45 Fun Facts About Curry

The English word 'curry' most likely comes from a word in which language family?

Dravidian languages of South India supplied the word: Tamil kari means a sauce or relish, and Portuguese traders in Goa are thought to have passed it on to the English as caril.

Whose 1747 Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy included the recipe 'To make a currey the India way'?

Hannah Glasse signed her bestseller only 'By a Lady', and for decades rumour credited it to a man; her currey fried chicken with spices, then finished it with cream and lemon juice.

Which key curry ingredient reached India only after the Columbian exchange?

Chili peppers are a New World crop that Portuguese traders carried to Goa in the 16th century; before then, Indian cooking took its limited heat from black pepper.

Which gum resin from the genus Ferula was a key spice in medieval Indian proto-curries?

Asafoetida, called hing in Hindi, is the dried latex of Ferula roots; its sulphurous stink mellows into a savoury, onion-like flavour once it hits a hot pan.

Dhansak, a stew of meat with lentils and vegetables, comes from which Indian community?

Parsi cooks, descendants of Zoroastrians who left Persia for Gujarat, stretch costly meat with lentils and vegetables in dhansak; the dish later became a British curry-house standard.

Which fiery curry from Goa takes its name from a Portuguese garlic marinade for meat?

Vindaloo began as carne de vinha d'alhos, pork in a garlic marinade; British curry houses turned it into a byword for heat, and stray potatoes crept in through confusion with the Hindi aloo.

Chicken tikka is traditionally cooked in which charcoal-fired clay oven?

A tandoor is a vase-shaped clay oven heated by a charcoal or wood fire inside it; skewered meat roasts in the fierce heat while flatbreads bake stuck to its inner wall.

Which spice gives curry powder its deep orange-yellow colour?

Turmeric is coloured by curcumin, a pigment so strong that it is approved as a food colouring in its own right; the spice's old nickname is 'Indian saffron'.

The curry tree, whose leaves flavour many South Indian dishes, belongs to which plant family?

Citrus is the family, Rutaceae, of the curry tree; despite the shared name, the word curry does not come from the tree.

Which Indian dish was reputedly invented in Glasgow, possibly by chef Ali Ahmed Aslam?

Chicken tikka masala's best-known origin story has Ali Ahmed Aslam of Glasgow's Shish Mahal improvising a sauce for a customer who found his chicken tikka too dry; rival chefs dispute the claim.

Which Anglo-Indian soup takes its name from Tamil words meaning 'pepper water'?

Mulligatawny joins Tamil milagu, pepper, and tanni, water; the thin South Indian broth was much transformed for British tables, gaining meat such as chicken or mutton.

Which country's curries are scented with pandan leaves and seasoned with dried Maldives fish?

Sri Lanka's cooks add Maldives fish, a cured and dried tuna, to their vegetable curries, where a little of it gives the dish a rich savoury depth.

Rogan josh, coloured red with alkanet, is a centrepiece of the wazwan, the multi-course feast of which region?

Kashmir's wazwan is the feast of weddings and Eid: a master cook and his team prepare course after course of meat overnight, and guests share it in fours from one large copper platter.

The word korma comes from a Hindi-Urdu term meaning what?

Braising is the technique the Hindi-Urdu word qorma names: meat is seared, then cooked slowly with yoghurt or stock and very little liquid; the word is Turkic in origin, kin to Turkish kavurma.

Which Cambodian curry is traditionally steamed in a banana-leaf cup?

Amok sets to a mousse as fish in kroeung paste and coconut cream steams in its banana-leaf cup; it is believed to have begun as a royal Khmer dish, and Cambodia now promotes it abroad.

Massaman curry is usually built on chicken, potatoes, onions and which nut?

Peanuts go in with the chicken and potatoes; massaman also stands out for cardamom, cinnamon and cloves, spices that reached Thailand with Muslim traders and are rare in other Thai curries.

The 'sweet' in kaeng khiao wan, the Thai name for green curry, describes what about the dish?

Its colour: khiao wan means 'sweet green', the Thai term for a soft, creamy green. The curry is not necessarily sweeter than other Thai curries and tends to be hotter than red curry.

Which fresh rhizome, a pungent relative of ginger, is pounded into many Thai curry pastes?

Galangal goes into the mortar with lemongrass, garlic and coriander root: Thai curries are built on fresh rhizomes, herbs and aromatic leaves, where Indian ones lean on mixes of dried spices.

Phanaeng (panang) curry is distinguished from other Thai curries by what?

A thick, creamy, mildly sweet sauce marks panang, cooked down in coconut cream with very little added liquid; older recipes were less sweet and grilled the meat before simmering it.

Who most likely introduced curry to Japan, where it first appeared in cookbooks in 1872?

The British Royal Navy most likely brought it: Japan's navy was modelled on Britain's and took up its curry stew, though one naval researcher argues the military picked the dish up from civilian kitchens instead.

On which day of the week do Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force ships traditionally serve curry?

Friday is curry day across the fleet, a habit inherited from the Imperial Navy, which made curry a weekly staple to ward off beriberi; ships' galleys now compete over the best recipe.

What are the three basic vegetables in Japanese curry?

Onions, carrots and potatoes simmer in a sauce made from blocks of instant roux; House Foods' apple-and-honey Vermont Curry of 1963 turned a spicy adult dish into a children's favourite.

In Japan, katsu curry refers exclusively to curry served with what?

Katsu is short for katsuretsu (cutlet): katsu curry is curry served with a breaded, deep-fried cutlet, usually tonkatsu or chicken katsu; in Britain the name has drifted to mean the sauce.

