How a Persian braising technique turned into a Mughal court dish, then into the mildest thing on every British curry menu.
The word korma comes from the Urdu qormā, which itself traces back to a Turkic root, qavirma, meaning to fry or braise. The same root produced the Persian khoresh, a gently spiced meat stew, and it's this Persian dish that's generally credited as korma's direct ancestor. As Persian-influenced cooking took hold in the Mughal court, particularly from the reign of Shah Jahan in the early to mid-17th century, that stew began its transformation into something distinctly South Asian.
Pinning down exactly when is tricky, but food historian Neha Vermani has traced one of the earliest documented references to qorma to cookbooks compiled during the reign of Bahadur Shah I, also known as Shah Alam, who ruled from 1643 to 1712. Through the 18th century, Mughal court cooks are widely described as building on the plain Persian stew with yoghurt, ground almonds, garlic and a fuller spice mix, arriving at something closer to the thick, nutty gravy recognisable today. The classic method was dum pukht: sealing the pot with a ring of dough and cooking it over low charcoal, heat above and below, so the meat stewed gently in its own steam rather than boiling hard. That slow, sealed approach is a large part of why an old-style korma reads as delicate rather than punchy. Nothing gets the chance to scorch, and the yoghurt never gets hot enough to split.
Inside the Mughal court, korma signalled refinement rather than everyday eating. The preference at the top table was reportedly for a pale, almost white version, thickened with almonds or cashews rather than turmeric, said in popular accounts to have been served at grand court occasions in the 1650s, including gatherings connected to the Taj Mahal, though that particular detail is more repeated in food writing than it is firmly documented. As Mughal influence spread into regional courts such as Hyderabad through the 18th and into the 19th century, korma technique travelled with it. One recorded example from a Hyderabad account of 1832 describes a "korma" style pilau made with thin slices of meat cooked into rice.
Korma's reputation for mildness has old roots too. British colonial households in India through the 19th century took to it as one of the gentler dishes available, and Indian cooks working in British kitchens of that period are recorded as simplifying and softening curries generally to suit unfamiliar palates, a shift food historians now group under the term Anglo-Indian cuisine. That same instinct, korma as the safe option, carried all the way through to Britain itself in the 20th century, arriving properly with the wave of Bangladeshi restaurateurs, many with roots in Sylhet, who opened curry houses across the UK from the 1960s into the 1970s. By the time that trade had matured, korma had settled into its now-familiar role: the first curry most British diners ever order.
A proper korma turns on getting three stages right, in order. Whole spices, cardamom pods, cloves, a stick of cinnamon, go into hot ghee or oil first and are left just long enough, a minute or two, to release their oils without catching. Ground spice, usually cumin, coriander and a little turmeric, follows and gets a brief toast rather than a long simmer, since raw spice tastes flat and burnt spice tastes bitter. Getting that window right is most of the actual skill in the dish.
Meat is seared in the spiced fat next, so it picks up flavour at the surface before any liquid arrives. Only then does the braising liquid go in. Traditionally that's yoghurt, worked in gradually and kept below curdling temperature so it thickens the sauce instead of splitting into curds and whey. Ground almonds or cashews handle the rest of the thickening, giving the gravy its body without any graininess, and in homestyle British versions a finish of cream rounds off the sharper edge of the yoghurt.
The style most closely associated with Lucknow and old Delhi stays nearest to the original court dish: pale, thickened with almonds or cashews, gently spiced, with meat cooked until it comes apart easily.
In Hyderabad, korma picked up the region's own character, more chilli heat and coconut alongside the nuts, plus a stronger showing of whole spice, reflecting how Deccan sultanate cooking blended with Mughal technique from the 17th century onward.
The version most people in the UK actually know bears only a loose resemblance to either. It's usually a bright yellow-orange from generous turmeric, sweetened with coconut, sugar or occasionally sultanas, and built for a fast service line rather than a slow court kitchen, a shift that took hold as the British curry trade scaled up through the 1970s and 1980s. It remains, for a lot of people ordering their first curry, the entry point to the whole cuisine.
Korma comes from the Urdu qormā, itself rooted in a Turkic word for frying or braising. It originally described a cooking method rather than one fixed recipe, which is why so many different kormas exist across the region.
In its British restaurant form, yes, it's usually the mildest thing on the menu. Traditional Mughlai and regional Indian kormas vary more, and a Hyderabadi korma in particular can carry real heat.
Restaurant versions typically use more turmeric, and sometimes colouring, for visual consistency across a busy kitchen. Traditional pale or white kormas relied on almonds and yoghurt rather than turmeric for their colour and body.
The classic combination of yoghurt, ground nuts, cream and whole spices contains no gluten. It's still worth checking any stock cube or ready-made curry paste, since some brands include wheat-based thickeners.