Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Curry recipes page which bring together recipes for curries, curry pastes and powders and accompaniments to curries from around the world. These pages provide links to all the curry and curry-associated recipes presented on this site, with 1527 recipes in total.

Curry, originating in the Indian sub-continent (modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) has become a true global phenomenon. Curry is first attested 4000 years ago and it was being introduced to southeast Asia by Indian traders 2000 years ago. Its introduction to East Africa was probably not much later than that. However, it wasn't until the European ages of exploration and conquest that curry powders were invented and curry became a global phenomenon.

We all know what a 'curry' is... or at least we're familiar with the common usage of the term and the use of the word in Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Thai, Caribbean and Japanese restaurants (amongst others). However, in reality, the term curry is due to a misunderstanding during the British Raj and I'll examine its origins and modern interpretations further, below:

As a general modern interpretation, a curry can be considered as a dish with a sauce (gravy) seasoned with spices, mainly associated with South Asian cuisine. In southern India, leaves from the curry tree may be included. The British introduced curry (either through the introduction of curry powders or the transportation of people from south Asia) to the Caribbean, Japan and the UK with further dissemination throughout the former British Empire.

Curry powder, a commercially prepared mixture of spices marketed in the West, was first exported to Britain in the 18th century when Indian merchants (often from the Bay of Bengal) sold a concoction of spices, similar to garam masala (or modern-day Madras), to the British colonial government and army returning to Britain who wanted a retain a taste of the food they had become used to in India.

The term curry as we use it today is a result of linguistic confusion, where the word for 'sauce or gravy' in Tamil was first brought into Portuguese and then Anglicised and mis-represented by both colonial Powers to stand for any dish with a spicy sauce. Etymologically, it is most likely that the word 'curry' is an anglicised form of the Tamil கறி kaṟi meaning 'sauce' or 'relish for rice' that typically uses the leaves of the curry tree (Murraya koenigii).

Portuguese traders (during the 16th century CE) brought chillies and tomatoes from the New World, so it was only after the Columbian Exchange that modern-style curries got going. It's probably from these initial interactions that the term 'curry' gained familiarity as a misunderstanding. It's the old story, the newcomer asks the native 'what's that', or 'what are you eating' and the reply in Dravidian languages would have been something like 'khari', 'kahari' or 'caril' referring to the mix of spices used or the sauce/gravy. So the colonial takes the word they've heard, adjusting the pronunciation and then assumes the word is generic for all such dishes. Indeed, the word 'curry' did not exist, as such, in any Indian languages. So it was the Portuguese who popularised the term 'curry'. Indeed, the first European recipe for Kaṟi comes from a 17th century Portuguese cookbook. Contact with the Portuguese in India brought the term Kaṟi in to English, where it was further Anglicised into 'curry', a term that was applied to all spicy sauce-based dishes. It's interesting that just as curry entered English, the English word 'gravy' entered many Indian languages. So if you ask Indians what a curry really represents many will say that it's a dish with a spiced gravy!

As a cooking style characterized by vegetables, pulses or meat cooked in a sauce flavoured with a spice paste it could be argued that it's the development of a pestle and mortar (or at its most basic a grinding stone) that defines the origins of curry (in India at least). So the development of curry follows almost directly from the technologies required to mill grain.

Here I should also mention the karahi (also known as kadai) the most popular dish in South Asia for cooking a curry. A karahi (/kəˈraɪ/; Assamese: কেৰাহী, romanized: kerahi, Bengali: কড়াই, romanized: koṛāi, Hindi: कड़ाही, romanized: kaṛāhī, Marathi: कढई, Nepali: करै, Urdu: کڑاہی; also kadai, kerahi, karai, kadhi, kadahi, kadhai sarai, or cheena chatti) is a type of thick, circular, and deep cooking pot[1] (similar in shape to a wok) that originated in the Indian subcontinent. The similarity of the name karahi to 'curry' needs to be mentioned. The British undoubtedly encountered these vessels in the Bay of Bengal where the name is romanized to koṛāi and I'm certain this also led to the confusion over the naming of the dish that came to be known as curry, with the dish also lending its name to the food.

