Comedian Trevor Noah recently spoke about how he perceived India’s gravy-rich dishes, admitting he often generalised them as “curry”. Sharing an anecdote on his podcast, What Now? , he said, “When I was in India, I would say curry and then people would say, ‘what are you talking about’.”

To understand the term, Noah turned to chef Asma Khan, who said she had first encountered the word in England. “I never heard of the word until I came to England,” she said, tracing it to the South Indian word ‘kari’, associated with a sauce or relish.

“Every dish (in India) has a name. Curry is not a name of anything,” Khan said, adding that she first heard the term in 1992. She argued that using one label for a country as diverse as India risks flattening its culinary and cultural identities.

“Curry is a problematic word,” she further said, explaining that repeatedly using the generic term can obscure the distinctions that make Indian food unique.

But is the word itself the problem, or how it is used?…