in new lands they explored, rejiggered the power structure to suit their preferences, standardized this totem pole and put themselves on top. Racist, but definitely not lazy about it.
9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
Well, if you're talking about cultural homogenization, the curry-like thick stew you call "goulash" is actually pörkölt in Hungary. The original gulyas is a paprika-flavored soup, and it's considered an entirely different dish (eaten with a spoon instead of a fork etc).
pradn 6y ago
"Curry" is used by Indians to describe freshly-made solid-ish vegetable/meat dishes that are always eaten with rice or flat breads like roti and parathas. They aren't eaten by themselves. They are also meant to be eaten hot. It's important that the "main event" is the carbs, with the curry accompanying them. This is both a broad and narrow definition. It's broad because you can make a curry out of any vegetable and any meat, with practically any spices. It's narrow because it has to solid-ish and be eaten with rice or flat breads. A soup like sambar or rasam mixed with rice isn't considered a curry, but it's not a soup per most people's standards either. A soup isn't a curry because it's not primarily eaten with rice or flat breads. A pickle isn't a curry because it might take months to be prepared; it's not meant to be eaten fresh. A mango chutney is not a curry because it's not meant to be eaten hot. (Note that the Indian definitions of "pickle" and "chutney" vary from the American/British usages. In India, a "pickle" is a preserved fruit/vegetable/meat in oil, chili powder, and other spices. A "chutney" is a freshly-made dish of diced fruits/veggies, often reduced to a paste with a blender.) This is a sort of definition that's intuitive to Indians. The problem Indians have with foreign usages of "curry" are, I think, with them not respecting this definition, and using the word to refer to pretty much all Indian food. "Going to get some curry" sounds like you don't care about even the basic differences in the cuisine you're eating. That all said, I understand that I'm undermining my own argument. It's rather subtle to tell a curry apart from another Indian dish. Indian people eat plenty of things aside from rice/roti + curries. You have kebabs, biryanis (rice baked with meats), sandwiches (from Vada Pav street food to everything else), noodles (Indo-Chinese cuisine), a million buttery, saccharine sweets, unique breakfast foods like dosas and idlis, and so so much more. How can you have a country the size of India with at least 20 major cuisines and languages, in a country with influences from East Africa, Central Asia, Tibet, South East Asia, and Western Europe, without tremendous culinary diversity?

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

leg100 6y ago

It's rather trite to go on about how the word "curry" is a crude term that glosses over the rich variety of regional cuisines between and within various countries. Anyone who wants to engage in oneupmanship know-it-all will stress its inauthenticity. Yet it is a useful term - as someone else has mentioned - to refer to meat/veg in spicy gravy sauce associated with certain countries. Just because it's a word developed outside of India doesn't mean it isn't meaningful.

AmericanChopper 6y ago

To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. The more relevant criticism of the word boils down to the facts that it doesn’t really mean anything to Indians, and that it’s meaning is so poorly defined that it barely means anything at all. The word can be used to refer to pretty much any Indian food, which is simply a poor categorization, and that use would wind up a lot of Indian people. The other use case is pretty much anything that has a spiced gravy. But a ragu uses spiced gravy as much as a butter chicken does, and most people wouldn’t call a ragu a curry. So it must be a spiced gravey with Asian ingredients, but a Japanese curry has more ingredients in common with a ragu than it does a saag paneer, also a lamb tagine dish uses a spiced gravy with Asian ingredients, and people wouldn’t call that a curry either. Basically it’s a word that has no definition that would describe all of its different use cases.

DanBC 6y ago
> To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. A group of British outsiders who were in India because of the British Empire?
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  There’s absolutely nothing uniquely colonial about coming up with words to describe things that are new to you. It’s simply a result of one culture coming into contact with another. To say using language to describe new things is colonial is frankly ridiculous.
  - pinkfoot 6y ago
    Yes, but its a whole new vein of offence to be mined.
  - bregma 6y ago
    But it brings a certain je ne sais quoi to the sturm und drang of everyday life for the hoi polloi.

55555 6y ago

idk. in Thai, the name for each curry is literally the color or flavor of the curry plus the word "curry", like how we (Europeans and Americans) mostly do with sandwiches and soups. This is self-inflicted but I hesitate to use that word as it overstates the graveness.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago
The Thai word is แกง kaeng, which is etymologically unrelated to English or Tamil, and encompasses a range of dishes varying from what we'd call curries (the famous red, green etc) to distinctly soup-like dishes like kaeng khae. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaeng_khae https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaeng_khae

beojan 6y ago

I'll just quote Wikipedia: "Curry is an anglicised form of the Tamil word kaṟi meaning 'sauce' or 'relish for rice' that uses the leaves of the curry tree (Murraya koenigii)."

vardhanw 6y ago
Interesting to see the list of English words of Indian origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_Indian_origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_India...

SllX 6y ago

Japanese-style curry is more or less a Meiji-era British import and wasn’t popular within Japan until the 1960s. For that matter the British weren’t one to homogenize groups; they made extensive investigations of the local cultures and power dynamics in new lands they explored, rejiggered the power structure to suit their preferences, standardized this totem pole and put themselves on top. Racist, but definitely not lazy about it.

9nGQluzmnq3M 6y ago

Well, if you're talking about cultural homogenization, the curry-like thick stew you call "goulash" is actually pörkölt in Hungary. The original gulyas is a paprika-flavored soup, and it's considered an entirely different dish (eaten with a spoon instead of a fork etc).

pradn 6y ago

"Curry" is used by Indians to describe freshly-made solid-ish vegetable/meat dishes that are always eaten with rice or flat breads like roti and parathas. They aren't eaten by themselves. They are also meant to be eaten hot. It's important that the "main event" is the carbs, with the curry accompanying them. This is both a broad and narrow definition. It's broad because you can make a curry out of any vegetable and any meat, with practically any spices. It's narrow because it has to solid-ish and be eaten with rice or flat breads. A soup like sambar or rasam mixed with rice isn't considered a curry, but it's not a soup per most people's standards either. A soup isn't a curry because it's not primarily eaten with rice or flat breads. A pickle isn't a curry because it might take months to be prepared; it's not meant to be eaten fresh. A mango chutney is not a curry because it's not meant to be eaten hot. (Note that the Indian definitions of "pickle" and "chutney" vary from the American/British usages. In India, a "pickle" is a preserved fruit/vegetable/meat in oil, chili powder, and other spices. A "chutney" is a freshly-made dish of diced fruits/veggies, often reduced to a paste with a blender.) This is a sort of definition that's intuitive to Indians. The problem Indians have with foreign usages of "curry" are, I think, with them not respecting this definition, and using the word to refer to pretty much all Indian food. "Going to get some curry" sounds like you don't care about even the basic differences in the cuisine you're eating. That all said, I understand that I'm undermining my own argument. It's rather subtle to tell a curry apart from another Indian dish. Indian people eat plenty of things aside from rice/roti + curries. You have kebabs, biryanis (rice baked with meats), sandwiches (from Vada Pav street food to everything else), noodles (Indo-Chinese cuisine), a million buttery, saccharine sweets, unique breakfast foods like dosas and idlis, and so so much more. How can you have a country the size of India with at least 20 major cuisines and languages, in a country with influences from East Africa, Central Asia, Tibet, South East Asia, and Western Europe, without tremendous culinary diversity?