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The Great Read
Who Created Butter Chicken? India’s Great Curry Clash.
A court has been asked to solve a bitter dispute between two families who have very different accounts of the origins of a dish beloved around the world.
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The Debate Over Butter Chicken’s Origins The celebrated Indian dish combines tandoori chicken with a creamy curry made with tomatoes, butter and spices.
Definitely it is not an invention of these two. It has come from somewhere deep into a village of Punjab where a great, great, great grandmom would have made it with tomatoes and lasun [garlic] and – oh, my mouth is watering now, so.
The celebrated Indian dish combines tandoori chicken with a creamy curry made with tomatoes, butter and spices. CreditCredit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times By Suhasini Raj
Photographs and Video by Anindito Mukherjee
Reporting from New Delhi
Feb. 7, 2024
In 1947, two men, both named Kundan, fled Peshawar during the bloody partition that carved Pakistan out of British India. They landed in Delhi and soon became partners in a restaurant called Moti Mahal serving food from the Punjab region.
On this much their descendants agree. Where they diverge is on the question of which of the men should go down in culinary history.
The two families both say that it was their own Kundan who invented butter chicken — the creamy, heavenly marriage of tandoori chicken and tomato gravy beloved everywhere north Indian food is served. And one of them has gone to court to try to prove it.
Image
A picture of Kundan Lal Gujral at Moti Mahal.
Before we dig in: Yes, it’s hard to prove that any single person came up with dishes that have become ubiquitous. Also, does it even matter after all these years? Being first doesn’t necessarily mean being best.
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But in the case of butter chicken, much is riding on the verdict — money, mostly, but also the legacy of the storied restaurant that the two men began building nearly eight decades ago, a span that covers almost all of India’s modern history as an independent nation.
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Suhasini Raj is a reporter based in New Delhi who has covered India for The Times since 2014. More about Suhasini Raj
A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 8, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Which Came First, the Chicken or the Chicken? . Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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