It’s one of India’s most beloved dishes and can be found bubbling on kitchen stoves or served on silver in restaurants across the country.
But exactly who came up with the recipe for rich and creamy butter chicken has long been a matter of dispute – one that has now reached India’s courts.
Two Delhi restaurants both claim to have the right to call themselves the home of the original butter chicken recipe.
The lawsuit to decide the matter was brought by the family who run Moti Mahal, a storied Delhi restaurant that counted India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, among its customers.
According to the Gujral family, the dish was the creation of their grandfather Kundan Lal Gujral who founded the restaurant in Peshawar, in what is now Pakistan. After India was split during partition in 1947, they moved the restaurant to Delhi.
They say the recipe, an indulgent curry that involves tender pieces of chicken cooked in a tandoor oven mixed into a rich tomato gravy laden with butter and cream, was invented by Gujral in the 1930s to use up leftover tandoor chicken.
Photograph: Sahiba Chawdhary/Reuters
“You cannot take away somebody’s legacy … The dish was invented when our grandfather was in Pakistan,” Monish Gujral, the managing director at Moti Mahal, told Reuters.
But rival restaurant Daryaganj has also staked its claim to butter chicken’s origins. The restaurant owners say that their relative, Kundan Lal Jaggi, had worked with Gujral when he moved his restaurant to Delhi in 1947 and it was there that butter chicken was created. This, they say, gives them the right to call themselves home to the first serving of the dish, a claim they say they trademarked in 2018.
As well as seeking rights to the title of butter chicken inventor, the Gujral family is seeking $240,000 in damages.
Given the slow pace of India’s courts, the pressing question of butter chicken’s origins may not be solved for months or even years. The next hearing of the case will be in May.