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Why the queen of Indian cuisine refused to use the word 鈥榗urry鈥�

09 January 2018

Madhur Jaffrey first appeared on British television in the early 1980s with , a series which tempted a generation of home cooks to introduce eastern spices and flavours into their diet.

Madhur brought eastern cuisine into British living rooms in the 1980s

Since then Madhur’s programmes and cookery books have made her a household name.

But , from the start of her career there was one thing she would never do: use the word curry.

“I started out not using the word curry at all. It bothered me so much. I hated the idea of ‘curry’ which was all inclusive – our food is so varied and so different in different parts of the country.

“So I fought it and didn’t use it at all.”

According to Madhur, if we used the catch-all term curry in India, we may not receive the dish we would expect.

I hated the idea of 鈥榗urry鈥�

Madhur Jaffrey, food writer

“It could be chickpeas, or it could be meat of various sorts with some kind of hot and spicy sauce. But in south India a curry can be a dry dish – okra curry in the south is a dry dish.

“So the best thing is to really describe the food with the ingredients. That’s how we do it. That will tell us what that food is, what tradition it is and some of the spices that are used in it.”

These days Madhur, now 84, has softened her views on the c-word.

“Thirty years went by and I kept ignoring the word until finally I gave in. Some of my newer books have the word curry in the title.

“Curry is the way a lot of people think about Indian food, so if you can’t beat them, you join them.”

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