The last word on curry

I’m not about to get started on what he-said-she-said about “curry,” don’t worry. This is a grossly over-discussed topic already, it’s much too much to summarize and not that interesting to do so, because everybody with a perspective has already weighed in. But, truthfully, it’s all a bit like all those blind men feeling the elephant they cannot fathom, or the King’s four sons seeking the character of the palāśa tree, and there now exists a whole wide range of moderately illuminative takes circling some central and unreachable truth.

There is a saying in Tamil: இரிஷி மூலம் நதி மூலம் ஆராயாது இருக்க வேண்டும்/ riṣi mūlam nadi mūlam ārāyātu irukka vēṇṭum, it is not advisable to seek the origins of sages and rivers. Because origins are small and irrelevant as the breadth of the rishis’ knowledge and the great rivers are wide and broadening. This search for the miniscule in the face of existing immensity, would it be worthwhile?

In this case, however, the immensity is what is confusing, the miniscule is what is remarkable. Something everyone knows and no-one has really thought through the significance of. Curry, from the Tamil கறி [kaṟi] and the root கறு [kaṟu], simply means black.

Curry derives from kaṟi, kaṟi means black

The Tamil origins of the word “curry” have been amply noted, as have its antecedents in British India. But after that, at best, it’s reduced to a dish with a sauce or a reference to that sauce or to a spicy stew–and then the historical fact that versions of something called “curry” [or, to Portuguese ears, karil or kari; to British ears, carie or curree] seem to show up everywhere from “bunny chow” handed out by Bania cooks in apartheid South Africa to black workers, to the meals of West Indian indentured laborers to Manchester’s Curry Mile, the quintessentially comforting Japanese kare raisu, and Raghavan Iyer’s 660 Curries means that there’s now a beguiling array of dishes and experiences grouped under the “curry” rubric.

All this makes for some perplexing and frankly preposterous claims. Gastropod’s Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley chronicle curry as “a dish that’s from nowhere and yet eaten nearly everywhere” [here, 2019]. “Curry seems to suffer from an existential instability — it’s not so much a recipe as it is a physical phenomenon that must be perceived to exist” says Food and Wine‘s Mari Uyehara [2022] who then rather makes an impassioned curry of her own by imbuing it with hitherto unheard-of emancipatory potential: “Curry, with all its bloody colonialist history, speaks to this survivalist spirit of humans… If anything, curry is an emblem of the insuppressible creativity of the oppressed who seize on the impossibly minute opportunities to subvert the tools of their oppressors, eventually so they may break free.” Even Sejal Sukhadwala’s ‘cover-all-bases’ definition in The Philosophy of Curry gets impossibly unwieldy: “a spiced dish of Indian origin or influence, in which vegetables, or meat or other protein, are normally cooked in a pot, usually with a gravy made from tomatoes, onions, coconut, yoghurt, gram flour, nuts, cereal, water or stock” [2022: 7]. And the otherwise lovely Raghavan Iyer offers a most disappointing compromise: “From where I sit, I see the transformation of kari to curry as the possible result of mispronounced happenstance” [Iyer 2008: 3; though he does in his latest and last book, On the Curry Trail, come a bit more to the point in the end].

But curry is not from nowhere, even if it is eaten everywhere. It’s not a ‘perceived existential instability.’ It’s not even “a recipe.” It’s not one thing, but it’s certainly not everything either. And it’s not a made-up Brit thing; it does exist. The breadth of the river in relation to the smallness of its origin, to which we must return.

The Tamil word கறி/kaṟi which most folks will note as the origins of “curry” but to which all folks invariably pay lip service–this word simply means black. கறி/kaṟi, related to கறுப்பு [kaṟuppu] as we know means blackness: either that which is naturally black [like coal or pepper] or that which becomes black, or causes other things to become black. [கறுப்பு and கருப்பு are spellings for “black” used interchangeably in modern Tamil].

Kaṟi means black, black means pepper

How does that help, you’re wondering. Well, the black thing and the blackening thing before 1500 was not coal [நிலக்கரி/nila-kaṟi, the ‘black of the earth’] but pepper. “Before 1500, pepper was the hottest spice in the Indian culinary repertoire. It came in two forms. The most widely used was the long catkinlike fruit of the hot and sweet Piper longum, known as long pepper … The jeweler Jean-Baptiste Tavernier noticed that the Muslims [on the Malabar coast] threw long pepper into their pilaus ‘by the handful.’ The other form was the small round fruit of the Piper nigrum, [black pepper]…” [Collingham 47-8].

