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India's courts to rule on who invented butter chicken
- fuzztester 3y agoI've eaten it earlier, multiple times. Whoever invented it, it tastes too sweet to me. Probably due to the amount of onion (1) in it, an issue I come across in Indian veg gravy dishes too. (1) The article says it is made in a tomato gravy, but my guess is that it is an onion and tomato gravy, not just a tomato one.
- Kluggy 3y agoYou ate it earlier than 1947? Or what do you mean by earlier?
- welcomebear 3y agoMaybe even the 1920’s! “They say the recipe […] was invented by Gujral in the 1930s”. Jk. Let’s do the math: Assume 5 years old to remember anything. 1946 is before 1947. To be 5 in 1946, they’re born in 1941. 1941 was 82 years ago. 82+ years old and commenting on HackerNews? Statistically unlikely but definitely plausible. Us nerds are getting up there in years so there’s certainly some octogenarians hanging around.
- fuzztester 3y agoI meant earlier than the present, of course. Of course, if reincarnation theory is true, I might have eaten it in some past life between 1947 and my birth year in this one. ChatGPT, do you remember your past lives?
- screye 3y agoTo be fair, Indian restaurants in the west sell a fully bastardized version of Indian food from India. (Canada is an exception, UK does its own thing) Despite being the predominant regional cuisine, the Punjabi/Mughlai food in the west also the most disappointmenting. Consistently too sweet, too creamy, too tomatoey and lacking the depth of fresh spices.
- fuzztester 3y ago>To be fair, Indian restaurants in the west sell a fully bastardized version of Indian food from India. The situation is similar for Chinese restaurants in India. I first got to know about this from my aunt, an Indian but a naturalised US citizen, when she came on one of her periodic visits to India, to see us. When we were eating at a Chinese restaurant in India, she remarked that the food was very different from authentic Chinese food. (It has been heavily modified to use Indian spices and to appeal to Indian tastes.) Later, when I went to Chinese restaurants in Malaysia and the US, I could see this for myself.
- bluedino 3y agoAhh to be from the Midwest where if you're lucky enough to have an Indian restaurant in your town, half the time you're getting something that's more chicken tikki than butter chicken. Also, I feel if it does have fenugreek in it, it isn't a "real" murgh makhani either.
- DiscourseFan 3y ago[flagged]
- Brajeshwar 3y agoFrom Wikipedia’s Butter Chicken[1] > The curry was developed at the Moti Mahal restaurant in the Daryaganj neighbourhood of Old Delhi in the 1950s, after the Partition of India by Kundan Lal Jaggi and Kundan Lal Gujral, who were both Punjabi refugees from Peshawar. Whoever did it, but if the dates are correct, I’m surprised that this is a recent dish/recipe, not something like the Mughals introduced to India. The types of dishes that Butter Chicken is categorized into sound like Mughlai cuisine[2]. Disclaimer: Besides my curiosity, I eat to live and have no clue in many, many cases related to food and cuisines. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_chicken https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butter_chicken 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughlai_cuisine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mughlai_cuisine
- bitxbitxbitcoin 3y agoThe tomato needed to be brought from the New World for butter chicken to be invented.
- alephnerd 3y agoThe Mughal empire started in 1526, and Mughals Cuisine was in full swing by the 1600s. That said, based on linguistics, I don't think the tomato arrived in India until at least the late 1700s.
- hnaccountme 3y agoWhy is this on hacker news?
- brcmthrowaway 3y agoSouth Indian erasure once again. No one eats this in wide swaths of the country.
- gregjor 3y agoButter was invented in Africa a long time ago. Chickens got domesticated in SE Asia and China, introduced to India thousands of years later. So India can’t now claim they invented either.
- morkalork 3y agoAnd tomatos, potatoes and chili peppers are all from the Americas. Hmmmm? Seems like nobody's iconic cultural dishes are safe!
- arcticbull 3y agoAh yeah, there's a great wikipedia article that shows which common vegetables and fruits originated in which parts of the world before the Columbian exchange. Really makes you think that Italian food once had no tomatoes. And Irish and Eastern European food had no potatoes. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange
- morkalork 3y agoAnd in this case, south Indian food without the heat of chilis.
- arcticbull 3y agoAhh yes, apparently they were introduced by the Portuguese in the late 1400/early 1500s. They did have black pepper though.
- fuzztester 3y ago
- insaider 3y agoI thought it was Australian, like how Chicken Tikka Masala is British
- sandworm101 3y agoIf it is a meat dish, from India, it is far more likely to have been invented by Indians for the Brits living in India. Whether that makes it Indian or British I leave to others.
- smt88 3y agoThat's not true. Huge numbers of Indians aren't Hindu and do eat meat. Less than 40% of the country is vegetarian. There are meat dishes that pre-date the arrival of the British, although it's true that almost all Indian food has been altered by British colonialism.
- kranner 3y agoAnd Portuguese colonialism. Practically all modern Punjabi food from makki to rajma is from South America.
- mangamadaiyan 3y agoDon't forget the Pav Bhaji. The "Pav" in the name of the dish derives from Portuguese "Pāo". I'll stop with this and refrain from mentioning how South Indian cuisine has been corrupted by Northern Indian cultural imperialism :)
- rational_indian 3y agoThe pav is actually pronounced as pao sometimes.
- mangamadaiyan 3y agoThe Portuguese "Pão" sounds more like the French "Pan". "Pav" or "Pao" is the Indianization.
- boomboomsubban 3y agoWow, the Wikipedia article has over 500 edits in the past five years, fairly absurd for a ~5 paragraph entry.
- gregjor 3y agoIt was invented at an American restaurant, Taj Mahal Star of India, in a strip mall in Anaheim, California. Stop appropriating American culture.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fuzztester 3y agoStop exporting American culture.
- gregjor 3y agoDo you want to send your cell phone, tablet, laptop back? Or stop using the internet? iPhones and Teslas and Levi's, great, but let's complain about McDonalds and Coke and Hollywood. The world is all connected now, that ship sailed a long time ago.
- fuzztester 3y agoYou, just above: >The world is all connected now, that ship sailed a long time ago. You, triple above: >>Stop appropriating American culture. Me: The world is all connected now, that ship sailed a long time ago.
- fuzztester 3y agoTIL that cell phones, tablets, laptops, the Internet, iPhones, Teslas and Levis are culture. Tech, tech, tech, tech, tech, tech and clothing
- fuzztester 3y agoHeck, even restaurants were invented in ancient India.
- dbajaj 3y agoThis sounds like a punch line for "why did the chicken cross the road?"
- geckbench 3y ago[dead]
- zeroCalories 3y agoI don't care. My local guy makes it better than you.