How an Indian Stew Shaped the Modern World: From Cleopatra to Queen Elizabeth

What is “curry”?

How do you define a category that includes so many of the world’s most beloved dishes- from Thailand to India, Africa to the Caribbean? A category of coconut soups and onion-based stews, Thai-Khmer steamed fish mousse and even samosas and curry puffs?

To find that answer, we look at the spices that link so many of the world’s diverse curries together, and trace those back to their point of origin- the Big Bang from where the entire world’s curry culture emerged.

And we’ll also find out how the word “curry” entered the lexicon and why its use is so controversial and to some, so offensive.

-Thanks to our guest, Chef Keith Sarasin. Here is a link to his channel: https://www.youtube.com/@chefKeithSarasin @chefKeithSarasin

-And his video about the word “Curry”: https://youtu.be/Y8AyelJo4Fo?si=ZrBnVes865jdDCId

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0:00 – Introduction
1:22 – Khao Gaeng
3:27 – The First Curry
5:08 – “Charles Masson”
6:16 – Putting the Pieces Together
7:50 – Indus Valley Stews
10:07 – Masala
11:32 – Out of the Indus Valley
12:55 – Iraqi Curry
15:02 – Babylon and the Start of the Spice Trade
17:18 – Agriculture and Geography
20:12 – Bangladeshi Curry
23:06 – The Coconut
24:34 – The First Coconut Curries
26:25 – Southeast Asia
28:35 – The Next 1500 Years
30:31 – Chef Keith Sarasin
32:17 – The Word “Curry”
33:09 – Curry Powder
35:11 – Curry Spreads Everywhere
37:55 – The Category Today
40:17 – Thailand
42:38 – What is Curry?
44:10 – Conclusion

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In 2017, after exhaustive surveys and interviews with chefs and journalists, CNN released a list of the world’s best foods. And coming in at number one was a dry beef curry called Rendang, from Sumatra in Indonesia. Four years later, the network did it again.

And again, the winner was a curry, this time from Thailand, the legendary Chicken Massaman, the two best foods in the world, two curries. And that doesn’t even scratch the surface of this beloved category. From Japan to Jamaica, West Africa to the Middle East, German sausages to Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, curry is an obsession.

But it’s also a category that’s become so broad, so political, and so controversial that to some, even the use of the term is deeply offensive. Today, we’re diving into the ancient history of what we now call curry, the ingredients

And techniques that would define a cuisine, and how a simple stew would inspire Caesar’s conquests, help set off the Crusades, trigger the Age of Exploration, and change the world forever. (Title Cards) In 1964, the United States Supreme Court heard a case about obscene content.

In the end, one of the justices would write that famous line, which was more or less, “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it.” That’s kind of like a curry, and here in a massive Thailand food court, well, I see it all around. This is a place called EMSPHERE.

It’s a brand new shopping mall in downtown Bangkok, and here, a half dozen stories are packed with Michelin street carts, upscale takeaway stalls, and not one but two restaurants by Gordon Ramsay. But even with all that, it’s all about the Khao Gaeng, the Thai curry counters where

The bounty of this amazing country, the colors and textures and smells sit on full display. All throughout the kingdom, from shopping malls to street markets, cafeterias to home kitchens, khao gaeng counters are one of the most picturesque sites to be found, the magic

Of Thai cuisine laid out on a table, thousands of years of history showcased in the diversity of the curries. And it is diverse. The category of Thai curry involves dishes as completely different as Hang Le, rich and savory, brought from Myanmar by the ethnic Mon.

Green curry, invented in Bangkok in the 20th century. Hor Mok, a steamed curry mousse with connections to the ancient Khmer and Javanese, and even curry puffs, deep fried pastries with their own origins in Portugal. There really is no unifying anything in all these dishes that fall under the umbrella of curry.

But even if we can’t define it, we know it when we see it. Curry is an impossibly broad category, and on the surface there’s not much that all these things have in common. They use different spices, different proteins, they come in different colors and flavors and textures. But maybe that’s actually the point.