Pepper is among our oldest and most prized spices, but it’s not right, botanically or historically, to collapse both long and round peppers into a single category. The Susruta Samhita‘s taxonomy consists of a “Pippalyadi group” of medicaments, among which are pippali (several types, but esp. Piper Longum) and maricha (Piper Nigrum), specifically distinguished [Vol. I, Sutrasthanam, trans. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna, Calcutta, 1907: 346, 510-11]. Likewise, there are multiple other references in multiple other texts. While Indian texts distinguish the two and “the classical writers knew both kinds,” round pepper “became popular in the twelfth century and had replaced long pepper by the fourteenth” (Toussaint-Samat 1992: 442).

For our purposes, it’s important to note that both pepper varieties are black, but distinct. Long pepper is திப்பிலி/thippilī in Tamil, but round pepper is in fact கறி மிளகு/ kaṟi miḻagu or karuṅkari [something like ‘the black burning’ and in Kannada: ಕರಿ ಮೆಣಸು/ kaṟi menasu]–as distinguished from குறு மிளகு/ kuru miḻagu which is technically pepper in its fresh, un-ripe, un-dried form, kuru meaning “seed,” though we’ve largely lost the distinction and use kuru miḻagu to mean “black pepper” generally.

The Sanskrit for long pepper, pippalī, became peperi [Greek], piper [Old English], and pepper. Long pepper was thus the earliest reference-point for hot, pungent spice in the European Old World. In India, however, it was always miḻagu, kaṟi miḻagu, the black–so that chilies, when the Portuguese introduced them, became miḻagai: miḻagu-kai, or the “pepper fruit” quite literally [மிளகாய்=மிளகு + காய்].

The black thing and the blackening thing from classical times to the present is therefore not just “pepper” but round pepper, Piper Nigrum, kaṟi miḻagu.

The word “miḻagu” is related [though how, precisely, I’m not yet sure] to the Sanskrit मरीचम्/marīcam–one of 12 names given to the personalities of the sun, referring to its heat, the capacity to burn, to turn things black, interpreted as disease-destroying. “Worship with pepper,” says the Śivapurāṇa, “is conducive to the destruction of enemies” [1.14.57-58, p. 241]. Indeed, pepper, salt and jaggery are each to this day offerings at the Vaideeswaran Koil near Mayiladuthurai, where Śiva is venerated as Vaidyanatha: the Lord physician. From the name given to the Sun came the words for the same pungent spices in all North Indian languages: मिर्च/ mirch, kala mirch or gol marich [black or round black pepper] distinguished from hara mirch [green chilies] and Simla mirch [capsicum] and so on.

கறி மிளகு/ kaṟi miḻagu is therefore not merely “black pepper” but that which has turned black as green peppercorns do, that which is capable itself of turning other things black by its heat.

Update 16/05/2023, since my full physical copy of Sejal Sukhadwala’s Philosophy of Curry just arrived by post: here is one book that does acknowledge the connections between kaṟi-black-and-pepper-use [2022: 9; thank you Ammini Ramachandran] but then seems to treat the Telugu koora, the Konkani upkaṟi and the tarkaṟi as somehow unrelated phenomena, which they are not–and then flips blithely to all sorts of other meanings which are neither here nor there.

Kaṟi means pepper, pepper means spiced

Kaṟi then very literally refers to black pepper, but more: the blackening of pepper, which is of course also its spicing, pungent, heat-adding and flavor/relish-adding properties. If there is one thing that all the many motley philosophers of “curry” can agree on, it’s that curry is not sweet, it’s spiced, it’s savory.

Many will call “curry” a gravy, a stew, and a sauce–but it’s by no means limited to these kinds of preparations. The तरकारी/tarkārī of most north Indian languages is a portmanteau–the Persian तर/tar [wet/fresh/oily] and the Tamil kaṟi–which refers to a wide range of usually vegetable preparations. In modern, colloquial Tamil, even a simple beans poriyal, a dry stir-fry, is also a type of kaṟi. மரக்கறி/Marakaṟi, some might say: a vegetable preparation. A dal can be a dal-kaṟi. In modern Tamil parlance, too, kaṟi refers to meat: kaṟi kadai is a meat shop, cooking kaṟi means cooking meat. The beans pori-yal becomes the pori-kaṟi when meat is the prime ingredient. kaṟi.

