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Curry Before Columbus

contingentmagazine.org

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Re: Curry Before Columbus

#21

Post by beojan »

twoslide wrote: post #7

I've spent about 3 years in India, through a combination of work and family, and rarely see anything called "curry" on menus. Part of what this author seems to be getting at is that "curry" reflects a colonial viewpoint that homogenizes groups outsite the west. Thus, Indians, Thais and Japanese food has "curries" (even though these curries are very different from one another). In contrast Hungarians have "Goulash."

I'll just quote Wikipedia:

"Curry is an anglicised form of the Tamil word kaṟi meaning 'sauce' or 'relish for rice' that uses the leaves of the curry tree (Murraya koenigii)."

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#22

Post by 55555 »

miguel_rdp wrote: post #6

An ad hominem side note: the author should try probiotics

They've had serious digestive problems since they were three years old and appear extremely well educated. They almost certainly have tried probiotics.

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#23

Post by pinkfoot »

AmericanChopper wrote: post #18
DanBC wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. A group of British outsiders who were in India because of the British Empire?

There’s absolutely nothing uniquely colonial about coming up with words to describe things that are new to you. It’s simply a result of one culture coming into contact with another. To say using language to describe new things is colonial is frankly ridiculous.

Yes, but its a whole new vein of offence to be mined.

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#24

Post by BelleOfTheBall »

This is a bit of a rant but people who try one or two dishes from a foreign cuisine and claim to be great lovers of it and experts on it are one of my biggest pet peeves. I've had friends who visited Germany once, ate a Currywurst and a schnitzel and proceeded to bore everyone to death with their tales of how rich the cuisine is and how wonderfully varied it is, how deeply they've explored it.

I'm glad when people find food that they like but it feels like many only take the base 5-10% of any cuisine (including their native one sometimes) and just build off of that, never digging deeper. I'm a pretty picky eater but I do my best to try different foods if only to actually understand a cuisine and see if I like it or if I'm just partial to the base level of street-food treats and "if you're a tourist, try this" meals.

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#25

Post by C1sc0cat »

DanBC wrote: post #17
AmericanChopper wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. The more relevant criticism of the word boils down to the facts that it doesn’t really mean anything to Indians, and that it’s meaning is so poorly defined that it barely means anything at all. The word can be used to refer to pretty much any Indian food, which is simply a…

> To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. A group of British outsiders who were in India because of the British Empire?

As some one said about English "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary"

There are a lot of words borrowed from India still in use to this day squaddie for example being derived from 'swaddy' a type on Indian soldier

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#26

Post by esperent »

basicplus2 wrote: post #2

Curry is curry due to it containing tumeric, and tumeric is native to India. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turmeric

Not so. It's named after the Tamil word kari which means a dish eaten with rice and flavored with curry leaves (kari patta).

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#27

Post by SllX »

twoslide wrote: post #7

I've spent about 3 years in India, through a combination of work and family, and rarely see anything called "curry" on menus. Part of what this author seems to be getting at is that "curry" reflects a colonial viewpoint that homogenizes groups outsite the west. Thus, Indians, Thais and Japanese food has "curries" (even though these curries are very different from one another). In contrast Hungarians have "Goulash."

Japanese-style curry is more or less a Meiji-era British import and wasn’t popular within Japan until the 1960s. For that matter the British weren’t one to homogenize groups; they made extensive investigations of the local cultures and power dynamics in new lands they explored, rejiggered the power structure to suit their preferences, standardized this totem pole and put themselves on top. Racist, but definitely not lazy about it.

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#28

Post by vishnugupta »

patrickaljord wrote: post #16

I've lived in Peru which also has a very spicy cuisine (many chilis come from the Andes). However, you'd be surprised at the amount of locals who confessed to me they didn't like food that is too spicy (they like it mildly spiced, or white people spiced as the article says) or spicy at all. It wouldn't surprise me if these two combined would represent 50% of the population. Could be the same in India.

There’s a tendency to conflate “spicy” flavor with “chilly” or “hot”. They are two orthogonal parameters, you could dial (up or down) them independent of each other. Most spices aren’t chilly, they add unique smell and flavor without burning the tongue.

Coming to India, almost every cuisine is spicy for sure. At least I don’t know of one that is not. Indians grow up immersed in spicy food and can’t live without it. And to be honest once your palette gets used to spicy flavor it’s hard to go back to bland food. Anecdotally I’ve heard many westerns complain about blandness of their food once they are used to Indian flavor.

Very few Indian cuisines dual up “hot” knob. Andhra Pradesh cuisine is an example of that. It’s almost at the limit of not killing the flavor.

So to summarize about India, we almost universally love spicy food. Some of us like it hot too

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#29

Post by vardhanw »

beojan wrote: post #21
twoslide wrote: post #7

I've spent about 3 years in India, through a combination of work and family, and rarely see anything called "curry" on menus. Part of what this author seems to be getting at is that "curry" reflects a colonial viewpoint that homogenizes groups outsite the west. Thus, Indians, Thais and Japanese food has "curries" (even though these curries are very different from one another). In contrast Hungarians have "Goulash."

I'll just quote Wikipedia: "Curry is an anglicised form of the Tamil word kaṟi meaning 'sauce' or 'relish for rice' that uses the leaves of the curry tree (Murraya koenigii)."

Interesting to see the list of English words of Indian origin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_words_of_India...

Re: Curry Before Columbus

#30

Post by dsr_ »

C1sc0cat wrote: post #25
DanBC wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To say it’s colonial is a bit of a stretch. It’s simply a word chosen by a group of outsiders to categorize something they didn’t know much about. A group of British outsiders who were in India because of the British Empire?

As some one said about English "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary" There are a lot of words borrowed from India still in use to this day squaddie for example being derived from 'swaddy' a type on Indian soldier

James Nicoll is the source of your quote.
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