Linschoten gave us the words mango, and bamboo. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten was a Dutch merchant who travelled extensively, in Spain, Portugal and then six years with Portuguese ships visiting the Arctic, Africa and Asia. His descriptions in Dutch of these journeys were some of the earliest first-hand information on the places visited. They were almost immediately translated into English, German and French. In England it was published in 1598 as Discours of Voyages into ye Easte & West Indies. This book was translated by William Phillip who was probably the first Dutch to English translator, specialising in travel literature.
It was here that curry was mentioned for the first time. In an account of Indian eating habits, it is stated that “Most of their fish is eaten with rice, which they seeth in broth which they put upon the rice, and is somewhat sour but it tasteth well, and is called Carril, which is their daily meat.”
Curry as a word comes from the Tamil word kari which is a sauce for rice and which found its way to English via the Portuguese who called it caril. This is stated quite clearly in an early reference to curry as a way to spice up rice. In his book An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, Robert Knox writes from his own experience – he was a prisoner on the island for 19 years. He notes that the Indians collect delicious unripe fruits and “boil them to make curry to use the Portuguese word”. This is the first real description about what is today Sri Lanka and made its writer Robert Knox famous.
But it was a long time later before there was a recipe in English for curry. Hannah Glasse The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy was the cooking book for the eighteenth century and went into multiple editions. She describes how “To Make Curry the India Way”, but it does not have much relation to what is considered curry today. To chicken she recommends adding nothing much more than rice, turmeric, ginger and pepper corn.
However, curry only really found its way to England as a result of civil servants returning from the Raj and from the huge influx of immigrants from Asian after the Second World War.