Alright, let’s start at the very beginning. (Title Cards) It’s the year 2600 BC, and someone in the Indus Valley is hungry. So in a mortar and pestle, they combine cumin, mustard seed, fennel, saffron and tamarind. A simple act of food preparation that maybe didn’t feel important at the time.

But it’s the first example we’ve ever discovered of someone going through the trouble to prepare a blend of ingredients not for sustenance, not for health, but just to add flavor. Now it’s important for this story to understand the context of where this was actually discovered.

Actually this first spice blend was found on shards of pottery at the site of an ancient city called Mohenjo-Daro, which was here, a place that at the time the cook was alive was the largest city in the entire world. Mohenjo-Daro was the heart of the so-called Harappa Civilization, which starting around

3300 BC for a little bit more than a millennia, would reign from the Indus Valley of today’s Pakistan as perhaps the most advanced society humanity had ever seen. 2000 years before ancient Rome, Harappa cities had irrigation, drainage, and buildings made from brick.

Harappans smelted metals into tools and cooking pots and wrote in a language so complex that we still can’t figure it out today. At its peak, there were multiple cities of up to 60,000 people. It was dense and urban, and the crazy thing is the civilization fell apart so quickly

That the Harappa would be completely forgotten. And its secrets would stay buried until the 19th century. Now how the Harappan Civilization was finally uncovered is a story that’s not really relevant to this, but I’m going to tell it anyway because it’s amazing.

According to the history texts, Harappa was found by an archaeologist named Charles Masson. He’s credited as being the man who uncovered the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro and a dozen other ancient sites, and he published his findings in 1842. But what’s interesting is the fact that he was not an archaeologist or historian, and

His name wasn’t even Charles Masson. It was James Lewis, and he was a wanted criminal. A deserter from the English army who would in the end spend eight years in hiding, as what I guess you could call modern history’s first ever backpacker.

Slumming it from place to place across today’s India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan before running out of money, hitching a ride on a boat to Persia, walking into a British government office, pretending to be an American archaeologist, and securing financing from the same people

Who had a warrant out for his arrest to let him keep traveling. And that’s how he happened to discover Harappa. Anyway, it would take another century for real research to be done into the civilization, and it’s only in the 2000s when we’ve really begun to understand their impact on cuisine

– the founders of curry. In 2010, a few years after the discovery of that first spice blend, scientists from Vancouver made another find in another Harappa city. Here it was the leftovers of a cooked stew, made with eggplant, ginger, and turmeric. And there were other finds. Harappans were cooking with lentils and chickpeas.

Mango used both fresh and dried as a seasoning. Sugarcane salt, basil, and cooking oil made from sesame, and of course, the original spices from that old mortar and pestle. And each example of these spices found was used in different combinations, different proportions, seasoning, and spices meant to suit individual dishes.

Now this was quite a breakthrough. This was the first time we find an example of what would become the foundation of Indian and Thai cuisine. The technique of grinding spices and using them as the base of a stew. And again, the Harappan civilization was much more advanced than we expected.

They weren’t just making spice pastes, but they were frying them in sesame oil. And as implements, they were cooking meat and bread in tandoori ovens, and simmering their stews in pots called handis, still in use for the same purpose today.

So for our first meal of the day as we try to understand curry, we’re going to the Indus Valley. (Title Card) So if you’ve been watching since we started this channel, you will recognize the orange-colored walls behind me because we have filmed here several times.

In fact, when we first launched, this was in like three of our first four or five videos that we came here for Masala Tea and curry. This is a restaurant in kind of a Punjabi part of Bangkok, which is the food of the

Region where the very first spice blend was ever ground into a paste or powder and then made into what we now call a curry. Today, the region once called Harappa lies in the country of Pakistan, in the northern part of a place known as Punjab.

