Wednesday 18 May 2011

Anglo-Indian cuisine - Kedgeree



Kedgeree (or occasionally kitcherie, kitchari or kitchiri) is a dish consisting of cooked, flaked fish (sometimes smoked haddock), boiled rice, parsley, hard-boiled eggs, curry powder, butter or cream and occasionally sultanas.

Kedgeree is thought to have originated with an Indian rice-and-bean or rice-and-lentil dish Khichri, traced back to 1340 or earlier.[1] It is widely believed that the dish was brought to the United Kingdom by returning British colonials who had enjoyed it in India and introduced it to the UK as a breakfast dish in Victorian times, part of the then fashionable Anglo-Indian cuisine.[2] It is one of many breakfast dishes that, in the days before refrigeration, converted yesterday's leftovers into hearty and appealing breakfast dishes, of which bubble and squeak is probably the best known.

Hobson-Jobson cites Ibn Batuta (c. 1340) mentioning a dish of munj (moong) boiled with rice called Kishrī, and cites a recipe for Khichri from Ain-i-Akbari (c. 1590). According to Hobson-Jobson, while fish is eaten with kedgeree, the use of the term for “mess of re-cooked fish ... is inaccurate”.[3]

An alternative view is that the dish originated from Scotland and was taken to India by Scottish troops during the British Raj, where it was adapted and adopted as part of Indian cuisine.[4] The National Trust for Scotland's book The Scottish Kitchen by Christopher Trotter traces the origins for the kedgeree recipe to books by the Malcolms dating back to the year 1790. According to this theory the dish travelled to India then returned to the wider UK.

The first view, that it was and remains an Indian dish, is evidenced by the popularity of the dish throughout the subcontinent today.

The dish can be eaten hot or cold. Other fish can be used instead of haddock such as tuna or salmon,[4] though that is not traditional.

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