History Article: The Material History of Tikka Masala

 Listen, admit it: You want to read someone else's homework. I get it. You're super curious about the history of tikka masala. Well, bruh, today is your SECOND luckiest day. 

This is just another of my academic articles. I'm pretty proud of it, to be honest. The footnotes are broken; sorry about that. I had some good jokes in them, too. You are missing out gems like:

Aheheh. Ahem.

Anyhow: 

The Material World of Tikka Masala

Empire is one of the oldest forms of human polity. Almost immediately after humans first settled into agricultural societies, the first empires were born; transient little glories built on bronze, stone, and blood. Humanity seemed to have a taste for empire and refined the concept, one generation after another. By the 1800s the great spider of the British Empire managed to cast nearly the whole of the world under the shadow of its web; great strands carried steamships and railcars to the dustiest edges of humanity. Traditional historiography tells of this as the story of the spider squatting in London; its various imperial hungers, its abuses, its wars. But empires are not ideas, they are processes; more, they are great collections of things that make possible combinations of yet more things. Things brought together unintentionally; brought together by great chained accidents of history. And when these things combine they tell stories that quietly reveal the vast and overpowering scope of the colonial empire. And no colonial product combines so many disparate chains as chicken tikka masala, the now-iconic British dish.

0. What is the object under study?

Chicken tikka masala is a chicken dish. Hailed as a “national dish” of Britain in 2001, it remains the most popular dish ordered in British curry houses and has successfully spread to other western countries. The dish itself consists of tikka--roasted chunks of spiced and marinated chicken, immersed in a curry--a rich, thick sauce traditionally made with premixed curry powder, though many variants exist. According to tradition, tikka masala was invented in a Glasgow curry house called Shish Mahal by British-Pakistani chef Ali Ahmed Aslam sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. According to Aslam’s account, he created the dish after a customer complained the tikka was too dry. Combining curry powder with a can of Campbell’s condensed tomato soup, he created the first chicken tikka masala.

There is reason to doubt Aslam’s story, but its veracity is not particularly important for an examination of the material history of this dish. There are many stories lurking beneath Aslam’s, hidden in the material objects themselves; stories that speak to the history of a global empire.

What we learn in Glasgow

It is not an accident that tikka masala was, allegedly, born in Scotland. An examination of any Scottish high street from the middle of the 19th century on would find not only the half-timber pubs and shops beloved by tourists, but another iconic British institution: the curry house. These curry houses offer a range of Indian and South-Asian-inspired dishes with varying degrees of authenticity. As one would expect, these restaurants were historically opened and maintained by South Asian immigrants and their descendants, who came to Scotland in great numbers in the 19th century; according to the 2022 census, British Asians make up almost 4% of the Scottish population. Material reality brought many of them to Scotland, one that once served as a vital pillar of the empire: the jute trade.


Jute is a long, herbaceous plant that thrives in the hot, humid conditions in and around Bengal and Bangladesh. It has been cultivated for use as a textile for 5,000 years, producing a durable, pliable fiber suited to a wide range of industrial and commercial uses. Though somewhat too rough for clothing, jute fibers are exceptionally strong, making them excel as cordage or for use as bags, mats, and similar heavier-duty uses. Recognizing jute’s potential to be of great utility to a maritime mercantile power, the British East India Company entered the jute trade in 1790. Initially, the tropical plant existed as a minor supplement to flax. Despite its ease of cultivation and the vast labor pools that lived in its warm, humid homeland, jute required a great deal of hand-powered processing that severely limited its utility in comparison to traditional European fibers that could nearly all be spun or otherwise processed mechanically by the late 18th century.


But as was often the case, a Scottish entrepreneur ultimately resolved the problem. Jute was revolutionized in 1833 when Dundee merchant Thomas Neigh discovered a process to mechanize jute spinning. It was labor alone that had prohibited jute from overtaking flax or other traditional European fibers from mass production; now that it could be mechanized, the easily-grown fiber could go from a craft to an industry. Jute production soared; with enterprising Scots opening vast factories in the industrial cities of Scotland. In Dundee, sometimes hailed “juteopolis,” half the population is recorded as having been employed in the jute mills. Gaps in domestic labor were soon filled by immigrants arriving on the same ships as the raw jute. However, the difference in labor pools between Scotland and southeast Asia were yawning; as British control over Asia increased, it became easier to move capital than labor. By 1858, Scottish machinery was flowing to vast new mills in the jute-growing regions themselves.


Industrialization was rapid. By 1895, more jute was processed and spun in Bengal than in Scotland. Numerous Scots traveled to plan, construct, and manage these new industrial facilities. As was often the case, many returned with an interest in the “oriental” cultures they had experienced abroad and sought ways to recreate the experience at home.


One such method was visiting the local curry house. Even in 1895, these were not novel: the first, the Hindoostane Dinner and Hooka Smoking Club, had opened its doors in 1810. Its proprietor, Dean Mahomed, had been born in Bengal, the epicenter of Asia’s original hand-woven jute industry. In addition to Indian cuisine, Mahomed also introduced the then-exotic Indian practice of shampooing hair to Britain; if a modern person would think it rude to be seen at a curry house with greasy, unwashed hair, the work of one man in particular hangs over their head. The material exchange between these two distant locations provided the necessary portal allowing the cultural exchange visible in the diversity of Scottish industrial cities today; it is unlikely tikka masala would exist without the hardy herb.


