Here's an interesting article re. Curry......
Snippet:
"So when the English merchants landed at Surat in 1608 and 1612, then Calcutta 1633, Madras 1640 and Bombay 1668, the word ‘cury’ had been part of the English language for well over two hundred years. In fact, it was noted that the meal from Emperor Jahangir’s kitchens of dumpukht fowl stewed in butter with spices, almond and raisins served to those merchants in 1612, was very similar to a recipe for English Chicken Pie in a popular cookery book of the time, ‘The English Hus-wife’ by Gevase Markham. Indeed many spices had been in Europe for hundreds of years by then, after the conquests of the Romans in 40AD and the taking of Al Andulus by the Moors in 711 AD, bringing to Europe the culinary treasures of the spice routes.
Many supporters of the Tamil word kari as the basis for curry, use the definition from the excellent Hobson-Jobson Anglo English Dictionary, first published in 1886. The book quotes a passage from the Mahavanso (c A.D. 477) which says “he partook of rice dressed in butter with its full accompaniment of curries.” The important thing, however, is the note that this is Turnour’s translation of the original Pali which used the word “supa” not the word curry. Indeed Hobson -Jobson even accepts that there is a possibility that “the kind of curry used by Europeans and Mohommedans is not of purely Indian origin, but has come down from the spiced cookery of medieval Europe and Western Asia.”
Whatever the truth, ‘curry’ was rapidly adopted in Britain. In 1747 Hannah Glasse produced the first known recipe for modern ‘currey’ in Glasse’s Art of Cookery and by 1773 at least one London Coffee House had curry on the menu. In 1791 Stephana Malcom, the grandaughter of the Laird of Craig included a curry recipe she called Chicken Topperfield plus Currypowder, Chutnies and Mulligatawny soup as recorded in ‘In The Lairds Kitchen, Three Hundred Years of Food in Scotland’.
Around the same time the word "consumer" began to appear which, conversely, was not originally an English word as one might think, but derived from 'Khansaman', the title of the house steward - the chief table servant and purchaser as well as provider of all food in Anglo-Indian households.
In 1780 the first commercial curry powder appeared and in 1846 its fame was assured when William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a ‘Poem to Curry’ in his ‘ Kitchen Melodies’.
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Curry
Three pounds of veal my darling girl prepares,
And chops it nicely into little squares;
Five onions next prures the little minx
(The biggest are the best, her Samiwel thinks),
And Epping butter nearly half a pound,
And stews them in a pan until they’re brown’d.
What’s next my dexterous little girl will do?
She pops the meat into the savoury stew,
With curry-powder table-spoonfuls three,
And milk a pint (the richest that may be),
And, when the dish has stewed for half an hour,
A lemon’s ready juice she’ll o’er it pour.
Then, bless her! Then she gives the luscious pot
A very gentle boil - and serves quite hot.
PS - Beef, mutton, rabbit, if you wish,
Lobsters, or prawns, or any kind fish,
Are fit to make a CURRY. ‘Tis, when done,
A dish for Emperors to feed upon.
http://www.menumagazine.co.uk/book/curryhistory.html
