An Ancient Curry

Home , Handi, The Forme of Cury

An Ancient Curry 11/15/2016 Sanjay Mishra Scientists have stumbled upon evidence that a tradition of cooking curry—the signature dish and culinary heritage of India—dates back to the Bronze Age. Read more.... Although traditional Thanksgiving fare does not include curry, the pilgrims may very well have tasted it before they left England. An English cookbook, The Forme of Cury, published in the 1390s, included recipes for hot "cury." And the Dutch East India Company, which played a role in prompting the Mayflower voyage, made large profits from the flourishing spice trade. The Kitchen Laboratory Modern curry has evolved through globalization, but Is Ice Cream the Next Superfood? archaeologists Arunima Kashyap and Steve Webber now have How Do Leaves Change Color Every evidence that a rudimentary “proto-curry” was most likely cooked Autumn? in the clay pots found at the Harappan sites of North India as far back as 4 thousand years ago. “It’s not surprising that people at that time were using food very similar to what they use there even today,” Kashyap said. 0 Comments Sort by Newest The Indus Valley civilization arose in Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro at the same time as the urban civilizations in Egypt and Mesopotamia. When they vanished, the Indus people left behind records in a script that has not yet been deciphered, so little is known about their customs and practices. Add a comment... Interested in the methods of plant processing and dietary practices of the Harappan people, Kashyap and Webber began exploring pottery from one of the largest settlements from that era. When they looked at these shards under microscope, they Facebook Comments Plugin spotted starch granules. They extracted these starch granules from various surfaces including pottery, stone tools, and dental calculus from human burial sites.

Starch granules from different plants have distinctive sizes, shapes, and physical characteristics (e.g., dimples and cracks). Using a microscope, researchers can distinguish one plant source from the other by those features.

Kashyap identified barley, millet, and mango from a variety of grinders and pounding stones. She also found starches from lentils and large and small grain cereals from the interior surfaces of storage jars. “We could see eggplant, ginger, and turmeric in a handi [a deep narrow mouthed clay cooking vessel],” Kashyap said.

With evidence of the foods the Harappan people cooked and ate, Kashyap gathered recipes from a present-day village near the excavation site and began experimentally cooking in clay pots similar to those found during archaeological exploration of the site. “I wanted to understand how the cooking affects the starches, and I wanted samples to match with what we found on the antique surfaces,” Kashyap explained.

She cooked vegetable curries, chutneys, and roasted and boiled roots and tubers. Preliminary data from these cooking experiments demonstrate that starch grain analysis is an effective way to investigate the culinary practices of ancient times.

The Harappan people had a surprisingly large range of crops in their diet, which they developed to sustain themselves. There’s no telling how far the influence of their dietary and culinary habits has spread. So next time you relish a curry— after the surge of piquant chilies subsides—thank the ancient city dwellers of the Indus Valley, who likely began the global culinary phenomenon.

References Kashyap and Weber (2010) Harappan plant use revealed by starch grains from Farmana, India . Antiquity, 84.

Andrew Lawler (2012) The Ingredients for a 4000-Year-Old Proto-Curry Science 337 (6092), 288.

Keywords: curry archaology food Indus civilization

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