Chicken tikka masala
🍖 With meat or fishChicken tikka masala is a curry of chunks of chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices, roasted and served in a creamy, brightly coloured sauce. Although it is linked to South Asian cooking, it is thought to have been created in Britain, where it became one of the country's most popular dishes.
History
The roots of chicken tikka, without sauce, go back to the Mughal period, when pieces of chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices were grilled in a tandoor oven; the Mughal emperor Babur (r. 1526–1530) is associated with its creation. The word tikka comes from Hindi-Urdu and means small pieces of meat, a term borrowed from Classical Persian.
The saucy version is generally linked to Britain. The most repeated account credits Ali Ahmed Aslam, a British Pakistani chef in Glasgow, with improvising a sauce from tinned tomato soup and spices for a customer who wanted something to go with dry chicken. Other Glasgow restaurateurs have claimed to have created it earlier, and the historian Peter Grove disputes Aslam's authorship. Scholars generally agree that the dish developed within the British Indian community, probably among Bangladeshi chefs who ran most of the country's Indian restaurants in the 1960s.
It is often compared with butter chicken from the Punjab, although the exact connection remains debated. From Britain it spread to restaurants around the world and into supermarket ready meals.
Culture
In Britain it is one of the most popular dishes in curry houses, and in 2001 Foreign Secretary Robin Cook called it a true British national dish, a remark that sparked lasting debate. It is usually served as a main course with rice or flatbread, and its tomato and coriander sauce varies widely because there is no standard recipe. Some versions resemble butter chicken, and the vegetarian alternative replaces the chicken with paneer.
Its popularity has led to unexpected uses, such as taco fillings in the United States and pizza toppings in India. For many British South Asians and some critics it stands for the mixing of traditions that marks multicultural Britain, though others have judged it inauthentic.
Legend and fact
The story of Ali Ahmed Aslam and the tinned tomato soup is widely repeated but doubtful. Historian Peter Grove and restaurateur Iqbal Wahhab have questioned it, and Wahhab has said the soup detail was made up to entertain journalists. What is documented is the British origin of the saucy version and its development in British Indian restaurants.