But kaṟi doesn’t literally mean meat, nor does it only mean meat. Rather, it is a shorthand for இறைச்சிக்கறி/iṟaicci–kaṟi where it is iṟaicci that literally means flesh and therefore meat. Even better, it’s a qualifier–but because it’s effectively an adjective, and because of (1) laziness (2) local dialect and (3) contextual understanding or some combination thereof, “kaṟi” is at times omitted in everyday speech and only implied. Consider the following examples:

• Non-edibles:
  • அடுப்புக்கரி/ aduppukkari: the black (charcoal) for cooking (as with this kummiti aduppu)
  • நிலக்கரி/ nilakkari: the black of the earth or coal (or lignite)
  • உமிக்கரி/umikari: charred rice husk
• Edibles:
  • கறி மிளகு/ kari milagu: black pepper [typically Piper nigrum] or “pungent spice”
  • கறிவேப்பிலை/ kariveppilai​: Murraya koenigii, “curry” leaves
  • காய்கறி/kaaykari: “vegetables” but literally kaay (unripe fruits) + kari (herbs and spices)
  • மரக்கறி/marakari: a preparation of vegetables; often used interchangeably with kaaykari
  • இறைச்சிக்கறி/iṟaiccikari: as above, spiced and stewed meat preparations
• Any number of other specific dishes including:
  • பால்கறி/paal-kari [vegetables cooked in milk],
  • புளிக்கறி/pulin-kari [vegetables cooked in tamarind],
  • துவட்டல் கறி/thuvattal-kari [a dry stir-fry-like preparation],
  • தலைக்கறி/thalakari [goat brain preparation],
  • பொறிச்ச கறி/poricha-kari [fried or deep fried preparations],
  • கறிவடகம்/kari-vadagam [spice preserves],
  • கறியமுது/ kari-amuthu [a preparation to be offered],
  • and so on.

Such are the variations that have confused observers, who often get lost in details and forget essentials. What is definitive in all the cooked kaṟis named is … {drumroll}… black pepper–literally, given its prominence in meat-marinades as even in Tavernier’s account quoted above and in kaṟi-masalas in general; or figuratively in other uses where kaṟi starts to stand in for pungent flavoring spices in general. Blackening spices, as Louisiana Cajuns might have averred, and quite correctly so for those do not omit black pepper.

More convincing than modern Cajuns, I have the Tamil writer Tho Paramasivan [ThoPa, fondly known] to back me up: “As black pepper, karunkaṟi or kaṟi, is largely used in cooking meat, the word kaṟi has become synonymous with non-vegetarian fare – known as curry globally,” he writes in the classic Ariyappadaatha Tamizhagam/The Unknown Tamil Country [1997/trans. 2022: 34]

So the word “curry” from kaṟi really just means spiced, once upon a time with black pepper and now with chillies and other spices for which the black, kaṟi, most efficiently stands in. The pungencies or hot qualities of spices all gather under கறித்தல்/kaṟitthal: காரம் நிறைந்து இருத்தல்/ that which carries heat or pungency.

Interestingly, the 1st c. Greek gourmet Apicius, in a list of spices necessary in a household [the Brevis pimentorum], “applies the term pimentum to substances which we would regard as spices.” The earlier meaning of pimentum? Pigmenting–like the blackening that pepper denoted. Pimentum was applied by the Spanish to pimienta: pepper. Similarly, poivre in French stood in for anything spiced. And Columbus’ journals, in which we have the first mention of chilies from the new world, declared them a ‘better spice than pepper’–christening chilies pimientO in the masculine, to pepper’s feminine pimientA [Toussaint-Samat 1992: 434-35, 465].

But really the point is that from the Tamils of the ancient world to the Greeks of the 1st century to the Spanish of the 1500s and all beyond, pepper denoted spice. All other spices with comparable pungency were defined against pepper.

The final word

It’s a one-liner of an anti-climax in the end, really, the logic of which runs thus: curry comes from the Tamil kaṟi, kaṟi means black, black means pepper, pepper means spiced.

A “curry” is thus a dish spiced with black pepper, or with any other hot, pungent spice that measures itself against black pepper, as all spices once did.

I challenge you to find a modern curry that doesn’t fit this simple and uncomplicated bill perfectly.

Sources Cited

• Iyer, Raghavan. 2008. 660 Curries. Workman Publishing.
• Iyer, Raghavan. 2023. On the Curry Trail. Workman Publishing.
• Paramasivan, Tho. 2022. The Sweet Salt of Tamil, trans. V. Ramnarayan. Navayana Publishing.
• Susruta Samhita. 1907. Vol. I, Sutrasthanam, trans. Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna, Calcutta.
• Sukhadwala, Sejal. 2022. The Philosophy of Curry. British Library Publishing.
• Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. 1992. A History of Food [English edition]. Wiley-Blackwell.