E3W Literature | University of Texas

Lizzie Collingham

Curry: A Tale of Cooks & Conquerors

Oxford University Press, 2006

315 pages

$28.00

Reviewed by Lisa Gulesserian

Peppered with recipes of enticing Indian dishes such as chicken tikka masala and korma, Lizzie Collingham’s Cur­ry: A Tale of Cooks & Conquerors is a great read for western gourmands who are curious about the delights they com­monly consume in Indian restaurants around the globe. To satiate this desire for information, Cambridge-trained historian and self-proclaimed foodie Lizzie Collingham chronologically tracks the creation and transformation of ten dishes of vaguely Indian origin in her ten chapters.

After reading a couple of chapters, it is clear that Collingham is not writing a facile history of “authentically Indian” fare. She makes sure her readers understand the implications of calling any Indian dish authentic, as each dish is actually the product of many years of conquest, fusion, and innovation in both India and Europe. She explains that the dish we now call “vindaloo” had its beginnings with Portuguese traders in Goa who used chili peppers procured from colonies in the Ameri­cas to spice their version of carne de vinho e alhos or meat cooked in vinegar (tamarind in Goa) and garlic. Surprisingly, the recipe that Collingham provides at the end of her chapter on vindaloo is from a British source, not a Portuguese one. Nonetheless, a British recipe for an already hybridized dish serves to further highlight the hybrid nature of Indian dishes.

Collingham’s title is an apt illustration of the mixed origins of “Indian” cuisine. According to Collingham’s sources, the word “curry” actually originated with a British garbling of what the Portuguese called caril or carree from the Kanna­dan word for seasoning, kari. For the Portuguese, carree were dishes made of butter, spices and herbs that were served on top of cooked rice. For the British, this definition was fur­ther widened to include “any spicy dish with a thick sauce or gravy in every part of India.” Collingham underscores the importance of this British definition in her chapter on Ma­dras curry by discussing the regional differences within In­dian food on the subcontinent and explaining that there is no single dish cooked by all Indians. Only in the Western imagination and the Western kitchen is there something seen as unequivocally pan-Indian, where “recipes, ingredients, techniques, and garnishes from all over the subcontinent [are] combined…in a coherent repertoire of dishes.” It is here that Collingham makes her most sophisticated arguments, as she explains that “Anglo-Indian cookery can never be described as a truly national Indian cuisine as the hybrid dishes that it produced were only consumed by the British in India.”

Despite starting out with detailed chapters about korma and vindaloo, the nuances of the last chapters are not as developed as the chapters from the first half of the book. Collingham os­cillates between focusing on Indian food in India and Indian food in England while trying to explain the combination of events that resulted in the Indian food that we eat now. This disorienting organizational strategy does little to further the argument of the book, especially in the chapter about curry powder in England. Here, Collingham discusses topics as varied as “traditionally bland” European food, catsup, chutneys, and non-indigenous vegetables such as potatoes and tomatoes. By the end of the book, Collingham seems to have bitten off more than she could chew by trying to cover the developments in eating habits of both Europe and India concurrently. A better strategy would have been to defer to previously written books such as Wolfgang Schivelbusch’s Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants, and Intoxicants (1993) when sum­marizing changing European tastes to include spices and fla­vorings that were formerly deemed foreign and unappetizing.

However, Collingham’s chapter on curry and chips does pro­vide information on the use of spices in Europe that cannot be procured in Schivelbusch’s book. With various personal accounts from Indian immigrants, Collingham recounts the story of Syhleti sailors who jumped ship and fled to England to make a living by owning pubs that slowly introduced the British working classes to the piquant flavors of curry with fries and beer. This chapter clarifies the origins of the wide­spread English practice of “going out for an Indian.” It also added to Collingham’s argument about the hybrid nature of Indian cuisine outside of India, as she explains that many of the Indian restaurants in England are actually run by Ban­gladeshis from Syhleti. This leads Collingham to argue that “the creolization of ethnic foods can be read as a sign that [the British] are only capable of being cosmopolitan in their tastes, as long as they are able to integrate the ethnic dish into their thoroughly British food habits.” By ending her chapter with this biting critique of the many events that led to the hybrid­ized cuisine of Indian restaurants abroad, Collingham moves beyond a merely factual account of the creation of dishes like curry and chips and into a realm of social commentary. Truly, this chapter showcases the implications of the curries and tikka masalas that most people eat without a second thought.

Although Collingham’s book is generally well-researched, as in the chapter about curry and chips and Madras curry, the author overwhelms her patrons at times with too much information from one source. Since the majority of her pri­mary documents come from British and French travelogues, it is heavily one-sided in European sources. In a book that is supposed to demystify Indian cuisine, this is a bit of a mis­step. Yes, Collingham is attempting to show the hybrid nature of Indian food as we know it, but providing historical data from the Indians themselves would have developed her argu­ment, adding another layer of complexity to an issue that is already quite complicated in regard to origins and influences.

In short, Collingham’s book is an interesting venture that in­troduces the idea that our favorite Indian dishes are products of years of borrowing and innovation amongst Europeans and Indians, but it leaves scholars focusing on India without much information as the majority of the book explains In­dian food in the western imagination. In any case, Curry is an­other book in the long line of many discussing hybridization and globalization, but it does so through the lens of recipes and restaurants. Any reader or cook with a voracious appetite should give Collingham’s book, and the recipes therein, a try.