An Appreciation of Alex Toft Nielsen & his Cp44.

An expensive curry powder originates in Denmark of all places, but then Denmark has become a center both of retrospective and innovative foods, from traditional foraging and curing to the new Nordic cuisine that takes those and other strands of historical Scandinavian foodways in a new direction.

Curry itself appeals to people from cultures as disparate as Denmark itself and, to cite a single example, Japan, where the concept landed not from India but rather with British sailors who arrived after the country reopened its borders to foreigners and foreign trade during the middle of the nineteenth century.

Back in Denmark, Alex Toft Nielsen identifies the precise date when he began his “world’s best curry powder project” as 19 November 2011. The inspiration for the project was neither Indian nor Danish but rather Louisianan; Tabasco, which he describes aptly as a “simple and good product that you will find in kitchens all over the world.”

His was no casual whim. After cooking with any number of commercial curry powders, Nielsen traveled to Kerala where he ate a lot of south Indian foods and acquired “several special spices for the project.” Back in Denmark, where “the real development work” began, he experimented with all manner of mixtures and assembled a panel of tasters from around the world via Facebook which it appears has some social or at least culinary utility after all.

His project required almost three years to complete and has resulted in a single curry blend, not a line of different curries. It is not hard to see why. After experimenting with a broad range of chilies, Nielsen settled on a blend of four (understandably undisclosed) varieties and wisely chose a medium level of heat. His final formula is a mixture of, you properly guessed, forty-four spices.

Nielsen claims he was trying to create a better sort of Madras curry powder and at that he has failed. In the process he hoped to introduce “fruity and herbal notes to the blend to give it freshness,” and there he has met with spectacular success. His product is at once earthy and bright. Cp44 does not resemble a superior Madras curry powder: It is better than that.

The result of the project encapsulates the forces shaping contemporary Danish foodways and exemplifies Danish modesty. It is recognizably a curry powder but also unlike any other commercial blend. Its packaging refers to his “World’s Best Curry Powder Project” but Nielsen himself disavows in exclamatory boldface at his website any claim that in fact it is the best. That judgment, he believes, “will always be subjective” and the claim therefore is “impossible” to assert. In our subjective judgment, however, the claim prevails. Cp44 is the best curry powder we have found.

Nielsen has not managed to replicate the global fame and economic success of the ubiquitous Tabasco sauce, but then few products do. According to the Aroma Spices website a number of obscure Danish websites mention the product and, apparently, also the New Indian Express in an article that does not, however, appear at its online archive. Otherwise it does not appear that Nielsen has picked up publicity from the glossy food publications or their websites. Neither do appraisals appear to have been published in the mainstream press of any nation. All this proves only that quality is no guarantor of publicity.