Which is Japan's largest chain of curry restaurants?

CoCo Ichibanya held about four-fifths of Japan's curry-shop market in 2014, plus a Guinness record for the most curry restaurants; House Foods, maker of Vermont Curry roux, later bought it.

The Madras curry of British menus takes its name from a city now called what?

Madras was officially renamed Chennai in 1996; 'Madras curry' was invented in Anglo-Indian cooking as a simplified hot sauce made with curry powder, and the name is unknown in Indian cuisine.

The balti was developed in the 1970s in which English city, home to the 'Balti Triangle'?

Birmingham's balti is cooked fast over high heat and served in a thin pressed-steel bowl; a bid to win 'Birmingham Balti' EU protected status failed because no standard recipe could be defined.

Jalfrezi was created in Bengal during the Raj for what purpose?

To use up leftover meat by stir-frying it with chillies and onions was the idea, recorded in Raj-era Anglo-Indian cookbooks; the dish is now a British curry-house favourite yet rare in restaurants in India.

Which dish traditionally sits at the top of a British curry-house heat scale?

Phall is the hottest curry regularly on the menu, a thick tomato-based sauce loaded with ground chillies; it was born in Britain's Bangladeshi-run curry houses, not in South Asia.

Which dish won CNN's 2011 reader vote for the world's most delicious food?

Rendang, beef slow-cooked in coconut milk and spices until dry, drew a clear win from more than 35,000 reader votes, overturning the top pick on CNN's own list published earlier.

Which Delhi restaurant popularised butter chicken in the 1950s and is widely credited with inventing it?

Moti Mahal was opened in Daryaganj after Partition by refugees from Peshawar, credited with stirring leftover chicken into a buttery tomato gravy; a founder's grandson says they first made it back in Peshawar.

Herta Heuwer is credited with inventing currywurst in 1949 at her snack stand in which city?

Berlin's Herta Heuwer made her sauce with curry powder she got from British soldiers and poured it over grilled sausage; builders clearing the ruined city made it a hit, and she registered the name Chillup.

Who co-created coronation chicken with Rosemary Hume for the 1953 coronation?

Constance Spry, a celebrated florist, also arranged the flowers in Westminster Abbey and along the procession route; she and Rosemary Hume devised the cold curried chicken for a lunch for foreign delegates.

Bunny chow, a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with curry, comes from which South African city?

Durban's Indian community created bunny chow, usually dated to the 1940s, though its exact origin is disputed; quarter-loaf versions have spread across South Africa under the name kota, 'quarter'.

Indentured workers from India brought curry goat to which Caribbean island, where it is a party staple?

Jamaica took in more than 36,000 indentured labourers from India between 1845 and 1917; their spice mixes met the island's goat, and the dish became a fixture of parties and special occasions.

The word dal comes from a Sanskrit root meaning what?

To split is the sense of the Sanskrit root dal, after the split pulses; cooks finish the pot with a tarka, spices sizzled in hot ghee and folded through just before serving.

Laksa, the spicy coconut noodle soup of Malaysia and Singapore, originated in which cuisine?

Peranakan Chinese communities formed when Chinese traders settled in Straits ports such as Malacca and married locally; the earliest laksa is believed to have come from their kitchens.

The 'Curry Mile' is a stretch of Wilmslow Road in which English city?

Manchester's Curry Mile runs through Rusholme; despite the name, by the 2020s shisha bars and Middle Eastern takeaways had moved in beside the curry houses, some of the bars taking over former pubs.

Which Regent Street restaurant, opened in 1926, marked its centenary in 2026 as the UK's oldest Indian restaurant?

Veeraswamy turned 100 in March 2026 while fighting eviction: its landlord, the Crown Estate, declined to renew the lease, and the owners petitioned the King and went to court to stay.

What was the name of the Indian restaurant Sake Dean Mahomed opened in London in 1810?

The Hindoostane Coffee House opened at 34 George Street as a 'Dinner and Hooka Smoking Club'; Mahomed later moved to Brighton, opened 'shampooing' vapour baths and became shampooing surgeon to two kings.

Curry ketchup is a classic topping for German currywurst and for which deep-fried Dutch snack?

The frikandel is a skinless minced-meat sausage that, unlike most sausages, is deep-fried; ordered 'speciaal', it comes cut open and filled with curry ketchup, mayonnaise and chopped raw onion.

Which North Indian spice blend, whose name means 'hot spices', is often added just before a curry finishes cooking?

Garam masala usually blends cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, cloves and peppercorns, roasted and then ground; recipes differ by region and household, and none is counted more authentic than another.

Soup curry, a thin broth-style curry with chunky vegetables, originated in which Japanese city?

Sapporo's cafe Ajanta is said to have created the prototype, a 'medicinal curry', in the 1970s; a later shop coined the name soup curry in 1993, and a boom in the 2000s carried it across Japan.

Which British brand, established in 1889, still sells curry powders, pastes and cooking sauces?

Sharwood's was set up by James Allen Sharwood in 1889; older still is Crosse & Blackwell, the name two former apprentices gave a London pickle firm when they bought it in 1830.

Burmese curries are traditionally cooked until which ingredient separates and floats on top?

Burmese curries are cooked si pyan, 'until the oil returns': onions, garlic and spices are fried in generous oil that separates and floats on top, a sign the curry is done.

When the Imperial Japanese Navy adopted curry, what did it serve the stew over instead of bread?

Rice replaced the bread, and the navy thickened the sauce with flour; the result, kare raisu, is now eaten so widely in Japan that it is called a national dish.