Of conquerors and cooks

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CURRY A TALE OF COOKS AND CONQUERORS

By Lizzie Collingham

Oxford University Press, $28,

304 pages

REVIEWED BY CLAIRE HOPLEY

Lizzie Collingham's "Curry" has quite a few intriguing recipes, but it is not primarily a cookbook. It also has lots of information about the various peoples who have settled in different parts of India, and especially about their responses to the foods they found there. Yet it is not exactly a history of India. Rather, it is a series of essays that ponder Indian foodways, tethering them to both the religions of the country and to its many invaders.

Among them were the British, who probably did the most to bring Indian cooking to the West. The East India Company arrived in 1600 and the British Empire only folded its banners when India and Pakistan regained their independence in 1947. One effect is that Indian cooking has intimately shaped that of its former rulers.

As early as 1747 Hannah Glasse's "Art of Cookery" had recipes for curry, and since then no cookbook aiming to capture the full range of British food has been without instructions for several curries and at least one pilau. Few tables in Britain lack a selection of sharp sauces and chutneys, most of which derive from Indian models.

The very word "chutney" derives from the Hindi chatni, making the origin of these spicy relishes quite clear. Worcestershire sauce was created by the pharmacists Lea and Perrins of Worcester in an attempt to mimic a favorite sauce brought back from India by Lord Marcus Sandys.