A Blend Of Southern Comfort And Indian Spice Made This 1970s Dish A Hit

If you were asked to name a Southern food classic, you would probably say buttermilk fried chicken or chicken and dumplings, but in the 1970s, "country captain" would have been the most popular dish served at fancy dinner parties in Charleston, South Carolina. As recipes go, it's a Southern variation of classic chicken curry, but it seems to have originated elsewhere. Interestingly, country captain gets its name not from the South but from 19th-century India, when ships on the trade route between India and China were known as "country ships." Thus, the captains sailing the country ships were supposedly called "country captains."

Although it's unclear whether the ships' captains brought the Indian recipe for browned chicken in curry to America, a variation of the meal first appeared in an 1857 cookbook published in Philadelphia. It showed up again in several other 19th-century cookbooks, but in 1905, chef Alessandro Filippini of Delmonico's restaurant in New York published his version, which added green bell peppers, roasted almonds, and dried currants. It then became the standard recipe that's known today.

Country captain drifted down South when Mary "Miss Mamie" Bullard adjusted Filippini's recipe by adding tomatoes and served the dish at society dinner parties. In 1924, Franklin D. Roosevelt was receiving polio treatments in Warm Springs, Georgia, where Bullard had a summer home, and she served him the dish. It became his favorite meal, which he then served to his own guests, including General George S. Patton.

When Patton visited Fort Benning in Columbus, Georgia, he requested that county captain be prepared, and the wives of officers stationed at the fort began serving the dish at their dinner parties. Relatively easy to cook, the recipe was a hit, and wherever the Army wives moved to, they brought country captain with them. By the 1950s, it became known as an "old Army recipe" and was recommended, along with fried chicken, as a quintessential Southern supper.

As the myth grew that country captain was brought to Southern shores by sea captains, food writer Cecily Brownstone took it upon herself to defend the historic accuracy of the recipe, and James Beard taught her more authentic version in his culinary classes (via The New York Times). Eventually, Brownstone's recipe was published in a reprint of one of the best-selling cookbooks of all time, "Joy of Cooking," by Irma S. Rombauer, which boosted its popularity nationally. But as tastes changed, country captain eventually fell the way of many vintage chicken dishes that no one seems to make anymore.

Over the years, however, the recipe has been glammed up by celebrity chefs Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse, and in 2000, the Pentagon alluded to Patton's love for the dish by packaging country captain for soldiers' Meals Ready to Eat. Country captain was briefly in the spotlight again in 2009 when the Lee Brothers beat Bobby Flay on "Throwdown with Bobby Flay" using their recipe. It may not be as popular as it once was, but country captain is an intriguing East-meets-West dish that's worth discovering.