Empire: World History - 127. Inventing Curry: The British Taste for India

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

From the beginning of the Raj, British tastes began to turn away from Indian cuisine towards a European palate. The colonial classes sneered at Indian food, instead seeing French food as the height of sophistication. Meanwhile, people in Britain – including Queen Victoria – sought out Indian flavours and so began the Indianisation of British cuisine. Imports of curry powders rapidly increased and the earliest Indian restaurants popped up in British cities. With this came the introduction of renowned dishes such as chicken tikka masala and coronation chicken. Listen as Anita and William dive into the historical origins of the British obsession with curry. For bonus episodes, ad-free listening, reading lists, book discounts, a weekly newsletter, and a chat community. Sign up at https://empirepod.supportingcast.fm/ Twitter: @Empirepoduk Email: [e-mail] Goalhangerpodcasts.com Assistant Producer: Anouska Lewis Producer: Callum Hill Exec Producer: Neil Fearn Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you want access to bonus episodes reading lists for every series of Empire, a chat community. Discounts for all the books mentioned in the week's podcast, add free listening and a weekly newsletter, sign up to Empire Club at www.mpowerpoduk.com. From the viceroy to the young clerk who at home consumes high tea at sunset, every Englishman in India solemnly dresses for dinner. It's as though the integrity of the British Empire. depended in some directly magical way upon the donning of black jackets and hard-boiled shirts. Solitary men in dac bungalows, on coasting steamers and little shanties among tiger-infested woods,

obey the mystical imperative every evening of putting on the funereal uniform of English prestige. Almost more amazing is the other great convention of keeping up European prestige, the convention of eating too much. Five meals a day, two breakfast, luncheon, afternoon, tea and dinner, a standard throughout a India. A sixth is often added in the big towns where there are theatres and dances to justify late supper. The Indian, who eats at most two meals a day, sometimes only one, too often none, is compelled to acknowledge his inferiority. Perhaps the Indians can only be impressed by our gastronomic prowess. Our prestige is bound up with overeating. For the sake of empire, the truly

patriotic tourist will sacrifice his liver and his colon, will pave the way for future apoplexes and cancers of the intestine. I did my best while I was in India, but at the risk of undermining our prestige of bringing the whole imperial fabric in ruins about my ears, I used from time to time, unobtrusively, to skip, of course. The spirit is willing, but the flesh, alas, is weak.

That's wonderful. Who said that? Oldest Huxley, one of my favourite travel diaries of all time, little known and now out of print, but it's called Jesting Pilot, their diary of a journey. and it's published in about 1924, and it has some of the best descriptions of the Raj that I know. Well, hello, and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnan. And me, William Drupal, looking forward to yet another episode on overeating. This is quite difficult, isn't it? Because I'm really hungry now. It's getting to lunchtime here and dinner time for you.

On Tuesday, we were talking about the relationship between Britain and India via food in the 1600s and 1700s, and we're going to carry that through today through the 1800s and 1900s. It has been a podcast of plenty, shall we say, because we did bang on a lot about just how much was on the table, didn't we? I mean, the amounts that were consumed were astronomical. But what was I thought most interesting about that was how in the early period, Indians and British are actually eating quite similar food. The food of Tudor, England is quite similar to the food of early Mughal India. And what we're going to see in this episode as we head into the late 19th and 20th century is that similarity diverse. And that's true of many aspects of life. I mean, we often forget that in the 18th century, one in three Brits in India was married to an Indian woman or inhabiting with Indian woman,

or leaving their goods in their wills to an Anglo-Indian child. And there was this moment when the two worlds came very closely together. And then that got kicked out as English racism and superiority and power all increased. And you have this beginning of the more familiar sort of Kipling Eskwell by Easter's East and West as West, and Never the Twain shall meet. And that happens in food, too. Absolutely. You sort of hear people recognising that even, and it being a deliberate effort to have a divergence. In the writings of say, look, Colonel Kenny Herbert, who is an Anglo-Indian cookery writer who is writing in 1878. So he recognises that before there was a one track to gastronomic problems that both followed.

