Who made butter chicken? India's great curry clash.

In 1947, two men, both named Kundan, fled Peshawar during the bloody partition that separated Pakistan from British India. They landed in Delhi and soon became partners in a restaurant called Moti Mahal, which served food from the Punjab region.

Their descendants agree on this. Where they differ is in which of the men should go down in culinary history.

The two families both say it was their own Kundan who invented butter chicken: the creamy, heavenly marriage of tandoori chicken and tomato gravy, beloved wherever North Indian food is served. And one of them went to court to try to prove it.

Before we delve deeper: Yes, it's hard to prove that someone invented dishes that have become ubiquitous. And does it still matter after all these years? Being the first doesn't necessarily mean being the best.

But in the case of butter chicken, a lot depends on judgment – ​​mainly money, but also the legacy of the legendary restaurant that the two men began building almost eighty years ago, a period that spanned almost the entire modern history of India as an independent nation. .

The case is set out in a 2,752-page document filed in the Delhi High Court. In it, the family of Kundan Lal Gujral, who runs Moti Mahal, alleges that the descendants of Mr Gujral's business partner Kundan Lal Jaggi, who runs a rival chain, Daryaganj, falsely claimed that butter chicken was Mr Jaggi's brainchild.

The lawsuit offers a pre-refrigeration era sketch of how the dish came about. Mr. Gujral, it says, “worried every night about what to do with the leftover tandoori chicken. His recipe was to make a gravy with chopped tomatoes, cream, butter and spices, adding sugar if the tomatoes were too sour to balance the flavors.

Mr. Jaggi's grandson, Raghav Jaggi, tells a different story: that his own grandfather invented butter chicken by chance.

In this version of events, it was late one day and the kitchen was running low on supplies except for a few pieces of tandoori chicken. Mr. Jaggi, his grandson said, was asked by a large group “to make a gravy and add tandoori chicken to it so that everyone could have a hearty meal.”

In this story, by scraping together as much as possible, he created a gravy with tomatoes, fresh butter and some herbs. He then mixed in chunks of cooked tandoori chicken – which is why recipes still used today call for the chicken to be placed in the tandoor first and then added to the makhani, or butter gravy, as it simmers.

Mr. Gujral's family doesn't believe in it. “It is not possible to make the butter chicken gravy 'on the spot,'” their lawsuit argues.

Monish Gujral, Mr Gujral's grandson, said the family was seeking an injunction against Mr Jaggi's chain, which was founded in 2019, and seeking damages of about $240,000 for copyright infringement and unfair competition. The box also includes another creamy concoction, dal makhani, a black lentil dish.

“It is history that my grandfather invented tandoori chicken, butter chicken and dal makhani,” said Monish Gujral at his restaurant in south Delhi. “For so many years, awards and interviews have been recorded with my grandfather, with the Jaggi family also present. Why didn't they take the credit or say they deserved the credit too?”

In its first incarnation, Moti Mahal was a large open-air dining venue in old Delhi, where guests could enter the primitive kitchen and watch the food being prepared. Shopkeepers around the current restaurant, in south Delhi, still reminisce about the original spot.

The restaurant occupied a ground-floor space in an upscale market in the 1970s. It recently moved up a floor; guests who come looking for it at the old address will be directed upstairs.

Diners are greeted by a poster of the elderly Mr Gujral identifying him as the inventor of tandoori chicken, butter chicken and dal makhani. Inside there are portraits of him with Indian prime ministers, politicians and Bollywood stars.

Many diners come looking for the same taste they've enjoyed for decades, even though tandoori chicken is now cooked in gas-powered steel ovens, not the coal-fired clay ovens that the government has banned to reduce pollution. (When this correspondent recently stopped by for some interviews and – strictly for reporting purposes – a taste test, a municipal inspector came in to check if gas was indeed being used.)

One diner, Raksha Bahl, 80, ordered butter chicken with fluffy naan. It was her wedding anniversary and she was celebrating with her son after losing her husband years ago. Her husband would drive her many miles from a neighboring state to celebrate business successes at the original Moti Mahal in Old Delhi.

She said she missed the smoky taste of chicken from the coal ovens and complained that there was a little too much salt in the gravy this evening, which the manager dutifully replaced.

“For Punjabis, butter chicken is a comfort food and I think Moti Mahal is the best,” says her son Pawan.

Mr Jaggi, the owner of rival chain Daryaganj, said he started his business soon after his grandfather died in 2018 to “celebrate the resilience and success of the Hindu Punjabi refugees who fled Peshawar and came to Delhi as their new home. ”

Daryaganj is a stark contrast in mood and ambience, luxurious and modern, although it similarly advertises itself with the tagline “By the inventors of butter chicken & dal makhani” and displays portraits of celebrities served by the elderly Mr. Jaggi.

This weekend there was a long queue as Indians and foreigners waited for a table at an outlet in a luxury mall near Delhi airport.

It offers two types of butter chicken: the 'Original Butter Chicken from 1947, the secret recipe from 1947' and 'Today's Butter Chicken'. The original's gravy has a coarser texture, reminiscent of a time before modern kitchen appliances, while the newer dish has a silkier, richer gravy.

Mishika Verma, a 22-year-old advertising professional, said she preferred the original version. “Honestly, I like this butter chicken better than Moti Mahal because it is more realistic,” she said. “What you get elsewhere is too creamy and too heavy.”

She didn't care who made the dish.

“The claim could be very important to them personally,” she said. “I can understand.”

But ultimately, “I came here for the taste.”