Product Description

Curry serves up a delectable history of Indian cuisine, ranging from the imperial kitchen of the Mughal invader Babur to the smoky cookhouse of the British Raj.
In this fascinating volume, the first authoritative history of Indian food, Lizzie Collingham reveals that almost every well-known Indian dish is the product of a long history of invasion and the fusion of different food traditions. We see how, with the arrival of Portuguese explorers and the Mughal horde, the cooking styles and ingredients of central Asia, Persia, and Europe came to the subcontinent, where over the next four centuries they mixed with traditional Indian food to produce the popular cuisine that we know today. Portuguese spice merchants, for example, introduced vinegar marinades and the British contributed their passion for roast meat. When these new ingredients were mixed with native spices such as cardamom and black pepper, they gave birth to such popular dishes as biryani, jalfrezi, and vindaloo. In fact, vindaloo is an adaptation of the Portuguese dish "carne de vinho e alhos-"-the name "vindaloo" a garbled pronunciation of "vinho e alhos"--and even "curry" comes from the Portuguese pronunciation of an Indian word. Finally, Collingham describes how Indian food has spread around the world, from the curry houses of London to the railway stands of Tokyo, where "karee raisu" (curry rice) is a favorite Japanese comfort food. We even visit Madras Mahal, the first Kosher Indian restaurant, in Manhattan.
Richly spiced with colorful anecdotes and curious historical facts, and attractively designed with 34 illustrations, 5 maps, and numerous recipes, Curry is vivid, entertaining, and delicious--a feast for food lovers everywhere.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #371017 in Books
• Published on: 2007-05-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. There's nothing like trying to represent the food of India on a two-page menu to raise tricky questions about authenticity and mass taste. Isn't curry really a British invention? Does chicken tikka masala have anything to do with Indian food? Fortunately, Cambridge-trained historian Collingham supplies a welcome corrective: the cuisine of the Indian subcontinent has always been in glorious flux, and the popularity of chicken vindaloo on London's Brick Lane or New York's Curry Row (and beyond) is no simple betrayal of the cuisine. (As far as charges of cultural imperialism go, if it weren't for the Portuguese, the chilli pepper never would have had its massive impact on the region's delicacies.) Easy stratifications wilt in the face of fact: Hindu and Muslim culinary traditions have been intertwined at least as far back as the 16th-century Mughal emperor Akbar, and even caste- and religion-derived gustatory restrictions are often overridden by traditions tied to subregion. Collingham's mixed approach is a delight: it's not every cookbook that incorporates an exhaustive (indeed, footnoted) culinary history, and few works of regional history lovingly explain how to make a delicious Lamb Korma. Collingham's account is generous, embracing complexity to create a richer exploration of the "exotic casserole" that conquered the world. Illus., maps. (Jan.)
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From Booklist
Like a fragrant biryani studded with bits of sweet and savory relishes, every page of this history of Indian cuisine offers some revelation about the origins of Indian food and its spread to the West. Historian Collingham traces how successive invasions of the subcontinent contributed new ingredients and novel cooking techniques that transformed indigenous cooking into what we now recognize as classic Indian cuisine. Early invasions from the northwest brought rice, and Persian pilau became Hindustani biryani. Portuguese sailors imported pork and Brazilian chili peppers to create vindaloo. Collingham describes how the regal courts of the various Indian states elaborated on all these foodstuffs to produce what may have been the most sumptuous banquets the world has ever known. Most surprising of all, Collingham's ruminations address the role of tea in India. Although it is a commonplace that today's India is the world's leading producer and consumer of tea, Indians drank very little tea until the British introduced it scarcely a century ago. Recipes, both contemporary and antique, supplement the text. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