But then there is a divergence. I'll just read you a little snippet from his writing. And he says, Ardiddhas today, and bear in mind he's writing in 1878. Our dinners today would indeed astonish our Anglo-Indian forefathers with a taste for light wines and a far more moderate indulgence in stimulating drinks has been germinated a desire for delicate and artistic cookery. Quality is superseded quantity and the molten curries and florid oriental compositions of the olden time so fearfully and wonderfully made have been gradually banished from our dinner tables for although a well-considered curry or Molligotorny, capital things in their way, are still very frequently given at breakfast or lunch and they know. longer occupy a position in the dinner menu of establishments conducted according to the new regime. Men of moderate means have become hypercritical in the matter of their food and demand a class of cooking, which was not even attempted in the houses of the richest some 20 years ago. Dinners of 16 or 20 thoughtfully composed are de rigour, our menu cards, discourse of dainty fair in its French. And that is really important because the French influence has now

made an appearance of that, isn't it by and large? to the Suez Canal. Tell us a little more about that, William. That's right. In 1869, you have the Suez Canal opening, and this means that goods and ideas travel far more quickly from Europe to India than they had previously. And one of these things, as you're saying, is the Victorian fondness for French food. So where before you had actually quite an Indianized luncheon and dinner table in the route. From this period, from the 1860s and 1870s, you begin to. to get an increasing Europeanisation. You see this not only among the British in India, but those living in their circles. For example, at menus in the royal palaces and the Maharaja of

Jobpur and Jaipur and the Wabs of Hyderabad, all the menus are suddenly in French. And the imported French wines, which never do well in India because people haven't got the refrigeration to keep them at a stable temperature and so on. And bizarrely living in a country with some of the greatest culinary traditions anywhere in the world, the Brits decide to try and pretend they're in Europe and be completely inappropriate food. What they're asking for, and I've sort of seen some of the more modern menus grating the tables of the Raj. They're really, as you say, into the French side of things, so consummets and things, you know, things that are lighter and easily digestible. But they do have an Indian tinge to them. And they are actually rooted in

Indian cooking because they have a slight flavouring that would be alien to a purely British palate. Because russam is a clear broth that is made in Indian kitchens and has been since time immemorial. And that is an example of something that uses a lot of pepper as opposed to chili, isn't it, a rassum? Indeed. And it's not hot as an it'll burn your tongue, but it's a hot soup that is much easier to digest. And there's also, you know, from the French, there's also this weird habit of presenting food that doesn't look like what it actually is. So, you know, you'll have a chicken, you'll beat it and smush it to within an inch of its life and turn it into something that looks like, I don't know, it's pig. or a cow or a, you know, a cart or something. So it is all sort of presentationally led in this period of the 1800s, thanks to that French influence. And I think what you're finding at this period behind all this is the fact that in the early period, as we said, one in three Brits is married to an Indian woman.

And so living at home, whatever they're doing in their office or in the governor general's palace, whatever it is. At home, these guys are often sitting on the floor, often wearing pajamas, often smoking hookers. Eating with their hands. eating with their hands and eating what their wives are eating. And you see the reverse happening in the photographs. You see that the Indian wives are sitting on European chairs or using knives and forks and using European crockery. So as with any mixed marriage today,

both sides make room for the others' habits. But by the 1830s, marriages with Indian women begin to die out and what you get instead is the fishing fleet. And you suddenly have these British women coming out. This is such a sort of time-band thing that if you failed to find a husband in your first two seasons coming out on the social scene in England, you went out to India where the theory went. There would be lots of single men sitting in Dak bungalows in their dinner jackets in the jungle waiting for you to snap them up. And in many cases this happened. But even there you failed to snag a

husband, you got sent back. And the poor girls who went back at the end of two seasons of dancing around the cantoonments and palaces of India were described as returned empties. Oh my lord. God, people are bad. They are rude. Do you know, just on the odds being good, if you haven't banned a husband in Britain, but there are more men than women in India. I'm minded of something. Someone told me about being a girl engineer going to Imperial College in the 1990s, there weren't many of them. And a friend asked her, said, oh, God, there's so many blokes there.

You must have found a boyfriend by now. And she said, well, the odds are good, but the goods are odd. That's brilliant. I think sort of the fishing fleet must be a little bit of a similar situation. So what you're happening is when you have now the rise of the Memsab, if you like, you have this whole world whereby you have a very anglicised social life. And India is excluded not just from the cooking table, but from all other aspects of your social life. And suddenly now you've got cricket clubs and tennis clubs. Badminton meals. I mean, things that are based around actual activities.

