British Monks Uncovered a 200-Year-Old Chicken Curry Recipe

England's love affair with curry is well-documented.

The spicy, fragrant stews of the Indian subcontinent have become so ubiquitous in the UK that they have managed to transcend the silly "ethnic food" label that still adorns many other immigrant cuisines—albeit with a few seasoning adjustments for "white people" with a lower heat tolerance.

Even in a time of unprecedented suspicion and contempt toward immigration, British MPs have been arguing for more lax policies on the basis that new arrivals would be beneficial for fans of curry across the nation.

And while curry's mainstream status in England is hardly a recent phenomenon, a centuries-old recipe book uncovered by Benedictine monks in a UK monastery suggests that curries were already popular by the end of the 18th century.

The recipe book in question, which surfaced at the Downside Abbey in Somerset, England, features a wide range of antiquated recipes like fricassee of pigs' feet and ears, "cabob to eat with cucharee," and turtle soup.

While the book also featured many dishes that are still popular—like pudding, pancakes, carrot soup, and mince meat pies—hidden among them was, to the surprise of the monks, a recipe for chicken curry dating back to 1793, the Western Daily Press has reported.

The Roman Catholic monks inherited the cookbook after suffragettes burned down Begbrook House, the home of a local bourgeois family whose servants compiled 142 recipes into a practical compendium.

"You can tell it's been very well used," Dr. Simon Johnson, administrator of the abbey's archives and library told the Western Daily Press, adding that the document had all of the scars and stains that one would expect on a 200-year-old book that rarely left the kitchen.

"It's in a pretty good condition, but there are a few splatters of something or other all over it," he said. "It seems to be a working kitchen cookbook as opposed to being for special occasions."

Far from being just a historical oddity, the recipes are a glimpse into a forgotten time and place, as well as a testament to how historically significant chicken curry is in England.

"It's evoked so much interest because it's a Georgian, Regency cookbook," Johnson says. "I think people are generally interesting in the more domestic parts of history. The social history is forgotten—the day-to-day running of a house."

This recipe is still 46 years more recent than the first known "curry the Indian way" recipe, published by Hannah Glasse in 1747. And while this recent discovery offers fascinating insight into curry's past, it's still not clear if white people will ever stop asking if the curry is "too spicy" when they go to an Indian restaurant.