At Swan & Lion, we love using spice. Our first products, which we sold at the farmers’ markets in Tokyo, were chutneys, pickles and piccalilli, all of which contain spices. Cumin, coriander, mustard seeds, star anise, cinnamon, nutmeg and more. And at Christmas time, we use a lot of cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger powder in our Christmas puddings and mince pie filling. Nutmeg in our bacon onion cheese pies, fennel seeds for our sausage rolls, mace in our pork pies. Our spice shopping list is long and extensive.

Growing up, from a young age I was used to having spices in sweets and desserts, whether it be a ginger biscuit or some cinnamon in an apple crumble. Or heavily spiced mince pies at Christmas, which to be honest, I didn’t like so much. But my first experience of spiced savoury foods came later, in the late 1970s in my early teenage years. Until that period, family meals at home and with my grandparents were almost entirely traditional British cuisine, meat and veg. And school meals were exclusively British dishes with no spices whatsoever, with one exception that I can remember, a beef goulash which had a slight hint of paprika. It wasn’t very good though! But there was a change happening, with dining out becoming a little more popular and a few restaurants being opened by recent immigrants to the UK. Where I lived in central Bristol, we had one Chinese restaurant and one Indian restaurant, that was the only choice. For a treat, my parents occasionally would get takeaways from them, which made an exotic change from the usual fish & chips, the only takeaway meal I can remember having until that time. The Chinese restaurant, The House of Wong, offered Chinese food adjusted for the British palate, which at the time was pretty much the only type of Chinese food available. Think sticky deep-fried pork balls in a sweet and sour sauce and chow mein. Delicious, but not really Chinese food. The Indian restaurant, The Taj Mahal, offered more authentic dishes with a variety of curries, rice dishes and Indian breads.

British cafe, The Frying Pan, during the day. Indian restaurant, The Taj Mahal, at night. Bristol wasn’t quite ready in the 1970s for a curry-only restaurant.

Around that time, my Dad (who sadly passed away last year) became interested in cooking at home. The Le Creuset pots my parents received as a wedding gift were his best friends in the kitchen, with most of his creations being slow-cooked in the Le Creuset. I remember French casseroles and Indian curries being his go-to dishes. And his curries were really good. Speaking with my Mum recently, she told me that he first started cooking when he was a student at Imperial College, London. His cooking bible was the Penguin Cookery Book, first published in 1952. My Mum still has his book and uses it from time to time.

The recipe for Curry Sauce was marked so we know he was interested in curries during his university years.

I am pretty sure his renewed interest in cooking when I was a kid came from one very important influence on home cooking in 1970s Britain, the TV chef Delia Smith. In her Complete Cookery Course book, she had a couple of curry recipes and in her first TV series, Delia Smith’s Cookery Course, first broadcast on the BBC in 1978, she devoted an episode to spices.

Delia Smith’s first edition, 1978. Sales of eggs in the UK went up 10% after its publication. I have her 1990s edition and still use it to this day.

I cannot find a video for this spices episode, but if you would like to get a taste of what these shows were like, you can watch here:

In this TV series, she introduced home cooks to recipes for spaghetti Bolenese, risotto Milanese and other dishes which at the time were very rare for home cooks to try. We have come a long way since then!

My personal journey with spices started when I left home to study law at the University of Manchester in the mid 1980’s. Not having much money, I cooked a lot with my housemates in our shared house. I lived in a suburb called Rusholme, an area very popular with students because of the low-cost rent. Rusholme had thriving communities of Indians, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis and many cheap curry restaurants. But it was the Asian specialty shops selling spices and vegetables that got me excited about the area. This was my first experience of being independent, living on a budget and it was these shops that inspired me to cook for myself. Living with 3 other people, very large pots of curry were made, which lasted us for days! While probably not being the most sophisticated of curries, they did the job for us at the time and it allowed me to experiment and learn.

A Brief History of Spice in Britain:

Rather surprisingly, at school I never studied the history of the British colonialisation of India. But my wife, Kio, tells me that this was part of her education in Japan and is generally well-known. I wonder why this was not part of my education curriculum.

Traditional British food has a strong connection with the use of spices, dating back as far as the Middle Ages. In the 1300’s, spices imported from mainland Europe were for the wealthy only, with black pepper, cloves, ginger, mace and saffron being the most common. But it was the expansion of the British Empire that made spices become more affordable and available to lower-ranking citizens.

The British were actually slow in joining the race to discover new lands and exploit the rich produce and commodities they provided. In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Portuguese and Spanish lead the way in ship navigation and the charting of the sea and land. By the late 1400’s, the Portuguese had plotted their way down the west coast of Africa, around the Cape of Good Hope (South Africa), up the east coast of Africa and across to India, first landing at Calicut in 1498. Jealous of the great wealth the Portuguese and Spanish were generating from their trading in Asia, in 1600, a group of English businessmen asked Elizabeth I for a royal charter that would allow them voyage to India and South East Asia on behalf of the crown in exchange for a monopoly on trade. The merchants invested their own money to finance the venture, and the East India Company was born.

And so, in 1608 the first East India Company ship landed at Surat in India and changed the face of Asia forever, a legacy which is still felt today. The East India Company’s royal charter gave it the ability to “wage war,” and initially it used military force to protect itself and fight rival traders. In 1757, however, in some of the bloodiest battles seen on the Indian continent, it seized control of the entire Mughal state of Bengal. Robert Clive, who led the company’s 3,000-person army, became Bengal’s governor and began collecting taxes and customs, which were then used to purchase Indian goods and export them to England. The company then built on its victory and drove the French and Dutch out of the Indian subcontinent and in effect ruled India on behalf of the British Empire.

As it grew and monopolised the trade, the East India Trading Company gave birth to many of the world’s great cities – Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Singapore and Hong Kong.

By the mid-1800’s, the price of spices had dropped significantly and could be found in specialty shops such as Payne’s Oriental Warehouse (328 Regent Street) and The Oriental Depot (38 Leicester Square).

With salaries for the working classes rising, they also had the buying power to use spices in their cooking and the wealthy turned their back on spices, choosing instead more bland food. In short, food of the gentry became more bland to preserve class stature. The new cooking style set “Old British” people apart from the “New British” — mainly immigrants who brought their love of spices with them from their homes in India, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

Curry remained popular however in the private clubs of London, particularly at the Oriental Club, established in 1824. The club was primarily set up for gentlemen returning to the UK from India and other parts of Asia, with members being predominantly wealthy workers and military members of the East India Company. Here they could relive memories of their days abroad and eat dishes that reminded them of those times. The club’s Chef de cuisine, Richard Terry, published his book Indian Cookery in 1861, stating that his recipes were “gathered, not only from my own knowledge of cookery, but from Native Cooks”. And it is from this recipe book that this month’s recipe has been taken, a chicken curry using his recipe for curry powder.

You can check the recipe here: https://www.swanandlion.com/chicken-curry-using-19th-century-curry-powder-and-paste/(opens in a new tab)

Now a feast for your eyes with some beautiful images of spices from my good friends Richard and Junko Jeffery from J. Jeffery’s Print Gallery. They have an incredible collection of antique botanical art for sale.

Check out their Facebook page for more information: https://www.facebook.com/jjpgallery/shop/?referral_code=page_shop_tab&preview=1&ref=page_internal

Finally, I cannot write about spices and the UK without mentioning The Spice Girls. Who’s your favourite Spice Girl? It’s a tough one, but thinking back all those years, when they first hit the pop scene, I think I have to go with Sporty Spice, or Melanie C. Always in a tracksuit, she was ready for sporty activities.

Spice Up Your Life!