And clubs in general. And you also have the production of books like this, which I'm holding in my hand, The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook by Flora Annie Steele. And it's a thick volume, even in the modern edition, it's 317 pages. And it deals with the duties of the servants, hints on breakfasts and dinners, hints on poultry, hints on management of young children, hints on outfits, in the plains, on the hills. So this is now the high rage.

You have a virtual apartheid, the two. races are kept completely apart and the same is true of the food. And you know, you talked about sort of the 1838, but this completely becomes crystallised after the Indian mutiny or the Indian uprising of 1857 when really, you know, this going home to your Indian girlfriend, stroke wife, stroke mixed-race children was completely frowned upon and there has to be a difference, a space between the two. Towards the 1900s, even if you had sort of left over Maharajas who hadn't been swallowed up by Dalhousie, the Governor General, they would have to prepare food for their banquets to the British taste. It would be no longer okay for them to bring out the very finest

of their chefs who would prepare the very finest dishes in their kingdom. They would have to try and anglo them up a little bit. So sandwiches suddenly start appearing and sort of little cakes and dainties that have come straight from that French influence. I remember there was an account when I was writing Sapphire, they go to one of these great parada parties for, you know, they have to throw one, parada parties for all the great women of the Raj, Sophia and her sister do. And they're terribly fretful about getting sort of the bakery to sort out the kind of food that would be acceptable to both sides. It is a hierarchy of cuisine, a hierarchy of taste that goes on. Even then, though, even though that's happening, even though you've got that separation, you still have

sort of Maharajas who are trying to impress. So there was one story, I remember, I remember writing for patient assassin, which is when Sir Michael O'Dwyer, who's the Governor General of Punjab, he counts it as a great issue of pride that he has never eaten Indian food, that he doesn't like it and he won't eat it. The whole time he's there. And he writes this thing in his diary. I mean, really, and he's in Punjab. We do good cooking in Punjab. Very good cooking in Punjab. Best Rajma in the country.

Thank you, red beans, my favourite dish, actually. But he sort of writes about being invited to Maharaj's dinner. where the Maharajas paid him the ultimate compliment of cooking dishes by his own hand. And Michael Lodwire is sort of like, he-h-he, he-he, writing in his memoir that, luckily, I had packed my own lunch. And I sort of hit it among the dishes. They, like, potted meats and things that he brought from his own kitchen because he wasn't going to eat this foreign muck. So you suddenly see there's a real difference in attitude that things that are Indian are bad and things that are British are good. But you do also get the beginning of a quite distinct Anglo-Ingo.

Indian cooking, which appears still at lunch in the club and so on. So you get in the Madras Club, invents Malagatoni soup, which is a Raj version watered down of Rassam. Rassum, yeah. And then you get the Korma. Now, the Korma starts off as something like Navi, the Korma, I think it's pronounced. And the Anglo-Indian establishment sort of waters it down and turns it into a sort of completely different dish. And there's a guy who writes a cook book in the 1870s, who caused himself a 35 years resident of India. And in his cookbook, he says that the Korma, without exception, is one of the richest of Hindustani curries. But it is quite unsuited to European taste, he says confidently, if made according to the original

recipe. And he gives his own British version of this, which reduces all the ghee and the yogurt, as well as the aromatic spices, such as cloves and cardamins. It emits cream altogether, and instead it produces a sort of more generic, well, what can only be described as a curry sauce, which is actually what it is. It is now the British, inverted commas, curry by adding coriander, ginger and peppercorns, which were basic ingredients of this new dish, which is called curry, which is what we should now talk about. Just one observation, though, you know, the fact that the Brits in India are post-1857 are so sniffy about Indian cooking, and think it's just not good enough. The same cannot be said about their monarch.

Queen Victoria loves a curry. Absolutely adores Indian food and you see entries in her diary. Indian curry is cooked every day for her. Every day. Particularly in Osborne Hats, which is her sanctum sanctorum where she loves to go with her family and her inner circle. It has a huge Indian influence with the Delbar rooms. She has her Munshi, very wonderful book that's written by our friend Shrabani Basu, is amazing. And the Munshi is tasked with coming up with more and more delicious Indian, recipes from his childhood to titillate Her Majesty's palate. This is David Burton. He says Queen Victoria herself employed two Indian cooks whose sole duty was to prepare the curry, which was served at lunch each day, regardless of whether she