Punjab is a region that includes the Indus Valley, and until the present, it was one of the world’s most famous culinary regions. Now, this is not a Harappa restaurant. I mean, that doesn’t exist. But it is what I consider the best Punjabi place in Bangkok, right in the heart of Phahurat,

The city’s north Indian quarter. And while modern Punjabi curries might not exactly resemble the food of the ancient Harappans, well, maybe it hasn’t changed as much as you think. Here we’ve ordered two staple Punjabi dishes, both of which showcase some ingredients unknown

To Harappans, but techniques and seasonings that call back to what those first archaeologists found. These are the ingredients in these two dishes compared to the stuff found utilized by the Harappans. I love this place. Tastes like history. Okay, we need to keep moving through the story, but first let’s put those ingredient lists

Back up on the screen for just a second. See that one thing with the asterisk, Garam Masala. Now ultimately, that’s what this is all really about, and the foundation of what would come to be known as “curry”. A masala is literally a spice blend. That’s it. That’s all it is.

A blend of spices meant to complement a certain recipe is called the masala for that dish. You can’t necessarily say the Harappans created the first curries, as that’s a term that’s kind of meaningless, as we’ll get to later, but they did make what we consider to be the first masalas.

And that’s just as important to this story. Today, if you don’t have time to make your own masala for each part of a family dinner, that’s okay. You can just pick some up at the store. Even here in Bangkok, we didn’t have to look far to find a place selling masalas meant

To go with anything. And once again, even with modern mass-produced boxes, we can still see a striking similarity to the spice blends of the Indus Valley. Now, the fact that the Harappan civilization is all but forgotten is actually closely related to the reason why they had such a massive impact on modern cuisine.

See, Harappa was never conquered. They didn’t get absorbed or enslaved into some neighboring kingdom. What happened 4,000 years ago, the reason why they disappeared, was that the Indus Valley went dry. The river stopped flowing, the farmland died, and the people simply scattered, abandoning the greatest cities the world had ever seen.

But wherever they’d end up, moving north, south, east, and west, they’d bring their technique of using spices and aromatics ground into a paste or powder and then cooked into a stew, and they’d set out to acquire more spices for their masalas.

Kicking off the very beginning of thousands of years of the spice economy. So that’s where we go next. We follow the masalas out of the Indus Valley, and our first stop is a place that was for a thousand years before the Harappans, the crossroads of the ancient world.

A place that was just emerging under Hammurabi as the Kingdom of Babylon. A culture that after discovering Indian spices would become the next great civilization and the first to dominate the global spice trade. Today we call it the country of Iraq.

This is like, you can see how happy I am, but this is really exciting. So we have mutton curry, and let’s taste it by itself first. Yeah, I’m going to try it by itself first. I can see already- just looking at it- onion. I see cilantro.

I see light green chili, which is this. So just a couple slices of that in here, but it’s not going to be spicy. Iraqi cuisine is not a spicy cuisine. This is just amazingly good. The food here, the Iraqi curries we were lucky enough to get to try, are absolutely fascinating.

And it’s worth mentioning that the oldest written recipe ever discovered, ever in the entire world, was basically this. A Harappan style stew with North Indian spices carved into clay 3,700 years ago. And even though some of the ingredients are newer and some of the flavors have certainly

Changed, both of these dishes have history. This one said to have been the favorite food of the Prophet Muhammad. Alright, I want you to look at a map of where Iraq is. And in the old days where the Babylonian Kingdom was, right at the gateway to the Arabian Peninsula,

Close by land to Egypt and pretty much the midway point between India and the states of the Mediterranean. That is obviously significant, because once the descendants of the Harappans found their way to Babylon, either through migration or through trade, the Babylonians and later Assyrian

And Persian kingdoms would become the biggest trading partner of the Indians, buying spices to resell further to the west. They basically build a monopoly, for a thousand years cornering the Red Sea and European market for spices. And they were very good at it.

Those were the years when spices from India and the Middle East commanded prices that would raise their stature to something only meant for nobles or the richest of the rich; when the Arab traders concocted wild stories about these mysterious and delectable plants to explain why the prices were so high.

It was said that cassia grew in shallow lakes patrolled by dragons. That black pepper came from fiery caves, cumin from snake infested waters, and cinnamon- that was protected by a bird called, and I’m not kidding, the Cinnamolugus. And the Arabs did a whole lot more than just corner the market in Indian spices.

