SC - curry leaves?

[Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir]

- -----Original Message-----
From: David Dendy <ddendy at silk.net>
Francesco wrote:

>The reason is concealed within the name. Curry (or "kari") did not
>originally mean "spice mixture", as it does to westerners today, but
"stew".
>It was the British who took home the idea of a spicy stew, and started
>calling a standardized spice mixture "curry powder". (No self-respecting
>Indian cook would use the same spice mixture in all dishes, or buy it
>ready-made and losing flavour in a jar) So curry leaves are called that
>because they are used in curries ("stews"), not because they are a
>substitute for the so-called curry powder.


Yes, I knew that, of course, but I was really wondering why *this* spice was
called curry-something - I mean, lots of spices are used in curries without
taking their name from them. But I checked my Indian cookbooks just now and
the answer was really self-evident - almost any recipe from Kerala or Tamil
Nadu (in Southern India) includes 10-20 curry leaves - other spices may vary
but lots of curry leaves and chilies are almost always called for. The curry
leaves were probably even more prominent before chili peppers were brought
to India. So it is perfectly natural that they should be called curry leaves
(a similar modern European example might be lovage, which is so prominent in
many dried vegetable soup and stew mixtures that it is called "the Maggi
herb" in many countries, Maggi being the best-known manufacturer of such
products).

Nanna

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