and her guests partook of it or not. And this is very interesting because it's also the period, ironically, the same period as European food is beginning now to take over British tables in India. It's the beginning of Indian restaurants in Britain. Yes. And the first The first one, I've got in my hands this wonderful book called The Travels of Dean Muhammad, the 18th century journey through India. And this extraordinary character called Dean Muhammad, who was originally an East India Company soldier, who comes back with his brother officer to Ireland, where rather amazingly he then elopes with a woman called Janet Daly. And as she has been disinherited for running off with Dean Muhammad, they start the first Indian restaurant in Britain, which he opens off Portman Square, offering what he described. as hot curries and a good Hubble bubble. Here the gentry may enjoy the hookah with real chillum tobacco and Indian dishes in the highest perfection allowed by the greatest epicure

to be unequal to any curries ever made in England. So this is, in fact, just before the mutiny of 1857, this is in the 1840s that he opens in. And he then goes on to open a second establishment, which is Britain's first hamam and massage parlour in Brighton. no less. There his clients include both King William IV and George IV, and he claims there is scarcely any disease to which the human frame is liable, which may not be relieved by the use of these baths. He's quite an entrepreneur. He is an entrepreneur. But you know, so these early Indian restaurants, as you call them, and they were popping up for as long as Indians were coming to Britain as workers. So, you know, you have the Lashkas who were the seamen who

transported goods for the East India Company. Who we came across in our Yemeni episode last They came from, you know, all over. You had Chinese Lashkas, you have Yemeni Lashkas, but you had a lot of Indian Lashkas. And they would come and they would often be stranded in Britain for months and months and waiting for a voyage home or to be paid often, just waiting a long time to be paid. And they would secrete upon their person, you know, sort of some would bring cumin, others would bring red chili, others would bring Fennigreek and they would get together. And you couldn't call these things restaurants, but they would mass cook together. So you would have what we would call, I suppose, a daba in India. You would have these little establishments mainly springing up around ports, actually, which I think you could definitely describe as Indian, you know, your early curry houses. Because people would come and they would contribute money and then, you know, more and more raw material would be bought. You also have very early accounts, maybe even preceding the Indian uprising stroke mutiny of 1857, where Brits, who were coming to Britain and bringing their Iirs or servants, Indian servants, who they wanted to bring back to Britain for whatever reason. We're also importing vast amounts of key, because you couldn't get that here, which is a very Indian thing, a clarified butter. So you see really interesting sort of receipts, manifest details of big barrels of key being brought back. And the next posh Indian restaurant, the oldest surviving Indian restaurant, which is still there near Piccadilly, is Vera Swamis.

Vera Swamis, been to Vera Swamis. I mean, that was a hotbed for nationalist activity. Indians would go and discuss politics there a lot. Interestingly, it's founded by one of my white Mughal families. And on the cover of the hardback of white muggles, there was a picture, this very charming picture, which is in the British Library, probably by an artist called Rinaldi. There's some people think it's by Zophony of William Palmer and his Indian family. And you have this extraordinary, very formal 18th century oil of a British officer in a redcoat with his two wives. So Palmer in his redcoat was the British resident at the court of Ovid in the 1780s, 1790s, I think. And he has, by his mogul wife, Fides Begham, a son called William Palmer, who becomes a famous banker in Hyderabad, and a very rich man, a very successful banker. And I think it's one of his children who found Vera Swami. Isn't that interesting? So, I mean, you have this really peculiar

situation, which I'm utterly fascinated with, is that you've got the Brits who go over to serve the Raj post-1850s, who have a deep skepticism of all things that are Indian. And so, you know, you have the high tea cucumber sandwiches with the crust cut off and fish that are served, you know, with capers and lemon. And see the menus from those times and the clear soups that are Derricka and French. But here in Britain, I mean, it's not just Queen Victoria who is fascinated. Others too, because you've got the older guard who've come back from serving in India, who did eat the lavish creams and curries and things and who still have a taste for it.

So they have already brought over their chefs and their cooks, and a lot of them from Surith, in fact, which we talked about in the last episode, who are still producing the food that they loved very, very much. And so a whole new generation is, in Britain, is being introduced to Indian food and learning to be excited by it, whereas the Brits in India themselves sort of look down on it as if it's kind of foreign filth,

which I think's fascinating. And this is something that, again, reflects a wider set of attitudes. So that when Gandhi comes to London, he finds a whole world in London, he finds vegetarian restaurants. He finds a whole bunch of people interested in Indian religions and Hinduism and Buddhism. And in fact, he learns about Hinduism in London, rather than just the rote learned prayers that he'd been brought up on. And he begins to take an intellectual

interest in religion in London. And it's when he goes back to the colonies in Verdecom, specifically South Africa, that he's turfed off the train and treated with the kind of straightforward racism that you see in that famous instance of Peter Maritzburg in South Africa. I mean, just two, again, two stories which tickle me a great deal. So there is one I wrote about Maharaja Dilip Singh. He was brought over here. He was a real close member of Queen Victoria's extended family in tantamantu. She took him to Osbourne. She spent a lot of time with him and loved him until she didn't love him and he hated her and tried to get India back or get his kingdom, his Sikh Empire, back. But in the days when he was still in favour, he makes this one trip to Calcutta to bring

his mother, Rani Jindon, back to London. who's an amazing tough old bird. Extremely tough old bird. And the Brits have made this calculation that she's less trouble here where we can keep an eye on her than she would be in India where she could ferment rebellion

in her son's name. And there are accounts of her living at Lancaster Gate, which is a very posh part of central London. And she's bought her own cooks and retinue. And all the locals sort of smelling this smell of her exotic cooking. And, you know, like, Bisto kids

being carried to the corner of Lancaster Gate where her house is, on this invisible pool of exotic cooking. Thackeray, can I just read you a bit from Thackeray? A very, very famous English writer was born in India. He was sent home at the age of four, like most Anglo-Indian children. Courted my great-great-grandmother, unsuccessfully. Really? Why didn't she fancy him?

What was wrong with him? Just as a matter of interest? Because my great-great-grandfather was much, much more handsome, of course. Okay, right. So he's sent back to Britain, but he's already got this sort of bedrock taste of India. and he discovers this taste again for Indian curry because he's eating at his aunts and uncle's houses who've also sort of spent time in India. He's so enthusiastic he wrote a poem to curry.

May I read it to you? These do. Thackeray's poem to curry. Three pounds of veal, my darling girl, prepares and chops it nicely into squares. Five onion next prures the little minks, the biggest and best her Sammywell thinks, an epping butter nearly half a pound and stews them in a pan until they're brink. round. What next my little dexterous girl will do? She pops the meat into savory stew with curry powder, tablespoonfuls three, and milk a pint the richest that may be. And when the dish is stewed

for half an hour, a lemons ready juice she'll pour. Then bless her. Then she gives the luscious pot a very gentle boil and serves quite hot. P.S. Beef, mutton, rabbit if you wish. Lobsters or prawns or any kind of fish are fit to make a curry. when done a dish for emperors to feed upon. Isn't that great? That's Thackeray. That's quite good, but I think he sounds a bit of a creep. I think my great-grandmother did well. What's next, my dexterous little girl?

Could have been her. Could have been your great-grandmother. Agreed. I think we should probably take a break there, and after the break, we should go into that most divisive of subject, which is curry powder. Mother, stop listening now.

Welcome back. So you poked the souffle just before we went into the break. Indian listeners around the globe gasping at the thought of anything so disgusting as curry powder. Madras powder, vindaloo powder. I mean, honestly, these things, if you want to set a certain generation off, just present that on a shelf in your kitchen somewhere. And here what happens? So curry powder, William, where's that come from then?

Because it wasn't from them. It wasn't from early immigrants. Well, you see, this is where I think you know I might. fall out about this one because I think that it is actually like everything the British did in India misunderstood and sort of bowdlerized and made safer but it is basically garam masala under a different name the difference being that of course in your mother's kitchen the garam masala would have been ground freshly and would have been delicious and you certainly wouldn't have put curry powder in a jar and left it for two years and then come back and scattered it over your eggs or your jubilee chicken

but it is, I think, derived from that. Describe garam masala for those who... Well, it's a mix of ground spices. So, you know, you'll have cumin and look it up before. I'm going to get executed by my family. Chili's, coriander, peppercorns, turmeric, fennig, curry leaves. You've got it in front of you. I have.