"A superb combination of culinary, cultural, and political history."--Books & Culture
"Part world map, part menu, this book is entirely delicious."--Time Magazine
"Cooks should relish Curry."--USA Today
"A lively study of Indian cooking from the Mogul Empire of the 1600s to Utsav in 21st-century Manhattan, one of the 'new breed' of Indian restaurants. It's a long but tasty journey, made easily digestible by Collingham."--Alison McCullough, New York Times Book Review
"Fascinating.... Collingham skillfully weaves her way through the complex cultural transactions that yielded a specialized Anglo-Indian cuisine based, in large part, on mutual misunderstanding.... One of her goals, in tracing the evolution of curry and the global spread of Indian cuisine, is to pull the rug out from under the idea that India, or any other nation, ever had a cuisine that was not constantly in the process of assimilation and revision. The very dishes, flavors and food practices that we think of as timelessly, quintessentially Indian turn out to be, as often as not, foreign imports or newfangled inventions. That includes chili peppers and tea."--William Grimes, The New York Times
"Her research and personal ruminations take the reader on an intriguing, colorful journey, dispelling any notion that curry as we know it is fixed, immutable or, for that matter, completely Indian.... She convincingly demonstrates that the foods of a country or region are inextricably linked to the historical, cultural and economic forces that shaped it and the people who ruled it."--Judith Weinraub, Washington Post Book World
"Collingham tells the story of how the culinary habits of conquerors and conquered got jumbled up in India with great flair, drawing on historical records and local lore to color her tale."--Time Magazine, Asia
"This delightful book is liberally sprinkled with colorful historical facts and anecdotes, adding spice to the fascinating story of one of India's signature gifts to the world."--Seattle Times
"Collingham is a diligent researcher with an eye to a compelling or amusing detail or quotation. Her book is therefore packed with information, and perhaps best read in small portions, so each can be savored.... Her recipes are alluring. They come at the end of the chapters, and the history therein makes them all the more enticing. They are adapted to Western kitchens, so this is a book that serious cooks will enjoy, as will anyone interested in the many regions with their varied climates, histories and cultures that make up modern India."--Claire Hopley, Washington Times
"Scholarly, accessable and above all utterly original, Curry is one of the hottest and most mouth-watering books of non-fiction about India to appear for many years. Lizzie Collingham has shown herself to be a major new talent in the field."--William Dalrymple, author of White Mughals
"An interesting story that's 5 parts history, 1 part culinary, and wholly entertaining to read.... Collingham couples excellent story telling with exhaustive research. The result is a historical perspective on Indian fare that is as mouth watering as it is informative."--DCist.com
"Like a fragrant biryani studded with bits of sweet and savory relishes, every page of this history of Indian cuisine offers some revelation about the origins of Indian food and its spread to the West."--Booklist
"Collingham's mixed approach is a delight: it's not every cookbook that incorporates an exhaustive (indeed, footnoted) culinary history, and few works of regional history lovingly explain how to make a delicious Lamb Korma. Collingham's account is generous, embracing complexity to create a richer exploration of the 'exotic casserole' that conquered the world."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Curry should be handed round with the poppadoms. A mouth-watering book, exhaustively researched, rich in anecdote and sprinkled with recipes both sumptuous (three pages on how to prepare chicken biriyani) and less so (twelfth-century instructions for roasting black rat), it provides the perfect stimulus for the next step--the giant leap from curry powder and chicken tikka masala to the real delights of the most varied, imaginative and delicious cuisine in the world"--Literary Review
"Successfully depicts the vivid history of Indian foods and cooking. Curry is richly peppered with illustrations, maps, and, of course, recipes.... All libraries will want to add this to their collections."--Library Journal
"From the influence of Moghul and Portugese to Britons, the book traces the evolution, transformation and reincarnation of curry, with rich anecdotes and tempting recipes. Lizzie Collingham has woven a fascinating culinary cruise that also enlightens us about India's history through its most popular export, the curry." --Mira Advani Honeycutt, Food and Wine Writer
"Lizzie Collingham's Curry is a spicy tale, well researched and deliciously told. She unveils the secrets behind one of the world's most important yet mysterious condiments. It's a great read with plenty of tasty recipes." --Andrew F. Smith, Editor-in-Chief, Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America
"Lizzie Collingham's love and passion for Indian food and flavors is well depicted in the book. It seems that she painstakingly researched the origin, history and lore of Indian food. I was very captivated by the stories and discovered that they tied into many of the lessons I have learned from the cooks I had worked with in India during my culinary profession. I think that this is a definite read for all Indophiles and will be one of the books I will recommend to my cooks and guests interested in food from the subcontinent."--Executive Chef Floyd Cardoz, Tabla & Bread Bar
"Finally a book that does justice to the complexity of curry and the diaspora that carried it around the world. Curry is rigorous and yet playful about a cuisine that belongs to everyone in all its hybridity and yet cannot be traced back to any one place. It does not shy away from the topography of imperial British power that shaped the curry in its dispersal through indentured servitude and the British merchant marine, while at the same time acknowledging that curry is how the empire strikes back." --Krishnendu Ray, author of The Migrant's Table and Associate Professor, The Culinary Institute of America at Hyde Park
"What this smart little book does is unpick some of the pathways by which various meats, fish, fruits and rice came together at particular moments in history to produce, say, a lamb pasanda or even our own particular favorite, chicken tikka masala ('curry,' it turns out, is a generic term that Indians themselves would never use)."--Kathryn Hughes, Guardian

Customer Reviews

The history of India through its food and Indian food through history
This book is more than a history of Indian cuisine. It is a history of India as reflected in its food. Each chapter is ostensibly the history of a certain dish (biryani, vindaloo, korma, curry), but it is also a history of a certain era in Indian history and how Indian food changed in that era.

Collingham argues that there is no such thing as "authentic" Indian cooking. Indian cooking has developed largely through the influence of outside powers invading the subcontinent and bringing a new set of ingredients or tastebuds with it. These new ingredients and tastes mixed with what was already there, adding a new layer to Indian cookery. Mughal tastes led to the invention of biryani. The Portuguese brought peppers from the New World and their Indian chefs created vindaloo. Cooks for the British essentially invented curry to suit British tastes.

One of the most interesting aspects of the book--and one overlooked by most reviewers--is its sources. Collingham has read dozens of historic accounts of travel through India. Some Mughal, some British, some French. These travelogues from the Middle Ages through the 19th century provide a fascinating window into Indian life and food at the time. These are complemented by contemporaneous recipes (and modern ones) for dishes from a given era.

You will learn how Indian cuisine developed and you will learn how India developed, and you will discover that both were the result of new influences meeting with the old India over centuries.

Serious Scholarship Masquerading as Light Reading
Collingham's book, while quite well-written and easy to read, is also a substantial piece of scholarship. Among other things, Collingham is excellent in her de-bunking of the myth of an "authentic" Indian food. Any historian of medieval and early modern India knows that what we now think of as distinctively Indian is a hybrid of numerous cultures. After all, the chili pepper, potatoes, and tomatoes only arrived in India with the Portuguese starting in the 16th century!

Her chai recipe is also quite good. (Why would you ever buy the pre-mixed stuff from the store?)

wonderfully written history for the lover of Indian cuisine.
Entertaining read about the many different cultural influences brought to bear on Indian cuisine and the converse, its influence on other cultures. It is intersting to learn of the introduction of New World foods (potatoes, tomatoes,chili peppers!) to India by the Portugese and Spainiards. The profound effect it had on the British Isles where Chicken Tikka Masala was recently declared the national dish of Britain(which, although derided as nonauthentic, I liked). This book inspired me to try more Indian recipes, which the author provided in abundance.