VVD0D95
Banned
Think Butter Massala and other dishes are slowly coming to outweigh Tikka Massala as the preferred dishes as it were.
How did the British view Indian food?
- Thread starter PsyloSurgeon
- Start date
TBF, our arrival in India does have some similarities to the behaviour of Bram Stoker's Dracula...
Why does the Singaporean colonial society sound exceptionally more racist than other regions of the empire? Whenever people write about racism in the empire during the period, it's always based on the experience in Singapore. There was a story about how Australia soldiers drinking in non-white pubs prior to the Battle of Singapore for example and was frowned upon for it. All in all, the Singaporean colonial elite thought that the Australians were essentially just white trash.
Likely because colonial Singapore was not the British taking over a local kingdom and having to deal with a native elite, but a British founded city on a thinly populated island with a non-British population mostly imported from elsewhere and lacking any power base, which would make the British careful about insulting them.
Shouldn’t colonial Singapore be seen within a wider context of Colonial Malaysia?The administration of the two are interwoven.The governors and high commissioners were the same people.
No the local in Singapore was mainly Chinese as such the British could lord over them as much as they wanted without alienate the Malays.
The oldest known recipe for a Curry in English dates to the 1774 edition of The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Simple.
This video is not available in my country. Can you give a summary, please?
Queen Victoria's favourite curry
An enthusiastic fan of India culture and cuisine, sample Queen Victoria's favourite curry recipe for yourself with this historic recipe.
rubenshotel.com
- Mrs. Beeton's Household Management, 2nd edition (1888), 'General observations on Indian cookery' (analytical index number: 2866)Mrs. Beeton said:
Some 19th century colonial attitudes, I regret, (and earlier there is a warning from Mrs. Beeton that you have to watch the servants in India carefully to make sure that they do not cheat you), but admiration by the author for the skill of Indian cooks.
Recipes listed subsequently in the 'Recipes for Indian Cookery' chapter (and I reproduce here the Mrs. Beeton spelling and nomenclature, which may not reflect accurately Indian names) are for: 'Rice for Curries', 'Indian Corn Roasted', 'Chitchkee Curry', 'Kouftas', 'Pilau', 'Dumpoke', 'Kalleah Yekhunee', 'Pooloot', 'Indian Veal Collops', 'Hulluah', 'Indian Pancake', 'Chilwars', 'Tamarind Sauce', and 'Fruit Drinks'.
The recipe for 'Curry Powder' (analytical index number: 2275) given in an earlier chapter contains: 1/4 lb of coriander seed, 1/4 lb of turmeric, 2 oz. of cinnamon seed, 1/2 oz. cayenne, 1 oz. mustard, 1 oz. ground ginger, 1/4 oz. of allspice, 2 oz. of fenugreek-seed.
Last edited:
There are probably a couple of different accounts at play to answer the original question:
- In the cliched world of inaccurate stereotypes, there was avoidance of curry and any foreign food akin to Dracula’s reaction to a crucifix
- The more accurate reality whereby Indian ingredients and styles were adapted into Anglicised versions of original subcontinental dishes, such as curry powder, various English curries served at a variety of gentleman’s clubs going back to the 19th century, mulligatawny and kedgeree as a couple of chaps have mentioned, chutneys and more. Someone beat me to Queen Victoria’s curry at the ready, which is a good bit of info.
Most Anglo-Indian/Anglicised Indian dishes were markedly less spicy than original Indian dishes, but this wasn’t a phenomenon limited to the British Isles, but a quite common course of events for dishes adapted to European and North American palates in the 19th century and up to the 1960s/70s in many cases. I believe the example of Chinese American food was raised and it is a good parallel.
It did come down to what spices and fresh ingredients were available in India but not in Britain. Onions show up in a lot of British dishes, but garlic hadn’t been widely popular since the Early Modern Period/~1400s or so.
What did the Victorians eat?
The upper class and upper middle class had what I’d term an international European/Western grande cuisine that was similar from San Francisco to Moscow. Elaborate dishes, very rich, plenty of meat and often with French names. The menus of food served to Victoria are very, very similar to those served to the Kaisers, Tsars, Napoleon III and at the White House; there is something of an exception for Christmas, with Victoria’s menu having both traditionally Old English and new elements, such as turkey.
As we head further down to the middle class, we encounter regional/national difference a bit more, with this group being the target market for Mrs Beeton in Britain. This is where the somewhat cliched reputation for overcooked veg in Britain comes from; a generation earlier, recipes don’t call for them to be quite boiled to death. In the lower middle class, we see plenty of tinned food and new processed stuff. There was an increasingly marked difference from North America, where more and better meat was eaten as a matter of course. Mark Twain waxed lyrical on it:
“A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.”
The urban poor of Britain and Europe had the worst of it, with bread, dripping, potatoes, tea and sugar and if they were lucky a bit of bacon being their staples and meat being once a week, if that. This lead to the malnutrition that showed up in Boer War volunteers. The rural poor/working class had it a fair bit better, with more access to dairy and vegetables.