They became a one stop shop for the ancient world. They established a trading relationship by water with Southeast Asia, especially the island of Sumatra, adding to their portfolio things like cloves, nutmeg, and mace. Overland from the Mediterranean came bay leaves and fenugreek, introduced for the first time to India via Arab merchants.

The heyday of the Arab spice trade would end abruptly in the year 120. That was when a shipwrecked Indian sailor ended up in Egypt. He drew a map for the Egyptians, giving them directions on how to visit India directly without a middleman, and thus would be born the new megalopolis of Alexandria.

But we’ll get to that part a little bit later. For now, let’s go back to the spread of the Harappan stews from the Indus Valley. Alright, let me make one thing clear. Just because the Harappans developed a technique of making spice blends doesn’t mean they could use those in every single meal.

And that of course is because there were limits on Bronze Age agriculture. See, 4,500 years ago there were no Tescos or City Supers to buy what you needed. And spices and herbs in most places were generally foraged. But as trade increased with the Arab world, Indian farmers made advances in growing commercial

Quantities of spices, from black pepper to turmeric and ginger. And these became available across the subcontinent. And then the real step forward came around 300 BC with the Mauryan Empire. Under Chandragupta, the Mauryans cultivated four types of cardamom, dried and sold six types of salts, as well as ginger, cumin, and long pepper.

And most importantly, they also began to grow the spices imported from abroad. Cloves, nutmeg, and bay leaves. Around the first century BC, a new civilization would appear in and around the Indus Valley. The Kushan, which we don’t know very much about from a food standpoint, but for the

Purpose of this story it is worth mentioning that you’ve heard of them on this channel before. That’s because the Kushan were the ones who we know from archaeological evidence had a presence in Abyssinia, today’s Ethiopia. Around that time we start to see the immediate and heavy use of Indian spices around the

Horn of Africa, and African ingredients sent east. Stuff like okra, which we ate in our first meal, and most importantly coriander, now an intrinsic part of Indian masalas. In fact, Ethiopia would be one of the first countries to adapt their own version of a

Masala as the foundation of their own cuisine, with evidence found as long ago as the 300s A.D. Their blend would be called Berbere. And here’s how closely it resembles Garam Masala. Over the first few centuries after the fall of Harappa, we can see a clear path where

Their cuisine would influence local tastes and flavors. And we can also see clear lines that separate Indian influence from other ancient powers, like China. This is one of those lines. It’s the mountain range called the Himalayas, and to the northeast of that line, food looks completely different.

But to the south of that enormous natural barrier, we find masalas and stews as the foundation of cuisines such as North Indian, Nepalese, and the northern gateway to Southeast Asia- Bengal or Bangladesh. This is a Bangladeshi restaurant serving the food of Bengal, a region that for thousands

Of years served as the crossroads between every civilization south of the Himalayas, not to mention a linchpin of the spread of food and culture from the subcontinent to what’s now Myanmar and Thailand. (Recipes on Screen) We’re talking about countries because that’s our frame of reference.

You know, 2023, almost 2024, we’re talking about countries. This is from Bangladesh, but we just had this from North India. We’re talking about how this inspired the countries that would eventually become part of the cuisine in Myanmar or northern Thailand. These are not countries that existed at the time this story starts.

Even as this is spreading, national borders look very different than they do today. So it’s just about the spread of people and dishes and techniques. The other interesting thing is when you see that line and where it goes, you can very easily see the distinction of, “Well, why does curry go this way?”

But you don’t see the technique go here. The answer is because of the Himalayas and because of the desert. It’s just that’s where people were. There’s a huge line of distinction between where you see the ancient culinary techniques

That sort of have a lot in common versus the things that start to look very different. It’s just geographical boundaries because that was what you had before you had these national boundaries drawn. I mean, Bangladesh has been a country since what? The 1970s? It was separated from India in 1947.

Throughout history, this has all been thrown together in a lot of different kingdoms and empires and countries. What flag we put on this dish today doesn’t matter. It’s just a matter of tracking this as it moves to the east.

