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| Course | Main course |
|---|---|
| Place of origin | United Kingdom |
| Main ingredients | Chicken, yogurt, tomato, onion |
Chicken tikka masala is acurry consisting of roastedmarinated chicken pieces (chicken tikka) in a creamy spiced sauce (masala). It is widely reported to have been created in Glasgow by Ali Ahmed Aslam, a Pakistani-born chef. It is offered at restaurants around the world and is similar tobutter chicken.
It is one of the most popular dishes in Britain, and in 2001 was described by the BritishForeign SecretaryRobin Cook as "a true British national dish".[1] The dish has been called inauthentic both by white Britons and by South Asians. Scholars and critics have debated the status of the dish, concluding variously that it has undergone an elaborate process of cultural interchange, and serves as symbol of Britain's multicultural society.Lizzie Collingham states that it feels quintessentially South Asian despite its British origins.
Chicken tikka masala is a brightly colouredcurry composed ofchicken tikka, boneless chunks of chickenmarinated in spices (masala) and yoghurt, roasted in an oven, and served in a creamy sauce.[2][3][4] A tomato andcoriander leaf sauce is common, but there is no standard recipe: a 1998 survey in Britain found that among 48 recipes, the only common ingredient was chicken.[4][5] It is served as a main course, often with rice or flatbread.[6] Chicken tikka masala is similar tobutter chicken, both in the method of creation and appearance.[7]
The English word "tikka" is borrowed from Urdu (تکہ)tikkā "small pieces of meat", itself a borrowing fromClassical Persian تکهtikka, "pieces".[8]Chicken tikka (without a sauce) was created in the reign of the Mughal EmperorBabur (r. 1526–1530) bymarinating pieces of chicken meat inyoghurt and spices, and then grilling them in atandoor oven.[9]
It has been suggested that chicken tikka masala originated in a restaurant inGlasgow, Scotland.[2][10] This version recounts how aBritish Pakistani chef,Ali Ahmed Aslam, proprietor of the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow from the 1960s, invented the dish by improvising a sauce made from a tin of condensed tomato soup, and spices, to please a customer who wanted a sauce to accompany the dry chicken tikka meat.[11][12][13][a]
The historian of ethnic food Peter Grove challenges the claim that Aslam had created the dish, on the grounds that the dish existed several years before his restaurant opened. Specifically, Sultan Ahmed Ansari, owner of Glasgow's Taj Mahal restaurant, stated that he had created the dish in the 1950s.[18]
The London restaurant ownerIqbal Wahhab claims that he and Peter Grove fabricated the story of a chef usingCampbell's tomato soup to create chicken tikka masala "to entertain journalists", and that in particular the use of the soup was "completely made up".[19][20][21]
Many sources attribute the creation of chicken tikka masala to theSouth Asian community in Great Britain.[3][22][13][23] The British Indian businessmanGulam Noon is among the people who helped to popularise the dish, though he was not its inventor; he ran food product companies inSouthall, in the west of London.[24]
It has been suggested that the dish is derived frombutter chicken, a popular dish in the northernIndian subcontinent. TheMulticultural Handbook of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics credits its creation toBangladeshi migrant chefs in Britain in the 1960s, who at that time ran most of Britain's Indian restaurants. They developed several new British Indian dishes.[25]
Peter and Colleen Grove conclude that the dish "was most certainly invented in Britain, probably by a Bangladeshi chef."[26] They suggest that "the shape of things to come may have been a recipe for Shahi Chicken Masala inMrs Balbir Singh's Indian Cookery published in 1961."[26][27]Mrs Balbir Singh's recipe calls for onions fried in oil, with garlic, ginger,masala spices and tomatoes for the frying mixture for the chicken; cream, ground almonds, and yoghurt are added later in the cooking.[28]
Rahul Verma, a food critic forThe Hindu,[29] claimed that the dish has its origins in thePunjab region.[30]
Chicken tikka masala is served in restaurants around the world.[31] By 2010, it was the most popular dish in British curry houses.[4] According to a 2012 survey of 2,000 people in Britain, it was the country's second-most popular foreign dish to cook, afterChinese stir fry.[32]The Oxford Companion to Food traces this popularity to 1983, when supermarkets began selling the dish as a chilled meal;[33] and as of 2016 it was the third most popular ready meal sold in UK supermarkets.[34] In 2025, the scholars of Indian food Bhaskar Sailesh and K. Karthikeyan called it "the world's best-recognized dish".[35] In 2009, efforts by Scottish parliamentarianMohammed Sarwar to gain the Glasgow dishprotected designation of origin status were however unsuccessful.[34]
In the United States, chicken tikka masala has in addition been sold as ataco filling byfood trucks and as a pizza topping.[36][37] In India, chicken tikka masala has been seen as a novelty dish in its own right,[38] and alongside that it has been used as a pizza topping by an Indian fast food chain.[39]BBC Good Food has proposed chicken tikka masala pizzas, usingnaan flatbreads topped with the curry mix, yoghurt, andmango chutney.[40]
In 2001, the BritishForeign SecretaryRobin Cook mentioned the dish in a speech acclaiming the benefits of Britain'smulticulturalism, declaring:
Chicken tikka masala is now a true British national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy.[1]
The social scientists Binod Baral and Basanta Adhikari carried out a statistical survey of people's views of the role of chicken tikka masala in the UK; the participants lived in the UK and had eaten in British Indian restaurants. They write that the dish "represents thefusion of British and Indian culinary traditions", and "serves as a symbol of multicultural society".[41] In their view, it has contributed to cultural exchange between the communities involved.[41]