Curry is also a truly ancient style of cookery and almost certainly hails back to the Harrapan culture of the Indus river valley. In 2010 excavations of the Harappan settlement of Farmana in the Ghaggar valley near modern-day Delhi, identified potsherds with traces of food still on them. Archaeologists Arunima Kashyap and Steve Webber of Vancouver's Washington State University used the method of starch analysis and identified mangoes, bananas, dates and gourds as well as cooked sugar and salt. The most interesting specimen held traces of aubergine, turmeric, ginger and salt — the first proto-curry. As a result, it's possible to re-construct a brinjal (aubergine) bronze-age proto-curry that I present on this site as Reconstructed Bronze Age Brinjal Curry whose antecedents survive today as Badanekaayi Gojju. Interestingly, large-scale rice cultivation also dates back to the Harrapan civilization, entirely possible that this proto-curry could have been served with rice.

Outside India it was probably Indian traders that introduced these first proto-curries to East Asia. Indeed, archeological evidence indicates that these types of curry were being prepared in South Vietnam (the Funan kingdom) 2000 years ago (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adh5517) where analysis of a spice grinding slab revealed evidence of turmeric, ginger, fingerroot, sand ginger, galangal as well as cinnamon, cloves (probably clove seeds rather than the modern clove flower bud spice) and nutmeg as well as the remains of rice and coconut as well as banana/plantain. So we could expand this to a plantain curry flavoured with turmeric, ginger, fingerroot and galangal (still the basis of South Asian curries today) with flavourings of cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon that's thickened with coconut milk and served with rice. I have a recipe in mind for reconstructing this dish and once I have a chance to visit the local Asian supermarket I'll prepare it to taste and publish the results here.

The Portuguese may have been the first Europeans to set up trading posts and then colonise India, but it was the British who popularised Indian spices in a global sense and that was done, largely through the actions of the British East India Company. Workers for the company grew used to the flavours of India and when returning to Britain they wanted to take those flavours back with them. Enterprising spice traders, primarily in the Bay of Bengal prepared spice powders (primarily adapted to English tastes) that could would withstand the long voyages home and these became popular. Initially, these were expensive novelties and curreys (as they were called in the 18th century) started to appear in the cookery books of the time. Indeed, the first published recipe for a curry in English was 'To Make Currey the Indian Way' from Hanna Glasse's 1747 The Aft of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, the classic Georgian cookbook. You can find a re-construction of this recipe on my To Make Currey the Indian Way page. In effect, this a stew of chicken or rabbits, with a spoonful of rice and several spices - the portions being the reverse of what is served today (ie an Indian sauce served with rice became an English stew with a little rice in it).

However, the first English curry recipe I've found comes from c. 1675 and is a hand-written recipe found in Wellcome Manuscript No MS.4050/7. I have a copy of the original recipe and have re-constructed the dish, which you can find here: To Dress a Hen, Mutton or Lamb the Indian Way.

It was also during this time that what we think of as the classic Indian curry was born (in India), with chillies becoming the mainstay of a curry's heat. Which is not to say that earlier curries were unspiced. After all, we know that even the earliest proto-curries of the Harrapan civilization used ginger extensively. Both black pepper Piper nigrum and long pepper Piper longum are Indian natives and have been cultivate and harvested for millennia. They have been used extensively as a hot spice and were prized as unlike all other 'peppers' they provide heat without affecting the flavour of a dish. Indeed, there are curry types in India today that use black pepper as the main spice, for example Chicken Kali Mirch (Black Pepper Chicken Curry). The recipe does contain two chillies, but you can remove these to see just how spicy the curry is based on black pepper alone.

Tomatoes (another product of the Columbian Exchange) are also a classic component of many modern Indian curries, but are fairly recent additions to Indian cuisine. However, that perception is largely due to how modern commercial restaurants prepare their curries (see my page on British Indian Restaurant (BIR) curries for a discussion) and many true Indian curries use coconut milk based or greens-based sauces.