The interesting thing about Bengali curries is that these dishes are part of a family that include things that we’ve showcased before on OTR. In fact, in just our last video, we spent time visiting the ethnic Mon, some of the first inhabitants to the region bordering Bangladesh to the east, and their most famous

Curry, Hang Le. Well that’s a closely related cousin of both the Harappan stews and the savory dishes of the Himalayas. But of course, that’s not to say that this would be the foundation of today’s most famous Southeast Asian curries, because there’s still one piece missing.

And to find that, we have to look to the south. (Title Cards) And finally, we introduce the coconut. It is, well, I mean, you know what it is. And it’s impossible to imagine curry, at least as we know it here in Southeast Asia, without this key component.

It’s what gives that sweet creaminess to Massaman, Panang and Green Curry, to Malaysian Laksa, Indonesian Beef Rendang or Burmese Ohn No Khao Soi. And coconut would be the last great addition to India’s stews, before they’d find their way across the ocean.

Now, we don’t know when the coconut itself was first introduced to the Indian subcontinent, but we do know it was sometime between 600 and 300 BC. That was when it was brought to Sri Lanka, Tamil Nadu and the Malabar Coast by Austronesian

Traders, the group that spread coconuts from the Philippines to the rest of the world. In fact, coconut appears to have arrived and become a major part of local cuisine in South India, particularly the state of Kerala, before the Indus Valley masalas and stews first appear in those records.

And when that would happen, sometime around the first century BC, when a culture already making coconut milk, cream and powder began to incorporate those techniques into a masala-based stew- well, nothing in this part of the world would ever be the same. (Title Cards) It was really interesting seeing earlier the

Bengali, Bangladeshi curry that kind of showed us on the way to being Burmese, North Thailand, that style. But this is fascinating to me because this is what looks like- almost looks like a Punjabi curry. In July of this year, a team of archaeologists made an astonishing discovery. At first glance, it looked a lot like the finds in Mohenjo-Daro. It was a mortar and pestle, or actually more accurately, a grinding slab. And it contained a blend of spices that are by now probably quite familiar.

Turmeric, ginger, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon. But what made this so significant was the fact that this was not found in India. It was in Vietnam, just west of the Mekong Delta, and it dates as far back as the second to third century AD.

This, which also included finger root, sand ginger, and galangal, was the very oldest masala, the oldest base of an Indian inspired stew ever found in Southeast Asia. It was found at a site from the Funan Kingdom, something we’ve referenced before as one of

The first organized settlements ever in this region and a distant predecessor of the Khmer. And that wasn’t all they discovered. A DNA analysis shows that around that exact same time, migrants from South India arrived and absorbed into Funan.

Now that’s not to say that all of Southeast Asia’s coconut curries would spring from this settlement. Over the next 2,000 years, there would be countless more periods of migration, especially to Indonesia and Malaysia, where just as a side note, Roti Curry, also beloved here in

Thailand, uses a roti and in some cases a curry, literally exactly the same as what we just had at that Kerala restaurant. Anyway, one last note on the curries of Kerala. If you were paying close attention when we showed you those last two recipes, you’ll

Notice one ingredient that’s specific to the southwest coast of India. Something not included in anything else we’ve tried today or referenced from history. And that is curry. As a matter of fact, the leaves of the curry tree, which is this, the Murraya or Bergera Koenigii.

And we really don’t have anything else to say about the curry plant, so we’ll just move on with a quick synopsis of the next 1,500 years before we can pick up our story. (Title Cards) Alright, I’m going to rush through about 1,500

Years of the spice trade because this isn’t about spices, it’s about curry, but these are the important points. We start after the Egyptians are now trading with India directly. That would lead to Egypt and the port city of Alexandria becoming massively wealthy and powerful. Which meant everyone wanted a piece.

