Indian cuisine is the most popular alternative to traditional cooking in Britain, followed by Chinese and Italian food. The chicken tikka masala is now considered one of Britain's most popular dishes.
Indian food was served in coffee houses from 1809, and cooked at home from a similar date as Mrs Beeton's cookbook attests. There was a sharp increase in the number of curry houses in the 1940s and again in the 1970s.
In the Victorian era, during the British Raj, Britain first started borrowing Indian dishes, creating Anglo-Indian cuisine. Kedgeree and Mulligatawny soup are traditional Anglo-Indian dishes. The word curry, meaning 'gravy', has been used since the medieval period. The word "curry" is not used in India. Instead, "masala" is used. Curry's tend to refer to light, often colored, spiced sauces on solid food. Curry does not usually contain meat (though it may be on it), unlike gravy.
Anglo-Indian fusion food continued to develop with chicken tikka masala in the 1960s and Balti in the 1980s, although some claim the latter has roots in the subcontinent.
Home-cooked curries by ethnically English people are often based on ready made curry powder sauces or pastes, with only a minority grinding and mixing their own spice masalas. The highly successful Patak'sbr and defines the taste of curry for many. Curries are sometimes home-cooked to use up leftovers.
In 2003, there were as many as 10,000 restaurants serving Indian cuisine in England and Wales alone. It is commonly mistaken that the majority of Indian restaurants in Britain are run by entrepreneurs of Indian origin, when in fact they are predominantly Bangladeshi and Pakistani. According to Britain's Food Standards Agency, the Indian food industry in the United Kingdom is worth £3.2 billion, accounts for two-thirds of all eating out, and serves about 2.5 million British customers every week. Pat Chapman's Curry Club has a membership of several thousand.
Indian restaurants typically allow the diner to combine a number of base ingredients — chicken, prawns or "meat" (lamb or mutton) — with a number of curry sauces — from the mild korma to the scorching phall — without regard to the authenticity of the combination. The reference point for flavour and spice heat is the Madras curry sauce (the name represents the area of India where restauranteurs obtained their spices rather than an actual dish). Other sauces are either prepared from scratch, or are variations on a basic curry sauce: for instance, vindaloo is often rendered as lamb in a Madras sauce with extra chilli, rather than the original pork marinated in wine vinegar and garlic.
In addition to curries. all restaurants offer "dry" tandoori and tikka dishes of marinated meat or fish cooked in a special oven, and biriani dishes, where the meat and rice are mixed together. Samosas, Bhajis and small kebabs are served as starters, or can be eaten by themselves as snacks.
English diners usually accompany their meals with basmati rice, bread being sometimes ordered in addition, and eat with spoon and fork. India's well-developed vegetarian cuisine is sketchily represented outside specialist restaurants.
In recent years, some Indian restaurants have started aiming higher than the norm for ethnic food, two of them garnering Michelin stars in the process.