Currytable @museum.de

Which ideas come to mind when you hear the word “curry”? Your mouth is watering? No surprise: Well spiced meals can generate feelings of happiness.

No curry recipe is like the other, but they have something in common: tradition. No matter whether they were developed in restaurants, by street vendors, in private households or for cookbooks: Their traditions can be traced back until the early history of India. In India, curry is the name of a dish. Indians differentiate between wet currys with sauce and dry currys with a strongly reduced sauce or even without any sauce. However, the British definition of a spice blend has prevailed worldwide.

The first Europeans appearing near the end of the 15th century in India wanted to trade but were soon lured by the great Indian wealth of spices, fabrics and gemstones. Most of all, however, they were busy in outdoing each other. Later on, the Europeans and especially the Englisch were responsible for the spread of Indian curry dishes both in the East and in the West.

Curry-powder is an English invention to approximate the taste of Indian food. There are similar mixtures in India being called Garam Masala in North India or Sambar Prodi in South India. The Tamil word kari means soup or sauce, and so the word “curry” was born.
There is one similarity between the Indian and the English mixture: Both don’t contain curry leaves. They are hardly known in Europe, but go well with with many Indian curry dishes. They exude a nutty citrus-fruity aroma and are best used fresh.