Nick Maclaren wrote:
In article ,
Mike Lyle wrote:
[...]
Confirming what Nick says downthread, the recipes I've looked into
do
seem to work, though some are distinctly odd (check out the recipe
for mango chutney, which revealed that the great woman not only
couldn't spell "chutney", but also doesn't seem to have known what
a
mango was).

I can believe the latter, but exactly why do you feel that there
is a correct spelling of chatni in Roman letters? Transliterating
Hindi (I think) to English is harder than transliterating Russian
(as in Tsebysef and over 200 variants) :-)

Not even the most alcohol-adultery-and-altitude-sodden Victorian
sahib would have qualified for the epithet "pukka" had he publicly
used the spelling "chetney". The lofty OED doesn't dignify it with a
mention, even to condemn it as a solecism.

The offending recipe -- which I have made, in modestly scaled-down
quantity, and found very good -- calls for 30 large unripe sour
apples with, among other things (but no mangoes), 3/4 lb powdered
ginger and 1/4 lb dried chillies. I don't generally approve of apple
chutney, but after that, I found it no surprise that the Victorians
conquered the entire bloody planet.

--
Mike.