{"id":279860,"date":"2020-12-28T03:42:56","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T08:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=279860"},"modified":"2020-12-28T03:42:56","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T08:42:56","slug":"from-curried-wombat-to-rendang-and-doro-wat-a-brief-history-of-curry-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2020\/12\/28\/from-curried-wombat-to-rendang-and-doro-wat-a-brief-history-of-curry-in-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"From curried wombat to rendang and doro wat: a brief history of curry in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"
Andy Hay\/Unsplash<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In a new series, our writers explore how food shaped Australian history \u2013 and who we are today.<\/em><\/p>\n

Curry occupies a grey area in Australia<\/a>: sometimes exotic and other, sometimes ordinary, often a bit of both.<\/p>\n

Advertised in Australia as early as 1813<\/a>, curry powder was a familiar ingredient for British colonists, developed in British India through a process of \u201cnegotiation and collaboration<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n

Curry powder was a food of empire.<\/p>\n

For the British colonialists who moved to Australia, curry powder was an \u201cagent of transformation<\/a>\u201d. In a new country with unusual animals, these spices could render<\/a> the unfamiliar into the familiar, as in \u201cIguana\u201d tail curry and curried wattle bird.<\/p>\n

Writing in the Melbourne Herald in 1874, journalist Marcus Clarke said<\/a> a man who had not eaten curried wombat \u201chas not used his opportunities\u201d.<\/p>\n

In his 1893 dietary advice publication The art of living in Australia<\/a>, physician Philip Muskett proposed vegetable curry as a suitable national dish.<\/p>\n

By the early 20th century, curry was a standard feature of Australian cookbooks and recipes. Curry powder was a given pantry item. In most discussions, curry barely rated a second mention: it was known, accepted and widely eaten.<\/p>\n

Sugar and spice and all things nice<\/h2>\n

Keen\u2019s curry powder was first blended in Hobart in the 1860s by British immigrant Joseph Keen<\/a>. By the 1960s, the company was promising curries \u201cfit for a Maharajah<\/a>\u201d such as Murgh Korma<\/a> and Kare Daging<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>
An issue Women\u2019s Weekly in 1948 listed a recipe for \u2018curried steak with spaghetti\u2019, including one dessertspoon of curry powder, two dessertspoons of sultanas and two apples.<\/span>
\nTrove<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But these promises of a \u201crich true Indian flavour<\/a>\u201d were undermined by the use of stereotypes to sell their product.<\/p>\n

An advertisement<\/a> from 1965 read:<\/p>\n

To the Indian housewife, \u201ccurry\u201d means a richly spiced sauce \u2026 Indians curry anything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Keen\u2019s suggested recipes included ingredients such as canned fruit, plum jam, sultanas and tomato sauce alongside the curry powder.<\/p>\n

From the 1930s, Australians developed a fashion for sweeter curries \u2014 perhaps initially stemming from the need to substitute unavailable souring agents such as tamarind.<\/p>\n

But it also reflected a sweetening Australian palate and successful marketing campaigns by companies such as Golden Circle, who suggested meat curries be topped with their<\/a> tinned pineapples.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
A 1965 ad for Golden Circle pineapples, the perfect topping for your curry.<\/span>
\nTrove<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A recipe for \u201cAustralian Curry<\/a>\u201d published in the 1981 Catholic Women\u2019s League of Tasmania cookbook is characteristic of these tastes, featuring tinned pineapple, a granny smith apple, two bananas, meat, a tin of tomato soup and one dessertspoon of curry powder.<\/p>\n

Looking outward<\/h2>\n

From the 1960s, sweet Australianised curries increasingly competed with a trend of heightened (although often questionable) cultural knowledge in the context of Australia\u2019s broader cultural, economic and political change.<\/p>\n

Post the second world war, a booming economy allowed for greater emphasis on lifestyle and travel. Increasingly aware of our proximity to Asia, Australia shifted its gaze to its own neighbourhood. There was a boom in international food<\/a> in restaurants, on television and in homes.<\/p>\n

The Colombo Plan<\/a> and Vietnam War<\/a> resulted in greater migration from Asian countries. The White Australia Policy was abolished in 1973, and an international movement for social equality and civil rights movements reverberated through the nation.<\/p>\n

\n


\n
\nRead more:
\nColombo Plan: An initiative that brought Australia and Asia closer<\/a>
\n<\/strong>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Australians integrated foods from the Asia-Pacific region \u2013 including the incorporation of dishes from cuisines other than India under the label \u201ccurry\u201d, such as Thai green curry.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1972, Charmaine Solomon published her first book, the South East Asian Cookbook<\/a>, with recipes for Indonesian rendang daging and Burmese fish kofta curry. Her second, The Complete Asian Cookbook<\/a> (1976), became one of the most influential cookbooks in Australia.<\/p>\n

Solomon\u2019s family heritage from Sri Lanka, Burma and India is reflected in her recipes<\/a>, moving Australian curries away from sweetened sauces and generic curry powders and towards more nuanced and complex tastes.<\/p>\n

In 1980<\/a>, she pledged to work with Australian tastes, but would not put up with:<\/p>\n

those strange and spurious dishes that masquerade under the name of curry and are only the leftover roast disguised in a yellow sauce thickened with flour and flavoured with what some people are pleased to call \u201ccurry\u201d [with] bits of apple, banana and sultanas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Solomon\u2019s history reminds us of how people move \u2014 carrying and adapting culinary customs but also contributing to the food cultures of their adopted homes.<\/p>\n

From the late 1960s, Australian cookbooks and magazines shifted towards recipes for more subtle and refined curries. \u201cAustralianised\u201d curries didn\u2019t disappear, but knowledge of regional and cultural variations gradually increased.<\/p>\n

South Asian migrants opened restaurants and takeaways, tending to offer a stable repertoire of North Indian dishes<\/a>, reflecting both migration patterns and an Anglo-Australian preference for familiar flavours.<\/p>\n

An evolving food culture<\/h2>\n

Our understanding of curry hasn\u2019t stopped evolving. Australians are still encountering and remaking foods from around the world as curry, and new migrants are expanding our cultural understanding and diets.<\/p>\n

From Ethiopian Doro Wat<\/a> to Afghani Lawang<\/a>, curry is still at once ordinary and exotic.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Food is never just food. What we ingest becomes part of us, and can be a statement of who we are: a marker of identity. It has the capacity to unite or divide.<\/p>\n

While food can signal the boundaries of cultures between \u201cus\u201d and \u201cthem\u201d, it can also mark the spaces where these delineations break down.<\/p>\n

I wonder what sort of curry Muskett might propose as a national dish today?\"The<\/p>\n

Frieda Moran<\/a>, PhD Candidate, University of Tasmania<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Andy Hay\/Unsplash In a new series, our writers explore how food shaped Australian history \u2013 and who we are today. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":279861,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-279860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-food","mauthors-frieda-moran-university-of-tasmania","mauthors-the-conversation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":279862,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279860\/revisions\/279862"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279861"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}