How incendiary are curries?
It is a popular myth that Indian curries are devastatingly hot, but this is not necessarily so. To be sure, some of them certainly are; but there are yet others which are the very opposite: mild, creamy, and even slightly sweet. I’ve attempted to graphically depict a range of curries in the “Curry Map” below: increasing hotness upward, and mildness downwards. Moving to the right signifies increasing spiceyness; but several dishes have a taste which I associate more with herbs than spices, and these are shown on the left (and the eagle-eyed will spot that a couple have lots of both herbs and spices!) Note that there is a great variation of the spelling of many words:– there is no one standard way of transliterating them in to the Roman alphabet. I’ve tried to use an “average” spelling; this includes several cases of a silent ‘h’.
