In Part 1 of WEB Du Bois’s Dark Princess, we meet Matthew Townes, an African American college student who is pursuing a career in obstetrics. It is quickly established that Townes feels separated from the white people he observes and engages with. After arriving in Berlin, Germany, he finds himself at the Viktoria Cafe and feels just as ostracized as by all of the white people he saw New York (7). This imagery prompted me to wonder what these customers might have been eating in this cafe.
One of Berlin’s most famous dishes happens to be “currywurst”, a mixed sauce consisting of ketchup, Worcester sauce, and curry powder on a sausage. Most people would suspect that curry has Indian origins, but the history is much more complex. The word “curry” is an English misnomer for the Tamil word “kari” which means sauce. Curry is a generalized term for a meat and gravy dish that derives from South India, but the word is only used in the west. Curry powder is a mix of spices which include cumin, black pepper, dry mustard, turmeric (for color), and several other possibilities. The mix is a British interpretation meant to emulate the flavors of South India, but the true spice mix is likely to be garam masala.
https://www.thrillist.com/eat/berlin/berlin-s-most-iconic-dishes-9-iconic-berlin-dishes-and-where-to-eat-them
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-is-curry_n_592d5ea2e4b0065b20b82803?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACmXaYU9TG62W-g9GKTzxHM1Yz9yFJhwme2DRrg7Uyw8xuzbb31NwU2LAMtDp0cF5t0Ab0ocVD0hAvcyYBuxV-7M29ogOig-Urf45ud3eDv6Wjf1bJ4BuzGHmOT7bWpFegl3YLgk3L5HNH3L7dYtEljWcxXlKWWxMpEpnpsxWCCL
https://www.thespruceeats.com/curry-powder-and-indian-food-1957468
What’s fascinating to me is that currywurst can give the impression of globalization, but the word curry is inherently rooted in a misnomer or misunderstanding of garam masala. This misunderstanding thus points to the oversimplification of cultures into monolithic identities (even in food!) that can muddy up the actual details of a specific history.