And that is also what said garabasala. Yeah, but it tastes different. I'm telling you it tastes different. I mean, yeah, one, it's misunderstood and it's sort of gone through the mangler in the process of being tell it to curry about it. But that's where it comes from, I think. Yeah. I mean, it's not a bad, I mean, you know, I keep loving to tell you about my school days and dazzled you with my kedgery, my offensive kedgery story. But we also used to get served curry on a Friday if we were, you know, and everyone got very excited. And I developed a real love for the epa, Essex

curry. And it was really nice. And I sort of went home and said, why doesn't ours taste like that? I guess I put sugar or something in it. But it was a, it was very nice. I liked it. I had a fray bentos curry in my time. That was all right, too. So, you know, these tastes, they sort of shuttlecock to and fro, don't they? And what the British do is not understanding that garam masala is something to be placed at the end of a cooking process, is a little bit lightly to put the final flavour in. Little kick. They use it as the main flavouring and they think that they can curry anything.

So what they often do is that they carry leftovers in the Raj and they serve it the next day, all covered in this stuff. Presume that this is satire, but you never quite know with the Raj. I'll read you from a letter written by Mr. Arnott of Greenwich. You may curry anything, he says. Old shoes even should be delicious. Some old cloth or stair carpet not found fault with. Gloves, if much worn, are too rich.

I mean, bloody hell. Don't try this at home, people. But there were also really tall claims started coming in. And we're talking as early as the 1840s about the medicinal value of curry powder. In India, turmeric is given all sorts of magical brink. properties. Very good antiseptic. Antiseptic, disinfectant, all of that kind of thing. It cleaned you inside. But the Brits get onto this as well because you have advertising really as early as the 1840s.

Edmund White, the maker of Salim's Curry products. He presents curry as a health food, even back then in the 1840s. He says that Curries could save lives. He cites this really extraordinary and preposterous case of somebody called Mr. Harper of the Jerusalem Coffee House, which is a well-known haunt for East India. merchants. The Jerusalem coffee house was a famous place, exactly. Very famous, very, very famous place. But he's a very sick man, is Mr. Harper, apparently, according to Edmund White, and he's tried every medicine on the market, and nothing is helping him. The only thing that saves him,

guess what it is? It's Edmund White's curry paste, which brings him back to life. Again, there is a taste for it in Britain. There is an exoticism about it in Britain, and there's also a mystical quality about it in Britain. So I always thought that the phrase to curry favour came from this period of time when curry was becoming very, very big in Britain. Did you think that? I'd never even thought it through. But you've heard the phrase. I know the phrase, absolutely. Okay, well, it doesn't, has nothing to do with the great curative powers of Edmund White or anybody else's curry powder. To curry favour, which means if you haven't come across the phrase, to seek or gain approval through flattery or servile behaviour, you can trace it back to mediate. You can trace it back to

medieval England, so clearly not the curry that we think about, because curry originally, apparently meant to groom or prepare a horse. So to curry favour was to launch yourself into the Lord's good graces by brushing his horse beautifully and looking after it. So that was something I've only discovered in researching this podcast that I have been wrong all these years. It had nothing to do with the influx of curry into Britain. So to curry favour, that's not from India, but the amount of spices, just to give you an idea. And again, I'll sort of look back to the 1800s. Between 1820 and 1840, imports of turmeric, which we were talking about has this magical, mystical quality, according to some of the salesmen here. It increased threefold. So first of all, it was some

$8,600 something pounds. It goes up to £26,000. By the end of the century, non-specialist growers are stocking three types of curry powder here in Britain. in these years, you know, yellow curry powder, brown curry powder and a fiery red chili curry powder. So it's becoming really pretty ubiquitous. You're getting by the 1850s British cookery books that call for a spoonful of curry powder in most of their Indian dishes. It's just, it's always there. Curry powder is now a staple in your cupboard. So curry powder is everywhere. It's on people's shelves. Queen Victoria is doing her very, very best to make people understand and appreciate the gift from her Eastern Empire,

even though the people who are working out in the Eastern Empire, may not recognise it as such. So, you know, we've talked about the Great Exhibition. The Great Exhibition, there are little curry houses within the Great Exhibition. In the Great Exhibition, where our Coenor was on display. Yes. They sort of recreated an Indian street scene, and they had little sort of houses like chai houses and things like that,

where you could sample the cuisine of these places. There was another wonderful thing I saw here. They had like snake charmers. And also they had Indian performers. The problem was, and this is the great exhibition in Earl's Court, 1895 and 1896, the Cobras kept dying of cold. Great detail. Breathe.

