Asian Window

Elizabeth Grice hears how recipes have been causing ructions since 1747. From the Telegraph, UK:

Britain's love of the dish stems from the days of the Raj.

In Hannah Glasse’s interpretation, curry is more like a gentle aromatic stew. In the first published curry recipe in English in 1747, she described “How to Make a Currey the India Way”. Mild and inoffensive, it would have been unrecognisable to robust Victorian diners who preferred their curries “hot as the hinges of Hell’s front door”. It would have disappointed the walrus-faced king of curry-makers, Col Arthur Kenney-Herbert, whose recipe for curry paste had nine ingredients. And, with its delicate reliance on peppercorns and coriander, it’s certainly far short of today’s spicy expectations.

I know, because David Burnett and Helen Saberi, co-authors of a joyful book on the enduring British love affair with curry, cooked it for me the other day. It was delicious, but was it a curry?

The Road to Vindaloo pulses with exotic people and recipes, reflecting the changes in culinary fashion brought about by the rise of the chilli-pepper. Inspired by David Burton’s culinary history, The Raj at Table, Burnett started collecting old curry cookbooks e_SEmD buying the odd tome here and there and cooking the occasional historic curry dish. He probed the decaying archives of maharajas’ palaces and old British clubs for recipes.

[The Road to Vindaloo: Curry Cooks & Curry Books by David Burnett and Helen Saberi is published by Prospect Books, paperback price £9.99]

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