Caesar invaded in 47 BC and then over the next 800 years, the Judeans, Byzantines, Persians, Arabs and more would fight over the city and its control of the spice trade. Tensions between the different groups would explode into a massive regional conflict,

Which would in turn grow into the holy wars at the turn of the millennia, better known of course as the Crusades. Anyway, while everyone was busy fighting each other, this city-state of Venice quietly built a monopoly on global spices and by 1,400 they were shipping 8 metric tons of the stuff just

To Western Europe every single day. The Portuguese were tired of paying Venetian prices so they wanted their own route to India. After Vasco da Gama, who sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and arrived in Kerala in 1498, Portugal would introduce chili peppers, tomatoes and potatoes which would quickly

Catch on, since in India these were the years of the Mughal Empire. They were the kingdom that united the subcontinent and spread regional dishes across the country, turning all of India into a culinary paradise with things like Mughlai meats and biryani’s

Available side by side with vegetarian Hindu meals, coconut and seafood stews from Kerala and the old Indus Valley staples. And then the British arrived and called it all curry. Why is the word “curry” so loaded? I think it’s loaded because it tries to simplify an incredibly complex topic.

For instance, if we said all Italian food is pizza, we would be doing a massive disservice to all of the wonderful nonas and wonderful grandmothers who are there making pasta for centuries. This is Keith Sarasin, and he’s an Indian food historian and chef, who for nearly two

Decades has split his time between India, where he cooks in kitchens and accompanies archaeological digs, and the United States. My background really wasn’t Indian, it wasn’t anything like that. It was just French fine dining. I discovered Indian food because, to be honest, I was a really picky eater.

My big thing is I didn’t want to get outside this little bubble that I grew up in. A friend of mine, his family had an Indian restaurant, and they would always cook and they’d say, “Oh, try this.” I was like, “No, no, no, no.”

One day we’re playing a video game and he said, “If I beat you this round, you have to try it.” And I say all the time, it’s the best bet I ever lost. That first moment that I tried those flavors, it was a dish called Chicken Vindaloo, which is a Goa dish.

The minute I had it, it was like, I would say it was like, you know, when you watch The Matrix and all of a sudden, you know, he’s like, “Whoa, this is what the world is.” That completely radically changed my life and I became obsessed with trying to figure

Out how to do it. A few months ago, Keith made a video on YouTube where he tackled the controversy of the word “curry.” And since he knows a lot more about it than I do, instead of quoting him, I asked him to explain it to us directly.

How did the name “curry” come about? The name “curry” kind of came about because of the Tamil word “kari” and K-A-R-I would be kind of the English spelling of that. And that word really kind of embodied a, you know, a dish that’s veg or non-veg mixed with some spices.

Typically, those spices could be ginger, garlic, illaichi, which is cardamom in Hindi. So things like that. So that amalgamation of kind of food ended up becoming what we modernly know as “curry” today. And of course, once the British started hearing that word, they would spell it as C-U-R-R-Y.

And I think that that’s one of the things to really kind of pay attention to because it was a blanket statement for any dish they didn’t understand. And going into another culture, there’s a lot of dishes you’re not going to understand. Now alright, here’s the thing.

The idea of using a blanket term for the cuisine of a country as diverse as India is offensive. But if we’re being completely honest, by the standards of the 18th century, it’s basically a compliment. What makes this really problematic is when in the early 1700s, the British started producing

A powder, a lot like garam masala, and calling it curry powder. Like they’re pretty much exactly the same. The British version less spicy and heavier on turmeric. Garam masala more complex and flavorful. But the thing is, garam masala is just one of a thousand combinations of Indian seasoning.

Again, masala is just a word for spice blend. And Indian food was about finding the right blend or combination of spices meant to maximize the base ingredient of a specific dish. Not just pouring stuff into a pot and adding curry powder.

The first written record of curry powder comes of course in 1747 with the London publication of Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery. Which if you watch this channel, you’re already familiar with, as that was where we also find the first recipe for fried chicken.

Now her initial recipe, to show how little understanding there was of actual Indian cuisine, lists only two ingredients in curry powder: black pepper and coriander. Four years later a new addition would add ginger and turmeric and eventually today’s powder would take shape. But here’s the point. Curry powder would make it big.

It would become wildly popular in the UK, and by the beginning of the 1800s, eating the Indian way was fashionable. Anyone at a posh dinner party could show off their own culture by cooking the exotic food of the savages across the ocean, the subjects of the glorious crown.

And as soon as it started to be mass produced in England, it was an affordable way to make food taste great. Just cook anything and add some curry powder. In my opinion, I think the issue is that curry powder is basically garam masala.

And what I mean by that is it’s the stuff that people fought wars over. It is unequivocally delicious, which means you take this thing, curry powder, all through history there have been, I would say, somebody lands on another person’s land and gives a name to something.

And then over time either that name goes away or the dish that they create that’s supposed to be a representative of something goes away. History is full of nonsense like calling a cuisine “curry.” However, in my opinion, the problem is curry powder is amazing. And so because of that, it spread everywhere.

It took off in a way that very few food- England at the time when curry powder was introduced had something like 50 countries under the crown at that time. So it goes everywhere, everywhere. You can get it all over the world. And again, it’s the spices that people fought wars over. It’s amazing.

And so you can’t, it was good as a, that’s my issue is that curry powder became so definitive because it’s delicious. And I think that’s part of the problem. Am I crazy or would you kind of go there with me? Yeah.

So a lot of history can be kind of summed up to what just made sense at the time. And when the British kind of occupied India for that long of a time, you have generations coming up being born there, their families assimilated there.

And when they would go back to visit their families in England, they would get to the point where they missed and craved the flavors that they grew up with. And so they created something just called curry powder. And yes, there’s a lot of characteristics like garam masala.

But one of the key characteristics in curry powder that makes it curry powder is an intense amount of turmeric in it. And turmeric you don’t find in garam masala. Garam masala, garam masala literally translates to warming spices because you have a lot of

Really warming things that we in the West would see at the Christmas time era. And so when you look at curry powder, I look at curry powder as, you know, people falling in love with the land that they occupied and then taking it back. And there’s a lot to unload there.

Don’t get me wrong. But I think that ultimately you can really look at curry powder now and look at the depth of masalas- there are thousands of masalas based off of a region and village all across India. So to say everything is “curry powder” or curry powder was the predominant would

Really be doing a lot of the subcontinent a disjustice. Curry powder would become a massive hit both within the British Empire and beyond. It would be the key ingredient in curry beef, a Hong Kong chacaanteng staple. You find it as the seasoning in Thailand’s pineapple fried rice.

It would add flavor to Germany’s iconic currywurst, show up in the fillings of a thousand kinds of foreign samosas and curry puffs, make up the core of Korea’s ttoekkbokki. And when Queen Elizabeth took the crown in 1952, the dish meant to commemorate the occasion

Would be a sandwich of boiled chicken in mayonnaise and curry powder, known forever as coronation chicken. Curry powder would also be one of the imported ingredients to Japan during the time of the so-called Meiji Restoration, when the country opened up to the world starting in the 1860s.

Back then, because curry powder was sold to the Japanese by the British, it was considered Yoshoku or Western, and it exploded in popularity. Especially as a dish made from curry powder stirred with flour and oil into a roux and served as a gravy on top of meats or potatoes.

By the 1930s, Japanese curry was already one of the most popular dishes in the entire country, today a worldwide phenomenon. But that’s not to say that every curry dish that appears thousands of miles from India is based on the export of this powder.

Now this is where the subject of curry, the idea of a name foisted onto a made-up category of food by the British in India, becomes even more sensitive. See, the British were pretty brutal to their subjects in the subcontinent.

Especially after 1833, when slavery was officially outlawed, and all of a sudden an estimated 800,000 African laborers in English territories would have to be replaced. So the British rounded up almost twice that number of Indians and sent them wherever was needed as indentured, unpaid laborers.

For example, in the Caribbean, which is how curry first came to be a part of the cuisine in places like Jamaica and Trinidad. And in South Africa, where a cast of Indian traders known as Banias set up shops in Durban

Selling food to thousands of workers brought over to work on sugarcane plantations, Bania Chow or “Bunny Chow” is today one of the most iconic dishes in that country. We started this video at a shopping mall in Bangkok, looking at all the variations of curries that today make up the heart of Thai cuisine.

