Cultural Erosion
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Buettner’s exploration of authenticity in British-Indian cuisine underscores a recurring challenge for immigrant cuisines: how catering to foreign palates can erode the unique history, cultural significance, and technical skill embedded in each dish. Authenticity, as Buettner frames it, isn’t simply about adherence to traditional recipes; it reflects centuries of culinary practice, local ingredients, and a nuanced understanding of regional, class-specific, and religion-specific flavours developed over millennia. When dishes are modified to fit the taste preferences of a foreign audience, as in the case of Chicken Tikka Masala, the result is often a simplified, less distinctive version that prioritises palatability over cultural depth. This simplification aligns with Buettner’s discussion of curry-house dishes in Britain as “a terrible parody of Indian food” where “a common sauce is slopped on” and “everything tastes the same” (p. 157).
This transformation diminishes the role of regional specificity and inherited techniques that give Indian cuisine its richness and diversity. British adaptations of Indian food often reduce complex flavour profiles to 'mild', 'medium', or 'hot', disregarding the subtleties of spices or the balance of flavours that distinguish regional dishes. In effect, British-Indian cuisine becomes a homogenised “curry” culture, where diverse culinary traditions are subsumed into a single, stereotyped category. Buettner argues that this erosion of authenticity reflects a broader trend of cultural commodification, in which elements of foreign cultures are, as Arjun Appadurai describes, “apt to ‘emerge just after [their] subject matter has been significantly transformed’” (p. 157). In the process, what is presented as “Indian” food in Britain frequently loses the historical and cultural context that defines its authenticity, transforming complex dishes into oversimplified, marketable products.