Indian cuisine has grown in status to become one of the most popular in the world, being served almost everywhere from street food vendors to fine-dining restaurants. In the UK alone, the Indian food industry is worth more than £3.2 billion (and counting), as the people of Britain get an increasingly large appetite for the exciting, mouth-watering dishes of India – including, of course, curry. With that in mind, here are some interesting curry facts you may not know:
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The word ‘curry’ originated from the Tamil word ‘kari’, which means a spiced sauce. This term once indicated a spicy, soup-like dressing that was served over meat and vegetables; the Portuguese then changed it to ‘curry’ and used it to describe sauces that were served with rice.
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Hannah Glasse was the first person to publish a curry recipe in English; it featured in the 1747 cookbook entitled ‘The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple.’
- One of the world’s fieriest curries is the Chicken Naga. The ingredient that makes this dish so spicy is the seeds of the Naga pepper, which is supposedly 100 times hotter than jalapeno peppers! Large quantities of the seed go into this chicken dish, so it’s not one for the faint-hearted.
- The Indian states of Assam, Manipur and Nagaland grow one the world’s hottest chillies: the BhutJolokia Chilli Pepper, otherwise known as the Naga Jolokia, the Ghost Chilli or the Ghost Pepper. This is said to be 400 times fierier than Tabasco sauce, and even comes with its own health warning!
- The UK’s first curry house opened in 1809. Situated in London’s Portland Square, the Hindoostanee Coffee House was owned by Sake Dean Mahomed and provided spicy vegetable and meat dishes to the capital’s diners. According to a newspaper ad for the curry house at the time, it served “Indian dishes, in the highest perfection…unequalled to any curry ever made in England.”
- Perhaps surprisingly, the opening of Sake Dean Mahomed’s curry house came long before Britain’s first dedicated fish and chip shop, which opened some 50 years later.
- Although the first curry house was built in 1809, it was some time before fine dining Indian food came to the UK. Edward Palmer – the great-grandson of an Indian princess and an English soldier - launched Veeraswamy in 1926, and to this day it is still serving up delicious, high-quality Indian food on London’s Regent Street.
- In New Delhi in 2008, a team of 60 chefs produced the world’s biggest ever curry. Weighing in at 12 tonnes, the mammoth biryani contained 6600lb of rice and 187lb of chillies, and the container could only be lifted by crane. The dish was cooked in a specially-built furnace measuring three-feet high.
