Nothing Scotch about this egg

How the Brits took our delicious Nargisi koftas and turned them into their industrial Scotch eggs

Over the last two decades, chefs in the West have taken relatively humble dishes and tried to turn them into something special. The hamburger is one instance. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, most American chefs did their own riffs on the burger, including, perhaps most influentially, Daniel Boulud’s version at DB Bistro Moderne in New York. This used high-quality beef, foie gras and every other luxury ingredient Boulud had lying around in his kitchen. 

The first British recipe for a Scotch egg turned up in 1826 and calls for the dish to be eaten with gravy, a theory that fits in with the Indian origin theory(iStock)

The Nargisi kofta was originally a curry that was recreated by the Brits as Scotch eggs

Why should the fortunes of the Scotch egg concern us? Well, because it is an Indian dish

The original curry had a tomato gravy that was difficult to recreate in Britain (Shutterstock)

Mass-produced Scotch eggs consist of cheap minced meat and a hard-boiled egg (Shutterstock)

Chef Gulam Qureshi at ITC makes delish Nargisi koftas

Chef Manish Mehrotra cooked the modern Nargisi kofta with chicken mince and his dish was a great hit on the menu of Indian Accent (Rohit Chawla for Indian Accent)