And how those came to be, and how they developed. Well, every single one has its own story, but at their root, they all have some connection to the very first Indus Valley stews. To film this video, we chose one of our favorite places, and somewhere we film all the time

On OTR, our friend Kate’s restaurant. And this time we asked her to make us a few curries that would look good on camera. She sent us four. Each one representative of a different part of Thailand, a different culture or ethnic group, but somewhere long ago. One common ancestor.

There’s Panang curry, which is actually from Thailand, not Malaysia, and takes its name from a Khmer word that refers to a method of cooking chicken. It starts, of course, with a spice blend, combining ancient Indian aromatics with those local to Southeast Asia.

It’s rich and peanutty, and with a hint of fermented shrimp paste, first added to curries in Myanmar. And that brings us to Gaeng Hang Le, one we already referenced earlier in a dish that came to Thailand by way of the north, the Himalayan route by way of Bangladesh and Myanmar,

Brought to Thailand by the Mon people. There’s Gaeng Khua, a southern Thai classic in basically what overseas we’d call a red curry. Here Kate made it for us with fish in a classic southern way, and the recipe is similar to

The base of a number of Thai curries, influenced by Indian immigrants to the Malay Peninsula and made in Thailand since at least the 18th century. And of course, the classic green curry, a Bangkok staple and the newest dish on the table with roots dating back to approximately the 1920s.

This is a fully Thai invention. The next generation of curry, if you will, that was made not by Indians, but by people from other cultures who simply follow the rules and techniques of that ancient practice. One that with the creativity of modern chefs and the impact of foreign ingredients can

Elevate a dish to something that’s truly special. I think my thesis on this is that curry does exist. It does now, right? The way I use the word personally is to represent a stew that starts with a masala, right?

Is the idea of taking, and this can apply to a Thai curry, a Malaysian curry, a Jamaican curry, South African Bunny Chow. When you take these spices, and there are telltale spices that started in North India, right?

When you make that spice blend and you cook it into something where the spices are intended to make the protein taste as good as it can be, to me, I’m okay with calling that a curry just because I don’t have another word. There’s something that connects all this stuff.

It does come from one school of culinary thought, and without another word to use, I’m okay personally using it, but I don’t know, tell me if I’m wrong. That’s just how I view it, as at least giving it some kind of meaning. Yeah, words are a lot like food, right?

There’s an evolution to them as we continue to evolve. If you look back even thousands upon thousands of years ago, we could say the first curry existed in the Indus Valley 5,000 years ago where a lot of archaeologists were doing something

Called starch grain analysis, and they would pick out little seeds and stuff from the teeth of decomposed bodies, and they would be able to say, “Oh, well, this was fennel, this was ginger, this was garlic, this is the first beginnings of curry-” That’s literally the entire purpose of this video, by the way.

That’s sort of what the video is that we’re actually making. It’s kind of tracking off of that. Maybe the biggest part of this story, the thing that honestly is way more important than the name of the dish, is the fact that the spices at its heart are now so affordable

And so easy to find that cooks can find inspiration in creating recipes, from the old school Punjabi stews to Iraqi Tashreeb, from Nepali Jhols to Ethiopian Doro Wot, from Thai curries to Malay curries, Hong Kong curries, Japanese curries, Cambodian Kreung, and even South African bunny chow.

Don’t forget these spices were the cause of wars and invasions, the rise and fall of entire civilizations, and the literal trigger for the age of exploration. And now, the idea that we can just walk down the street almost anywhere and grab a plate

Of something made with the most prized cultivars of the Indus Valley, the Arabian Peninsula, Ethiopia, and Southeast Asia, even if it’s in the form of a mass-produced powder. I mean, that’s just absolutely mind-blowing. So with all of that said, for one last meal we might as well finish with something that

Might not look like the cuisine of the Harappans, but still wouldn’t exist without it. A plate of Japanese curry, the most comforting of comfort foods and a perfect end to a very long day. Subscribe to the channel for more from OTR, please consider supporting us on Patreon,

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