The scholar of human geographyPeter Jackson describes the evolution of chicken tikka masala as an elaborate process of cultural assimilation and rejection. The process resulted in the "indigenisation" of the original dish, giving it a distinctively British quality. Jackson specifically rejects the charge ofcultural appropriation, which he considers a simplistic view of the interchanges involved.[4]
Cook's invocation of chicken tikka masala as a national dish and its description of the dish's origin as British have been widely debated.[45][19][46][47] The speech has been criticised by Indian chefs and commentators as disrespectful to Indian cuisine, where in their view the dish is a "cognate of curries originating in South Asia"appropriated by "White British colonialists".[48] Such characterizations have in turn been criticised as relying on notions that racial groups can own recipes.[48] The social historianPanikos Panayi, noting the criticism of the speech, writes that Cook's central point, thatimmigration had influenced British food, was correct.[46]
The scholar of modern history Elizabeth Buettner writes that "popular dishes like chicken tikka masala were mocked as the antithesis of 'real' Indian food as often as they were celebrated as a 'British national dish'." Buettner noted that these attacks on British Indian restaurants came from both "middle-class white Britons and better-off South Asians".[49]
The Indian chefRaghavan Iyer notes the shock of "some food critics" at Cook's speech, writing of chicken tikka masala that they "deemed it 'inauthentic'" because of the addition of a sauce in Britain.[50] Iyer writes that "the authentic version of the dish had no sauce",[50] pointing to the Mughal creation of chicken tikka, but comments that all the same the dish "feels quintessentially Indian" to many people, despite its British origins. With the sauce, however, in his opinion "the dish took on a personality of its own in Britain", going on to be adopted around the world.[50]
Other scholars, such as the anthropologistSidney Mintz, deny that there is such a thing as a national cuisine, since habits of cooking and of eating do not respect national borders.[51] Anupama Preetha and Anderleen Lazarus take chicken tikka masala as a prime exemplar of Mintz's statement; they note both that the dish was created across borders, and that its "ingredients and procedures" have been used to create numerous other dishes.[51]
The historian of foodLizzie Collingham discusses the question of the authenticity of Indian food in Britain, with respect to chicken tikka masala. She gives as an example the journalist and film-makerJonathan Meades, who wrote inThe Times that far from being a pleasing instance of how multicultural the British were, it showed how they could turn anything into an inedible and unappetising mess.[47][52] Further, Collingham cites the British Bangladeshi businessmanIqbal Wahhab and journalistEmma Brockes's view that the problem with chicken tikka masala is that it is inauthentic.[47][53] Collingham writes that what Indians eat is highly variable, being a product of their caste, regional origin, religion, and wealth.[47] From 1968, British Indian restaurants started to install Punjabi-styletandoor ovens, bringing the ability to preparenaan bread, and to roastmeat on skewers and chicken tikka, paving the way for chicken tikka masala.[54]
The scholar of culture Stephen Fielding describes chicken tikka masala as the most popular of the British Bangladeshi restaurant dishes. He writes that in response, more upmarket Indian restaurants have sought to be more authentic, claiming to serve what Namita Panjabi, the owner of London'sChutney Mary restaurant, calls "individual, original recipes, not those that have been adulterated or standardised."[55] In the same vein, Fielding quotesGordon Ramsay's praise for another London restaurant,Tamarind, distinguishing it as "a million miles from standard chicken tikka masala fare".[55][56]
All three main courses provided high amounts of the adult GDA for salt: chicken jalfrezi, 86%; chicken tikka masala, 79%; and chicken korma, 50% ... Main-course portion sizes were found to provide enough for two people. The average portion of chicken tikka masala in this survey was 523g.
Mr Sarwar claimed the dish owed its origins to the culinary skills of Ali Ahmed Aslam, proprietor from 1964 of the Shish Mahal restaurant in Park Road in the west end of the city. He is said to have prepared a sauce using spices soaked in a tin of condensed tomato soup after a customer said his meal was too dry.
'Chicken tikka masala was invented in this restaurant, we used to make chicken tikka, and one day a customer said, "I'd take some sauce with that, this is a bit dry",' said Ahmed Aslam Ali, 64, founder of Shish Mahal. 'We thought we'd better cook the chicken with some sauce. So from here we cooked chicken tikka with the sauce that contains yogurt, cream, spices'.
'Many chefs have claimed to have 'invented' chicken tikka masala, but it was certainly not Ali Ahmed Aslam of Shish Mahal,' says Grove. 'The restaurant did not open until the '60s and there was already a Glasgow claimant in the shape of Sultan Ahmed Ansari, who owned Taj Mahal and claimed to have invented it in the late '50s.'
An enterprising chef then looked around for something to make a sauce from and found a tin of Campbell's condensed tomato soup. Hey presto! A legend had been born. The problem with this story is that — despite its status as a curry legend — it is completely invented. Cinnamon Club founder Iqbal Wahhab ...claims to have originated the story to entertain journalists in the days when he handled the marketing for several restaurants. 'That thing about the Campbell's soup was completely made up,' he confessed
Rahul Verma, Delhi's most authoritative expert on street food, said he first tasted the dish in 1971 and that its origins were in Punjab. "It's basically a Punjabi dish not more than 40-50 years old and must be an accidental discovery which has had periodical improvisations"
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