What does Curry mean?

[Suvir Saran]

I hear the words curry.. curry powder... curry paste and curries all the time.  Many times their usage does not bode well with my Indian upbringing.  And at other times, I am amazed at how aptly these words are used.

What does Curry mean to you?  What do you think are its roots?  Is the word from the English language or from one of the many Indian languages?  

This link below goes into much more detail and would be fascinating for many.  Please read and share your thoughts.

The Origins Of Curry Link

And now about what curries mean to Canada.  The link below seems to be quite articulate with just a few Curry-facts seeming fuzzy.

Canadian Story on Curries Link

[mamster]

I think most American diners (and I've certainly been guilty of this kind of oversimplification) think of "curry" as being something like a Hindi-derived word for "stew," and any stew with some cardamom, cumin, and turmeric in it is then called a "curry."  I've heard the word is actually from the Tamil, and I frankly have no idea how widespread these spicy stews are in India.

The "history of curry" link is coming up very slowly for me;  I was hoping to be set straight.  Not having traveled in India, I'm sadly ignorant of regional Indian cooking, even though I know it's hugely diverse and could bring me much pleasure.  That's why I'm watching this board closely.

[Suvir Saran]

You certainly think more deeply than most others.  And you are very correct in most of your assumptions.  The link works fine for me.  Try it again.  YOu will like it. Exhaustive and well written.

[mamster]

Okay, I read the page.  Great stuff.  I especially liked the Thackeray poem, which seemed more that a little dirty.

I've never read Hobson-Jobson, but I have a collection of essays by William Warren ("The Truth About Anna, and Other Stories") which includes a paean to H-J, and periodically I reread it and think, "I should find a copy of this."

[Bux]

Elsewhere on eGullet I gave the US dictionary definition for curry. It is defined as a powder made from a blend of spices and also as a sauce made from this powder. Thus when one uses the word in America, no matter what one feels is correct, one has to understand that if your reader goes to the dictionary, this is the meaning he will find. I did not check more than one dictionary and that was a vey abridged soft cover edition. It would be interesting to read entries in other dictionaries.

[Suvir Saran]

Thanks Bux,..... I do think you have given us the most commonly understood and accepted meaning.

[Jason Perlow]

Curry (William Makepeace Thackeray, 1846)

Three pounds of veal my darling girl prepares,

And chops it nicely into little squares;

Five onions next prures the little minx

(The biggest are the best, her Samiwel thinks),

And Epping butter nearly half a pound,

And stews them in a pan until they’re brown’d.

What’s next my dexterous little girl will do?

She pops the meat into the savoury stew,

With curry-powder table-spoonfuls three,

And milk a pint (the richest that may be),

And, when the dish has stewed for half an hour,

A lemon’s ready juice she’ll o’er it pour.

Then, bless her! Then she gives the luscious pot

A very gentle boil - and serves quite hot.

PS - Beef, mutton, rabbit, if you wish,

Lobsters, or prawns, or any kind fish,

Are fit to make a CURRY. ‘Tis, when done,

A dish for Emperors to feed upon.

[indiachef]

"CURRY" - AFAIK does not exist in Indian foods. It is a term coined by the Colonials, ergo the word in English dictionaries.

[BBhasin]

Here is another take on curry. This is on the back cover of our menu to enlighten our patrons in a slightly humerous manner.

http://bombaycurrycompany.com/story.html

[Suvir Saran]

Thanks for the link to your site. Your restaurants seems wonderful. Great to see a website of that calibre for a restaurant.

I like the curry take you shared.

[trillium]

Ah, the eternal question...

Here's two uberthreads on the meaning of curry back in rec.food.cooking's glory days...watching shankar, bharati and geeta go was a thing of beauty.

click 1

click 2

Make sure to read the whole threads for maximum enjoyment.

regards,

trillium

[Bux]

Not only what, but where? The other evening as I was coming home, I was stopped by a tourist and asked if there was a Chinese restaurant in the area. By way of clarification, the young man said he was from Ireland, that he didn't have adventurous tastes and was just looking for a simple chicken curry. Chinatown is not a long walk from my front door and I pointed him in that direction and recommended a Shanghai restaurant that is good, cheap and the closest Chinese restaurant I could recommend. I was not about to discuss Shanghai food as it might relate to whatever passes for Chinese food in whatever part of Ireland he was from. There are many Chinese restaurants in NY that serve a curried dish, but it's hardly the dish a New Yorker would ask for when looking for a typical Chinese restaurant.

[skchai]

The remark about curry in Chinese restaurants gets me started on the entire mystery of East Asian "curries" and their origins. Here in Honolulu we have several branches of Coco Ichibanya, Japan's biggest curry fast food chain.

Japan's obsession with curry is nearly as deep, though not as broad, as Britain's. One survey showed that curry was the single most popular food among Japanese children.

