Curry Stuff: Comparing the History of Curry Consumption in Early Australia and Colonial Asia, c. 1900–65

Curry was omnipresent on the colonial table in India, Malaya and Singapore. In Australia it was an occasional dish and was distinctly different to the curries enjoyed by colonial Britons. This paper compares the consumption of curries in the two colonial and colonial/settler societies, using cookbooks and colonial memoirs.

The Australian curry in the twentieth-century was a curious concoction of meat or poultry with apple, raisins, chutney and curry powder all cooked in a stew-like mixture. It is likely that the abundance of meat and seafood meant that curry did not feature as prominently as in the Asian colonies. There, supplies of beef, lamb, pork were limited and were of poor quality and leftover meats were curried to stretch meals. In many outposts the scrawny village chicken was the only meat protein available and it was often curried to lessen its monotonous plain taste. There is little evidence that housewives and cooks in Australia had to curry meat dishes on a daily basis. Further, most cooks in Australian households were European and they prepared more European-type meals. By contrast, the meals in the Asian colonial households were prepared by local cooks who popularised curry dishes.

In its colonial heyday curry was a dish that was the perfect example of food appropriation, it leapt from presidency to presidency in the sub-continent and across the colonies in the British Empire. Although curry made its way to Australia it stopped short of becoming an important dish on the early Australian dining table.