In short, food for the very wealthy in Britain was much the same as elsewhere in an increasingly globalised late 19th century world and things started to diverge as we head down from there. A tad more complex than a largely fictional world where all British food was rubbish, but some cliches persist despite the contrary reality; hence we get the cliches about all Germans being humourless, all Frenchmen smoking Gauloises, all Italians paying no regard to road rules and all Pennsylvanians being vampires.
- In the cliched world of inaccurate stereotypes, there was avoidance of curry and any foreign food akin to Dracula’s reaction to a crucifix
- The more accurate reality whereby Indian ingredients and styles were adapted into Anglicised versions of original subcontinental dishes, such as curry powder, various English curries served at a variety of gentleman’s clubs going back to the 19th century, mulligatawny and kedgeree as a couple of chaps have mentioned, chutneys and more. Someone beat me to Queen Victoria’s curry at the ready, which is a good bit of info.
Most Anglo-Indian/Anglicised Indian dishes were markedly less spicy than original Indian dishes, but this wasn’t a phenomenon limited to the British Isles, but a quite common course of events for dishes adapted to European and North American palates in the 19th century and up to the 1960s/70s in many cases. I believe the example of Chinese American food was raised and it is a good parallel.
It did come down to what spices and fresh ingredients were available in India but not in Britain. Onions show up in a lot of British dishes, but garlic hadn’t been widely popular since the Early Modern Period/~1400s or so.
A Brief History Of Curry in England: A Dish Fit For A Queen
Curry was almost as popular with the Victorians as it is today thanks to Queen Victoria. Sam Bilton investigates the origins of our enjoyment of Indian food.
blog.english-heritage.org.uk
What did the Victorians eat?
The upper class and upper middle class had what I’d term an international European/Western grande cuisine that was similar from San Francisco to Moscow. Elaborate dishes, very rich, plenty of meat and often with French names. The menus of food served to Victoria are very, very similar to those served to the Kaisers, Tsars, Napoleon III and at the White House; there is something of an exception for Christmas, with Victoria’s menu having both traditionally Old English and new elements, such as turkey.
As we head further down to the middle class, we encounter regional/national difference a bit more, with this group being the target market for Mrs Beeton in Britain. This is where the somewhat cliched reputation for overcooked veg in Britain comes from; a generation earlier, recipes don’t call for them to be quite boiled to death. In the lower middle class, we see plenty of tinned food and new processed stuff. There was an increasingly marked difference from North America, where more and better meat was eaten as a matter of course. Mark Twain waxed lyrical on it:
“A mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most impeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an out-lying district of this ample county of beefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from the tenderloin still in its place.”
The urban poor of Britain and Europe had the worst of it, with bread, dripping, potatoes, tea and sugar and if they were lucky a bit of bacon being their staples and meat being once a week, if that. This lead to the malnutrition that showed up in Boer War volunteers. The rural poor/working class had it a fair bit better, with more access to dairy and vegetables.
In short, food for the very wealthy in Britain was much the same as elsewhere in an increasingly globalised late 19th century world and things started to diverge as we head down from there. A tad more complex than a largely fictional world where all British food was rubbish, but some cliches persist despite the contrary reality; hence we get the cliches about all Germans being humourless, all Frenchmen smoking Gauloises, all Italians paying no regard to road rules and all Pennsylvanians being vampires.
Come to think of it, while spices might be cheaper around the Victorian period, they probably wouldn’t have lentils and a lot of the other stuff used in Indian food. Though there would be plenty of rice and wheat, I imagine it would be prepared in different ways. Like how part of the reason people in Asia could use chopsticks for eating rice was because the rice wasn’t cleaned as completely as Europeans do, thus it was goofier. That, and they would hold the bowl up to their mouth and scoop the food directly inside. What is this about vampires, @Simon Darkshade ? I would understand if you are from Pennsylvania, as that is a very suspicious name, but I always assumed the state was was filled with underground coal fires, filthy industrial cities named after strip mines, Amish people, the only people dressed up as Colonials outside of Boston, Williamsburg, and former Tea Party rallies, plus... Ahhh right, the Fresh Prince was from the cheese steak city. He left though, so he doesn’t count.
There was not an awful lot of rice imported to Britain at that time.
I am not Pennsylvanian, nor American, nor from the northern hemisphere. I should think the vampire parallel is perfectly obvious, but here we go:
A list of inaccurate stereotypes concluded with one conjured up because it sounds like Transylvania, this reinforcing the ridiculousness of such stereotypes full stop.
I am not Pennsylvanian, nor American, nor from the northern hemisphere. I should think the vampire parallel is perfectly obvious, but here we go:
A list of inaccurate stereotypes concluded with one conjured up because it sounds like Transylvania, this reinforcing the ridiculousness of such stereotypes full stop.
Gotcha. Whenever I hear about Transylvania in regards to the United States I think of the colony in Kentucky. Though I suppose people on this site have more knowledge on history and geography than school kids anyways. I think we might have made similar jokes to that back then.
Queen Victoria's favourite curry
An enthusiastic fan of India culture and cuisine, sample Queen Victoria's favourite curry recipe for yourself with this historic recipe.
So which claim is true? Did Queen Vic hate curry, but just happened to have a curry that she liked a little better than the others?