Yet Japanese curry makes post-Raj British "bog standard" look like pure Hindustani cuisine. It typically contains soy sauce and beef tallow, and is thicked to the point of pastyness by a wheat flour roux. Its solid chunks are typically stewed beef or "tonkatsu" (breaded pork cutlet), but can also include fried squid, seaweed, quasi-korean "kalbi" (beef ribs), or "natto" (fermented soybeans). Typical sauce additives are chopped apples, plums, and tonkatsu sauce (!). It does contain coriander, cumin, turmeric, etc. whence the appellation presumably comes, but it's not clear how it arrived in Japan. Via the British? Hard to believe given the huge disparity between the British version and the Japanese. Via the Chinese? Then how to explain the much greater popularity in Japan than any part of the greater China?

Anyway, I digressed . . .

[skchai]

Another note on etymology: One of Thailand's five or so standard varieties

of curry paste is something called "gaeng kari". "Gaeng" is typically translated as Thai for "curry", and gaeng kari is apparent a Thai curry in

the Indian-influenced style, defined (as in much of the world outside the subcontinent) by use of ingredients such as turmeric, coriander, and cumin.

The point of this seemingly pointless digression is that is indirectly rebuts the notion that the English "curry" is derived from cury as in "Forme of Cury", as is mentioned as one possibility in the informative menumagazine.co.uk page. Gaeng kari apparently predates the beginning of British influence in Thailand. It furthermore seems unlikely that, being much closer to India, that Thailand could only acquire a taste for "curry" spices via the British. Given the unlikelihood that the term "curry" arose independently in Britain and Thailand from different etymologies but with similar meanings, it seem almost guaranteed that the term must have an Indian source. Hence Hobson-Jobson is vindicated!

[Suvir Saran]

Kari is a Tamil word.

Maybe one of our Southern Indian members could tell us more about the word.

And it has roots in the food world of the region.

[Bigfoot]

Kari is a Tamil word.

Maybe one of our Southern Indian members could tell us more about  the word.

And it has roots in the food world of the region.

Camellia Panjabi explains the origins of the word curry in her 1995 book "The Great Curries of India"

A lot has been written about the word curry and whether it is actually an Indian word in the first place, or was invented by the English. The Tamils (the people living in the Southern Indian state of which Madras is the capital) have the word kaari in their language, which has twelve vowels instead of the five in English and slightly different phonetic emphasis changes the meaning of a word. (Kaari is actually part of a longer word, Kaikaari, in the Tamil region, where caste differences are taken seriously, and these are reflected in different meanings of kaari.) The Brahmins of Tamil Nadu, who are strict vegetarians, mean by kaari a vegetable dish cooked with spices and a dash of coconut. When the non-vegetarian communities of Tamil Nadu use the word kaari, it literally means meat, which they pronounce with more emphasis on the end of the word as in kaaree. They would call a meat dish with gravy a kaaree kolambu, kolambu being gravy. The origin of the word curry seems to be a meat or vegetable dish to be eaten with rice, which is considered to be the main dish of the meal.

She also writes about the word curry being used in English:

Cooks in English households in Madras would not have been Brahmins, who would have refused to handle non-vegetarian food. They would most probably have been from the castes who converted to Christianity, who would agree to cook meat, beef and pork. So they would certainly have referred to meat dishes to go with rice as curry.

[Suvir Saran]

Kari is a Tamil word.

Maybe one of our Southern Indian members could tell us more about  the word.

And it has roots in the food world of the region.

Camellia Panjabi explains the origins of the word curry in her 1995 book "The Great Curries of India"

A lot has been written about the word curry and whether it is actually an Indian word in the first place, or was invented by the English. The Tamils (the people living in the Southern Indian state of which Madras is the capital) have the word kaari in their language, which has twelve vowels instead of the five in English and slightly different phonetic emphasis changes the meaning of a word. (Kaari is actually part of a longer word, Kaikaari, in the Tamil region, where caste differences are taken seriously, and these are reflected in different meanings of kaari.) The Brahmins of Tamil Nadu, who are strict vegetarians, mean by kaari a vegetable dish cooked with spices and a dash of coconut. When the non-vegetarian communities of Tamil Nadu use the word kaari, it literally means meat, which they pronounce with more emphasis on the end of the word as in kaaree. They would call a meat dish with gravy a kaaree kolambu, kolambu being gravy. The origin of the word curry seems to be a meat or vegetable dish to be eaten with rice, which is considered to be the main dish of the meal.

She also writes about the word curry being used in English:

Cooks in English households in Madras would not have been Brahmins, who would have refused to handle non-vegetarian food. They would most probably have been from the castes who converted to Christianity, who would agree to cook meat, beef and pork. So they would certainly have referred to meat dishes to go with rice as curry.

WOW! Thanks Bigfoot! What a treat it is to have you give details that I had been longing for. I was missing the book by Camellia. It is back home in NYC.

Have you cooked with Camellias book? What do you think of the recipes?

Thanks for taking time to share this with us.

[Bigfoot]

Suvir,

Thanks for the warm welcome; I just now realized that this is a thread you started in February 2002!

I have cooked out of Camellia's book quite a bit; it was actually one of my first Indian cookbooks! I found it really useful for its detailed explanations of ingredients & history of the cuisine (although it's limited in scope by definition). Haven't had a flop with any of the recipes, and I appreciate her way of explaining what role ingredients/techniques play in specific recipes. That said, I've got a long way to go in cooking Indian, so take my opinion here with a grain of salt.