But jute did more than provide a corridor between northern Europe and southern Asia. The fiber served both colonial empire and commercial curry in the capacity of capacity itself--its ability to create materials storage. British colonialism was focused not on the extraction of gold or silver, but resources, which in south Asia meant largely the spice trade. It is impossible to understate the importance of the spice trade to world history; it would be fair to say the trade was the catalyst for much of modern history. But moving spices in bulk was always a difficult, costly affair. Jute provided an answer: jute, woven into the iconic burlap sack, came to contain the majority of British break bulk cargo. Burlap sacks were the red blood cells of British colonialism; over a billion sacks made by over 64,000 looms in Calcutta alone may have been exported from Bengal to the empire, carrying spices, coffee, teas, and countless other commodities that fueled the great commercial engine of the British empire.


Among their countless cargo would have been the spices requisite in any tikka masala recipe. The transport of sensitive spices was always challenging. Jute bags were strong but highly breathable, preventing the moisture buildup that could lead to fungal infestations that could ruin entire cargos. Jute thus allowed, in a very literal fashion, for the material existence of tikka masala. And modern jute is a child of Scottish industry: the literal thread metaphorically binding two worlds.

II. What we learn at a glance

Tikka Masala is vibrantly red. Or vibrantly orange. There are many recipes; but in most commercial settings, the titular tikka is far from the color of ordinary charred chicken or undyed tomato paste. In traditional Punjabi cooking, the vibrant reds and oranges of tandoori chicken are created with turmeric and paprika; often in quantities unpopular with the mainstream 20th-century British tongue. Enterprising British curry house chefs found a solution. The secret is not the spices: it is dye; specifically Red 40, one of the most common food colorings used in the western world. This color is another marker of the globalized, industrial ancestry of the dish; and in particular, made possible by the Empire’s desperate search for a weapon against disease.


Red 40 is a child of the UK. While dyes have an ancient provenance, they were born as an industry in the 19th century. The Scottish firm of J. Pullar and Sons pioneered the first industrial-scale dye manufacturing; founded in 1824, they operated 30 locations across Britain and had received royal patronage from Queen Victoria by 1856. This was a momentous year for their industry: 1856 was the year the chemical dye industry was born, when 18-year-old English chemist William Henry Perkin synthesized an apparently-harmless, inexpensive mauve dye he called “aniline purple” but was popularized as “mauveine.”


Mauveine caused something of a sensation across Europe. “Mauve was everywhere: streaming on hair ribbons, waving from carriages, jamming up railway stations on the newly fashionable crinolines;” Punch magazine declared London infected with “mauve measles.” Chemists raced to discover new formulae; the age of modern color had begun. It is somewhat ironic that he revolutionized the look of the modern world when young Perkin had made his great discovery entirely by accident: Mauveine was a failed experiment, born of an effort to artificially synthesize the then-lifesaving chemical quinine.


Quinine was in demand because of its use as a treatment for malaria. Malaria, a lethal infection caused by bloodborne parasites easily transmitted by mosquitoes, was perhaps the British empire’s greatest enemy in India. British medical officer Desmond Whyte expressly recalled: “Our first number one enemy was malaria. Everybody, one hundred per cent got malaria.” These microscopic pathogens sickened and killed countless soldiers and administrators over their centuries of colonial venture; in 1939 the British army reported two-thirds of its soldiers being treated for malaria. William Perkin never found his malaria treatment, but he created the precursor to tikka masala’s most iconically visible, if technically flavorless, feature.


III. What we learn Inside the House of Curry


Next we must examine the space where chicken tikka masala was invented and popularized: the curry house. What we find is that like tikka masala itself, the curry house is a British fantasy, built to British tastes, emulating a foreign look never found in the country being emulated.


The classic curry house was built in a particular, iconic form, with the features of the “curry house look” being recognizable enough to attract significant parody and comment in British media. Despite being generally working-class businesses operating with minor margins, the interiors were meant to evoke decadent fantasies of Raj. Perhaps the most defining feature of the curry house was flock wallpaper: red and gold, in sensuous “oriental” patterns that conjured an exotic fantasy of India. Ironically and perhaps predictably, flock wallpaper is a deeply English material.


Flock wallpaper was originally invented in France, but the technique was perfected in England. By the 1700s England produced it in great quantity, recycling waste products (“flock”) from England’s wool industry into wallpaper that became as prestigious as the damask it was meant to imitate; by the late 19th century flock wallpaper in intricate Victorian patterns graced country homes and the Palace of Westminster. Nearly a century later, that same material lined the interiors of the curry house, surrounding diners with red and gold Arts and Crafts or Gothic Revival patterns meant to evoke sumptuous, orientalist fantasies--at an affordable price.


