How to Get a Curry in Victorian London

If you like curry, you have more in common with the Victorians than you might think. Their love of Indian dishes began with the officers and officials of the East India Company. These men enjoyed spicy meals in India, and still wanted to eat their favourites when they returned to Britain. Queen Victoria helped to further popularise the craze for all things Indian, regularly enjoying curries cooked by her own Indian chefs.

This short guide will take you to the cigar-filled gentlemen's clubs and the elegant, high-class hotel restaurants serving curries made by Indian chefs; the noisy, aromatic warehouses where Indian entrepreneurs stored their imported spices; the sell-out audiences watching demonstrations of curry-making by experts in Indian cooking; and the cookery schools where domestic cooks employed in middle-class homes learned how to make curry. You'll also learn how curry powder made Indian-style meals more affordable (and less authentic), and why it could be a health risk.

Curry in Victorian London was not available to everyone; it very much depended on your social class, gender and wealth. Spices were too expensive for the working classes, and only middle- and upper-class men were welcome in gentlemen's clubs and hotel restaurants (it was not socially acceptable for women to dine out without a male escort until the 1880s). But the British love affair with curry is firmly rooted in the Victorian period.