An interesting book to mention here is the 1869 edition of The Indian Cookery Book a volume published in Calcutta and which was a recipe guide to Anglo-Indian households. As well as English recipes adapted to India it has a guide on how to prepare a range of Indian dishes that include archetypes of kitchari/kedgeree, pilau, dupiazas, koftas, jalfrezis, tikkas, kormas, bhajis, bharta/bhurttha and vindaloos; all dishes that have become mainstays of British Indian Restaurant (BIR) cookery. The book also shows the use of chillies and tomatoes in Indian cookery. The book also demonstrates that the cultural exchange (at least in terms of cookery) was not a one-way street. I'm happy to present the full text of this volume, as well as redactions of many of the recipes from it on this site.

Indian trading posts and subsequent colonization brought curries to Malaysia and the Philippines, with trade bringing curry powders and flavours to western China. The Portuguese also brought their curry styles to Macao, as the British did to Hong Kong. Curry styles in Bengal and Myanmar can be considered extensions of Indian curries that have subsequently diverged. For example, Bengali styles (that include modern-day Bangladesh) are often based on fish and typically use dried rather than fresh spices (remember that early spice blends sold to the British originated here). Coconut milk and cream is also used less frequently. Many Myanmar curries are extensions of Punjabi-style cuisine cooked without tomatoes or peppers.

Thai stir-fried curries are generally based on Indian-style curry powders. However, the more native curries incorporate highly-complex and aromatic pastes that include chillies, kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, galangal as well as shrimp paste and fish sauce. Thai curries are based on a balance of sweet, sour, salty and umami flavours (though US versions tend to be overly-sweet).

In Indonesia, the rendangs are probably the most famous dishes and are considered a 'dry curry'. beef rendang being the most well known form. Rendangs are also known in Malaysian and Filipino cuisine.

In Asia, Korea is probably the country where curry was introduced most recently. Indeed, curry was largely unknown before 1969, when the Ottogi Company introduced a turmeric-base curry powder into the local market. Curry is now one of the dishes served to accompany traditional tteok (rice cakes) as part of teokbokki; though typically it is served to accompany rice. A typical Korean curry would be ka-re-raice, 카레라이스 (Korean curry rice); a curried stew of meat and vegetables served over rice.

It was the British who introduced curry powders to Japan during the Meiji period (1868 to 1912) and that has led to uniquely Japanese curry styles, of which karē raisu – curry, rice, and often pickled vegetables, served on the same plate and eaten with a spoon, a common lunchtime canteen dish is the most common. This introduction from Britain is why curry in Japan is classed as a Western dish.

The British-style curry powder also spread to the Philippines and though Indian-style curries are known in the south, in the more Hispanicised north curries tend to represent more the addition of curry powder to native dishes. In the south of Thailand we get the Massaman-style curry which is a fusion dish, combining ingredients from three sources: Persia, the Indian Subcontinent, and the Malay Archipelago and is probably one of the most complex of all curries in terms of flavour with added richness coming from the use of coconut milk (for an example see this site's recipe for Massaman beef curry). Other classic Thai curries being red curries, green curries and yellow curries.

The Caribbean is also known for its curries, with curried goat probably being the most well-known dish. Curries arrived in two ways, with the introduction of curry powder by the British and the introduction of Indians as indentured servants. The Caribbean also became a centre for growing many of the rarer and more expensive spices needed for curries as well as the introduction of native allspice berries into curry blends.

South Africa is also well known for its curries, with two independent centres; the Cape Malay population of the southern cape (and Capetown) and the Indian population of Durban and Kwa-Zulu Natal. The Cape Malay are the descendants of enslaved and free Muslims from different parts of the world who lived at the Cape during Dutch and British rule; with the original members originating from the Dutch colonies of South East Asia. Bobotie (as represented by Easter lamb bobotie) a dish of curried mince with an egg custard topping represents a fusion of European and Cape Malay dishes and Bo-Kaap Kerrie (Cape Malay Curry) is a classic Cape Malay style curry.