And they wake up, wake up, cobra. Kick the cobra. But these sort of Anglo-Indian curry houses, people got their sort of first taste of it. And around the exhibition as well, you had one Indian waiter who worked in the salon tea house at Liverpool's Royal Jubilee Exhibition in 1887 and Glasgow's exhibition the following year. He published a cookery book called Curries and How to Make Them in England. So you've actually got Indian writers as well as British writers all clamouring over. Let me show you how to make a curry.

That's great. I love that. I didn't know that at all. And then by the time that the empire begins to run down, you have the beginning of the conquest of British cooking by Indian cooking. and the long march towards chicken tika masala becoming the national dish of Britain, according to Robin Cook and others. Oh, he said that in 2001, didn't he?

I mean, we should remember when Robin Cook said that. 2001, he announced that chicken tika masala is the great national dish. It's such a hotly contested statement. It wasn't just for that reason, but he became the most hated British politician in India at the time, large because of his views on Kashmir. But I think you could mark the beginning of the sort of rise of Indian cooking towards colonising Britain, the counter-colonisation of British life by Kerry, with the coronation in 1953, and the invention as the official dish for the coronation of coronation chicken, which is known in France

apparently as Poulet-Rin Elizabeth. I really like coronation chicken. I think it's delicious. I think it's absolutely lush. I mean, for those people who neither live in Britain, well, no, it's just Britain. You wouldn't get this in India. I don't think unless they're Jim Carna's or the clubs. Coronation chicken is, how would you describe it? I've got the recipe in front of me. It is boneless chicken, seasoned with parsley, which is a very British rather than Indian seasoning, thyme, bailiff, cumin, turmeric, ginger, peppercorns, mixed with cream or mayonnaise, some dried apricots or sultanas, which is exactly what the Brits used to put in their curries because they couldn't get tamarind. And they used to substitute dried apricots in this country

when they served it in British gentlemen's clubs and so on. Yeah. Very. inventive. It would work, yeah. Some variations include cinnamon, and it served cold and eaten as a salad with rice, peas, and pomeptos, or used as a filling for sandwiches. And we know who created it. It was the invention of no lesser figure than constant spry, the English food writer and flower ranger, along with Rosemary Hume, and it was invented specifically for the Coronation of Queen's in 1953. I have to say, they did a very good thing there. And Coronation Chicken is my favorite sandwich. I think it's a very good invention. I went to the British High Commission at this coronation last year for King Charles and they had a much less good, rather disgusting

voluven which was meant to be the official dish. You're not being invited back. You're not coming back, mate. They also serve the coronation chicken from the last coronation, which is much better. Just looking at India though now, because I was in India just over Christmas. My lovely, lovely cousin. We were like wild animals. Let's go eat everything. All at wild, it's like Pac-Man. like moving through different parts of India. And he took us to a very shishi restaurant in Mumbai. It was kind of so chefy but also Indian. So you would have like a Rasmalai in a chocolate dome,

which you would prick and then it would all fall apart like an opening pedal. I mean, it was just so redonculus. You would have loved this. It was just also very OTT marvellous. But I noticed he wasn't eating neither was his wife. And we were, you know, I mean the kids and my husband, bouncing on it like ravenous hyenas. I said, why aren't you eating?

He said, no, we don't tend to eat this late. It was 7.30 in the evening. And so I said, well, huh? And among a certain sort of, you know, modern and educated kind of generation, you do not eat in India at the moment past four o'clock. That's a diet thing. It's a health thing. Because traditionally in, I mean, famously in Delhi,

no one at a smart dinner party, even today. No one arrives till 11. Well, no one arrives until about 9. and you don't even have a hope of seeing your dinner till 11. You're not kidding. So there are sort of like different areas. So, you know, really the hipster community are very health conscious in Mumbai. And they do this thing of like, no, you have to go without food for a certain amount of time.

But that is a very small minority of hipsters, as you say. I did almost die in Delhi, though. Honestly, you guys eat so late. It's ridiculous. I don't know how you sleep. What I love about Delhi dinner parties is that they don't serve the main dishes until 11. but they regard kebabs as snacks. So cabs are being handed round from 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock,

which I much prefer anyway, so I'm very happy with that. But we have now to do the single greatest question in the history of Anglian cooking. Strapping on my hard hat right now. We're going to get a lot of angry letters about this. But who invented Anita chicken tika masala? No, it's butter chicken. That's the one that's kicked off, isn't it? Well, there's both of them.

