The funny thing is, we all think this, while there are literally thousands of different curries, none of which are necessarily the same. From thick ones you can dip your spoon into, to plenty of thin and dry ones. They're often made with coconut milk, but that's not necessary. They taste spicy or mild, sour or sweeter, and sometimes they're infused with red wine, vanilla, mustard, butter, or cinnamon. Curry is usually eaten with rice, but also often with roti.
Traditionally, curry consists of a combination of spices, the most important of which are turmeric, cumin, coriander, and ginger. These spices, however, are mixed with fresh or dried chili peppers.
So if you love curry, there's so much to try, wherever you are. You'll find curries in India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, China, the Philippines and Japan, Thailand, Nepal, Jamaica, the Maldives, and the Bahamas, as well as South Africa and England.
It's difficult to say which curry is most popular in Thailand, but our guess is green curry (khaeng kiauw wan), which is also the spiciest. The green comes from the green chili peppers, of course, but the curry paste should also contain lime leaves, lemongrass, fresh cilantro, and basil. Curries in Thailand are sometimes wet (almost soupy), but often dry.
Another popular curry in Thailand is panang curry; a layered yet spicy curry that contains almost no liquid other than coconut cream. Or: massaman curry, a mild curry with chicken, potatoes, and peanuts, which came to Thailand from ancient Persia, via India and Malaysia. Equally mild is yellow curry (khaeng kari), which is also made with coconut cream and most resembles curries from India. That's where it originated. Curries had been made and eaten there for some four thousand years before the British brought them from their colony to Europe in the 17th century.
It's striking that no one in India called this dish curry (and nowadays only when speaking to foreigners in English). This is thanks to the British. They borrowed the word "kari," meaning sauce or soup, from Tamil and began calling this refined blend of spices curry (in India, such a combination of spices is more likely called masala).
Cookbooks dating back hundreds of years contain references to 'kari podi', or kari powder, which was brought to Europe from India, primarily by the British. As far as we know, curry first appears in a recipe by Hannah Glasse in 1748. It's not surprising that the dish wasn't found in cookbooks earlier, as recipes weren't written down in India; they were passed down orally from generation to generation and from cook to cook.
The fact that curry appeared in a cookbook so long ago doesn't mean it immediately appeared on the tables of Europeans. It took time. In 1810, the first Indian restaurant in Europe likely opened in London. Naturally, curry was made there, and so, bite by bite, London and the rest of Europe gradually learned about the Indian specialty. Curry became so popular in England that it's said there are now more curry restaurants in London than in Mumbai.
