Thread by @krishashok

What connects two 18th century German physicians/naturalists, the Nawabs of Arcot, and winged termites with South Indian cooking? A thread...

Johann Andreas Murray was a Swedish physician of German descent who studied under Carl Linnaeus, who pioneered the binomial nomenclature of all living organisms, a system that we continue to use today.

He was also a pioneering pharmacologist who wrote a 6-volume compendium of herbal remedies and edited subsequent versions of Linneaus’ work - “The Vegetable Kingdom”.

His father Andreas Murray was a famous theologian who studied at Koenigsberg (Kaliningrad, Russia today), a place made famous by Euler’s solution to the “Seven Bridges of Koenigsberg" puzzle. The solution to that puzzle laid the foundation for graph theory and topology

And the word Koenig (or König), King in German, brings us to our second chap - Johann Gerhard Koenig, a Baltic German physician/botanist who served on the Tranquebar mission in India before joining the service of the Nawab of Arcot.

Side story: The Nawabs of Arcot are descendants of the Turkic-origin soldiers who came to the South at the request of Sundara Pandian who was dealing with an accession crisis in the Pandian empire in the 13th century.

They are called Rawthers and have a rich syncretic history in South India. Arunagirinathar, a 15th century Tamil poet describes Lord Murugan as “Soor kondra ravuttane” (Demon-vanquishing Rawther), a reference to Rawther contributions to Murugan temples in the Vijayanagar empire.

Back to Dr. Koenig, he later became the naturalist of Madras with the British East India Company and undertook a lot of travels within South India, and wrote volumes on the use of local plants as medicine.

One of the things he wrote about was the use of winged termites as food in South India. These are the annoying swarm of clueless flies that arrive during the rainy season. They are often collected, roasted, and tempered with sesame oil, garlic, and…curry leaves.

If you are someone used to the distinctive flavour of curry leaves in your food, you know that it is utterly irreplaceable. The leaves have both a citrusy zing and a sulphurous meaty base flavour, a dual-layered flavour profile that is unique among herbs.

So, if you are wondering what all those stories from the past have to do with the curry leaf? The botanical name of the Curry leaf tree is Murraya Koenigii, named after Johann Andreas Murray and Johann Gerhard Koenig.

So, here you go - Murraya Koenigii. The more tender leaves can even be used as a garnish, and the more fibrous, darker ones are best fried in oil to release their meaty + citrusy flavours.

And here is a recipe that uses curry leaves both as a spice in oil ad well as a garnish.

https://twitter.com/krishashok/status/1281271207451484160

One advantage of curry leaves is that their flavour is essentially subtle and base-note based, so you can add quite a lot of it without it overpowering the dish

If you liked this thread, here are 2 threads on Asafoetida
1. By @reshii -

https://twitter.com/reshii/status/1318422695629922304

2. By me -

https://twitter.com/krishashok/status/1022789764850671616