A 2000 year old curry ? A culinary journey from South Asia to South East Asia

    31 March 2025

    March 2025

    In July 2023 a team of archaeolgists announced that they had found evidence at Oc Eo, an archaeological site in South Vietnam dating back 2000 years, of the use of spices that are ‘indispensable ingredients used in the making of curry in South Asia today’. ‘We suggest’, they wrote, ‘that South Asian migrants or visitors introduced this culinary tradition into Southeast Asia during the period of early trade contact via the Indian Ocean, commencing about 2000 years ago’.

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    Small Mulch

    Paul van Reyk
    My first essay on food was in Year 10 - people seemed to like it. It took me 56 years to come back to it, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My focus is on Anglo-Saxon settler culinary ways in Australia, roughly from the first days of colonisation to the 1960s - 1970s. I particularly write about stuff that has not been written about before but is very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon Australian table. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing.