 |
| Becky Sharp currying favour with Josiah Sedley in W. M. Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848). Becky tries to ensnare the curry-loving Josiah, who has recently returned from India. An insensitive boor, he plays a practical joke on her by making her eat chillies, which he promises her are very cooling, hence the name. |
It’s National Curry Week! Britons don’t generally need any
encouragement to eat spicy food, so I’m not entirely sure why this festival has
come about, but hey ho. I find it interesting that although we’re unfairly
famed for our ‘bland’ food, the Brits are a nation of spice-lovers, and have
been ever since medieval times. Though chillies – which some might consider a
necessary ingredient in a curry (I use the term in its most commonly used sense
to mean a bastardized dish of meat or vegetables with spices and sauce and
usually served with rice, rather than as a synonym for ‘Indian food’) – were
not part of the European repertoire until Columbus brought them back from the
New World, Europe already had a real love of pungent spices. Columbus referred
to them as chilli peppers because he was marketing them as a replacement
for the much loved – and extremely expensive – black pepper. Monks in Spain and
Portugal grew them, Portugese traders took them to Goa, and the vindaloo was
born.
It’s no surprise, then, that the word ‘curry’ comes from the
Portugese caril, which itself derives
from the Tamil kari and Kanarese (an
Indian dialect) karil, to mean a
relish for rice. The first reference to it in the OED is from Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s Discours of voyages
into ye Easte & West Indies,
translated by William Phillip in 1598: ‘Most of their fish is eaten with rice,
which they seeth in broth which they put upon the rice, and is somewhat sowre .
. . but it tasteth well, and is called Carriil.’
It tasteth well indeed.