The timing, however, is critical. By the second half of the 20th century, flock was becoming declassé. Flock had once been a symbol of luxury, but its appearance in working-class curry houses was a sign of the material’s decline. British commentators took note, with the Victoria and Albert Museum itself declaring that flock wallpaper had “declined into a cliche, most familiar (at least in Britain) as nothing more than a commonplace decoration in Indian restaurants where it is intended to evoke an atmosphere of colonial grandeur.” By the approach of the 21st century, flock was in complete retreat--not only with the little still in use now a synthetic, rather than woollen, material, but industry communiques specifically admonishing restaurateurs to avoid flock wallpaper and opt for a clean, modern look instead.


It is unclear why tikka masala was able to survive the arc of the wallpaper that once served as the womb of its popularity. The same articles encouraging chefs to abandon flock specifically encourage abandoning tikka masala; the symbolic link between the two was clear even at the time.


IV. What we learn from a can


One of the most compelling parts of the tikka masala story is the claim that it was born from a tin of tomato soup, added to tikka (boneless, spiced chicken chunks) a British patron found too dry after its time in the tandoor. This may be a myth; but a canned, creamy sauce forms a critical element of most tikka masala recipes--another useful material object. The material existence of canned, condensed tomato soup is a byproduct of European military necessity and the modern world’s drive for non-perishable, storable, cheap stores of food.


Tradition ascribes to Napoleon the maxim “An army marches on its stomach.” Though apocryphal, it captures both a military truth as well as an implication that Napoleon’s government well understood: a strong military requires a reliable food supply. To that end, in 1795 the French government offered 12,000 francs as a reward for a method to preserve food. Nicolas Appert won this challenge by heating food sealed in glass jars, though bulky, fragile glassware was hardly useful for an army on the march. It was an Englishman, Peter Durand, who instead patented the use of the modern tin can as a lighter, stronger alternative.


But Durand sold his patent to the self-taught inventor Bryan Donkin, who had already achieved some success with his improvements to the Fourdrinier machine that forms the basis for modern-day papermaking. Along with his partner John Hall, it was Donkin who can be best considered the father of modern canned food. The classic Campbell's canned soup referenced in the tikka masala origin story consists of a metal can wrapped in a paper label. As such, the story unwittingly assigns Donkin particular prominence in the history of the dish.


This also allows a complicating factor, in that Campbell’s soup is not only from the United States, but is perhaps one of the most iconically American brands. Its prominent place in the tikka masala mythology bears analysis. According to restaurateur Iqbal Wahhab, the entire story is a fiction, created by himself with the stated intent to “entertain journalists.” If his claim is true, his selection of Campbell’s as the selected soup is curious. Campbell’s soup is not particularly prominent in Scotland, where the soup market has been dominated by Heinz and native son Baxter’s for generations. If Wahhab was just being frivolous, and his mind landed on Campbell’s as pleasingly absurd, it is reasonable to assume that Andy Warhol lurks in the background of the dish. Perhaps, by the late 20th century, a different commercial empire had begun to supersede that of the British even in the imagination of the empire’s own people.


V. What we learn from the powder


A principal element of tikka masala is the curry powder used to flavor the sauce; the mixture was so associated with tikka masala that high end Indian restaurants more than capable of mixing their own fresh spices use curry powder specifically to evoke the nostalgic flavors of the 20th century. And yet, like the curry house, and like tikka masala itself, curry powder is a British creation; a signifier pointing the opposite direction of the signified.


High end Indian restaurants do not use curry powder. In India, there is simply no such thing as curry powder. Indian chefs sometimes sneer at the phrase; Indian cuisine uses a wide variety of spices in an even wider variety of blends, and the creation of a homogenized “curry powder” is sometimes seen as an insulting oversimplification of an intricate culinary culture.


And yet curry powder remains available in grocers across the western world--for curry powder is a western invention, meant to simulate “India” for a population that had little access to, or interest in, authentic South Asian cuisine. Even in the UK, there is no definitive “curry powder,” nearly all contain a few core ingredients: turmeric, chili powder, peppers, coriander, cumin; other common ingredients include ginger, cardamom, salt, garlic powder, cloves, and nearly any other aromatic. Though these spices do appear in traditional Indian and South Asian cooking, the specific flavor that manufactured “curry powder” creates is relatively uncommon in India proper. Like the larger dish itself, this is a fundamentally British flavor; a beloved national simulacrum.


This is not to suggest curry powder is particularly modern. There are advertisements for curry powder in British newspapers as early 1784; in the form of a Morning Post advertisement claiming the powder will, among other things, “promote good digestion, good circulation,” and even “a strong libido.”


VI. What we have learned


Chicken tikka masala, in its material reality, is a quintessential product of the British Empire, demonstrating how empires are not just ideas but great collections of things brought together by accident. The dish is a synthesis of Scottish industrial ingenuity, chemical science, military necessity, and cultural invention. It is a meal composed of simulacra; a British fantasy of an oriental taste, one that simplifies and commodifies intricate South Asian culinary culture. Ultimately, the status of chicken tikka masala serves as an icon of a global, colonial process that synthesized disparate materials and traditions into a uniquely British creation.

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