They're both highly disputed. I read the chicken teakamasaola was claimed by some Brit who poured tomato soup over a chicken. I mean, is that right? And not just not some Brit. We know the name of this guy, rather like a Coronation Chicken. It has an originator. And he's Ali Ahmed Aslam of Glasgow's celebrated Shish Mahel restaurant. And the story is that in the 1950s, early 60s, he had a stomach ulcer and was on a liquid-based diet.

and he added some of his tomato soup and a few spices to help liven up dry meal. And the customer, who he gave it to, instead of loved it so much, and he kept returning time after time with his mates just to eat it. And this was a variant on that story, which is, yes, that some Brits complained that the kebabs were too dry and they wanted it wetter. So they just poured some tomato soup over it? I mean, I like a chicken teka masala. I like it.

And we have to say that this very important bit of history reached as far as Parliament when in 2009, Anasawa, now a leader of the Scottish Labour Party, put forth an early day motion in the House of Commons requesting that Parliament legally recognised Glasgow as the home of Chikin Tika Masala. But sadly, it failed. Right. Okay. There's a butter chicken war going on in India. There is. And it's getting feisty over there. So who are the main contenders? I know the Delhi claim. You presumably know a Punjabi one. No, I don't know Punjabi one. I think it's two restaurateurs who say that they originated it. So I've always been told for 20 or 30 years that the originator of butter chicken is a restaurant that's still open in Daria Gunge in the old city of Delhi near the German Majid called the Motimaha Dulux. Yeah, that's one of them. Certainly when I first came to Delhi, people always used to say, oh, you must go to the Motte Mahal Deluxe because it's the place where butter chicken was invented.

I didn't realize there was a competitor. Well, there is. And it's now so bitter, and this is hot off the press because this just happened a week or so ago. It is going to court. No, who's the rival claimant? Delhi High Court, it's been filed already. So Mothi Mahal, your one, founded in 1947. With refugees from partition.

And then there's another whole story of whether this was a dish originally native to Peshawa or whether it was Punjabi, which is a separate sub-dispute in this. So the lawsuit was brought by the family over a man called Kundanl, Gujaral, who is one of the original restaurants founders. And he claims that he, Gujaral, created. ateed the curry and he sued a rival chain called Daria Gunges of falsely taking credit for it. And the Goudiral family, do you know how much they're seeking? How much?

It's quite a lot in rupees, I'm guessing, but 188,9008 pounds in damages. Because Darya Gunge is saying that they invented not just butter chicken, but Dahl Muckney as well. Dahl Muckney is, again, another of these dishes that apparently was invented during partition and it was one of those. So to those that don't know, Dalmukni is the dark doll, full of ghee, very, very rich, too rich for my taste. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. Very fattening. Very fattning. It cooks for hours and you've got this swirl of white ghee on top of it. It's so buttery and so bad to be. It's so delicious. And I think it's in Yasmin Khan's book on partition that there was some deprivation of some sort during partition and they had to make their doll with a

different substance. So that's how Uradal began. Oradal, right, okay. I'm just looking at some newspaper copy of Mothi Mahal, which is this early restaurant, which is also laying claim to the invention of butter chicken. The New York Times wrote of Mothi Maha in 1984, because it used to have lots of, I should say, very important people used to come and eat there, including Nairu, was a frequent flyer. At its time, people used to go up to Delhi and everyone would go to the Mottimhael ducks. Now, of course, everyone goes down to South Delhi, the kind of southward drift of Delhi restauranting. I remember when I was first year in the 80s, going up to Delhi tweet. Do you want to know what the New York Times wrote about Mr. Gujaral, who's part of this lawsuit?

They described him as a portly florid man with a splendid moustache and credited him for both the butter chicken recipe and the restaurant's booming success? Well, I suspect that this will be something that will exercise our listeners and we will receive a great number of complaints and letters about this. Tell us what you think. Who originated butter chicken? Who invented chicken dikin masala? These are of some of the great colourery issues of our day. I'm really hungry now and I can't do this anymore. Can we stop?

It's at a time by time. I know exactly what I've got. I've got a very good persuaderie chicken dish cooking and I can smell it even as I said to. I've got to make something myself because I'm here. But everyone else is out of work or school, but I'll find something. Anyway, listen, enough from us. Thank you very much for listening. This is it.

I'm sorry if we have made your tummies rumble. I can't think straight anymore. I've got to eat something. It is goodbye from me, Anita Arnan. And goodbye from me, from a very hungry, William Duremberg.