The Ethiopian wat of wot is considered by many as a curry-style dish. To be exact, it is an Ethiopian and Eritrean stew that may be prepared with chicken, beef, lamb, a variety of vegetables, spice mixtures such as berbere, and niter kibbeh (a seasoned clarified butter). It is native to Ethiopia/Eritrea and has few external influences. An example would be Sega Wot (Red Beef Stew).

Kenya and Madagascar both have their native curry styles, introduced through centuries of trade and settlement from India with Kenyan styles tending to be more 'Indian' in nature and Malagasy curries using more native spices in their curry blends. Examples would be Swahili Fish Curry from Kenya and Malagasy vanilla chicken curry (amongst many others).

In terms of West Africa, it's debatable if Nigerian pepper soup could be considered a curry as though hot with pepper and containing native spices (and sometimes turmeric) it tends to be more soupy (ie have more liquid) that most curries (see my recipe for Nigerian fresh fish pepper soup; note that pepper soups are also found in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ghana). Curry powder has made its way to English West Africa and can readily be found in Nigeria, Ghana and Liberia. Though the term 'curry' in Nigeria often refers to turmeric-based curry blends and to turmeric itself. The closest thing to a curry in both Nigeria and Ghana might be 'Chicken Gravy', which really is chicken in a gravy flavoured with curry powder and thickened with cornflour. Here is my recipe for a Nigerian Chicken Gravy. In Dakar, Senegal, Indian restaurants have made an appearance and their food has definite native and French twists. Here is my re-constructed recipe for a Senegalese Beef and Cabbage Curry.

Indians were brought to Durban and Kwa-Zulu Natal as indentured cane cutters and they brought with them a vibrant curry culture, exemplified by Durban Mutton Curry and Bunny Chow (which is a regular curry served 'bunny style' ie in a hollowed out bun, cob or more typically a half loaf).

Anglicised versions of curry were very popular during the Victorian period and curry recipes appeared in most recipe books (as exemplified by Mrs Beeton, Eliza Acton and even Francatelli). Indeed, the UK's first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostanee Coffee House, opened in 1810 in London. However, it was not until the 1960s-1970 when emigrants from the Sylhet district of Bangladesh began to open 'Indian' restaurants and developed the British Indian Restaurant (BIR) style of cookery that Indian/Curry restaurants began to take off in the UK. Originally the food represented Indian-style dishes adapted for a British origin, though from the 2010s there's been more of a move towards authentic Indian dishes (for more on this see my page on British Indian Restaurant (BIR) curries).

The British, however, were not the only European nation to fall in love with curry. The French also brought curry back from their colony in Pondicherry and just as they gave that region of India baguettes, the Pondicherry coast gave France vadouvan curry powder as well as Breton kari powder. The range may not be as vast as British curry powders, but the history is fascinating nonetheless. There you will find authentic curry recipes made from both these curry powders.

The other major European power in India was the Portuguese. Curry passed into Portuguese cookery as 'caril' but in a subtler way. So you get Portuguese-influenced curries in Macau and debal/devil’s curry in Malay Cristong (peoples of mixed native and Portuguese ancestry) cuisine the first is based on Yellow Chinese-style curry powder and the second does not use curry powder at all. But, there is a Portuguese curry powder, called Pó de Caril, obviously, and I've tracked down a recipe for Pó de Caril/Portuguese curry powder so I can now present authentic Portuguese curries for you (not that there are many, but they do exist!). The Portuguese also brought these curries to Africa and they have become staple dishes, particularly in Mozambique and Angola.

With a verified 4000-year long history, the curry (however you define it) is probably humanity's most ancient continuously-prepared cuisine and one that, in its various forms, has come to dominate the globe.

Below are listed all the curry recipes available on this site; with more being added monthly: