The divine blend of spices needed to make curry first reached Southeast Asia about 2,000 years ago, when the region began trading with the Indian subcontinent, according to an analysis of ancient spice residue.
The new project analyzed 12 different spice grinding tools unearthed at the ancient trading port of Oc Eo, in modern-day Vietnam, by washing them with water and chemicals. This produced hundreds of tiny fragments that the researchers painstakingly identified (to a reasonable degree of certitude) under a microscope. The results sounded like a shopping list for making curry: turmeric, ginger, fingerroot, sand ginger, galangal, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon.
“These spices are indispensable ingredients used in the making of curry in South Asia today,” the paper says.
