This dish of spiced chicken in a creamy tomato sauce gained its popularity in the early days of newly independent India. It’s now a fixture on Indian restaurant menus worldwide—and the subject of a fiercely contested lawsuit.
Pieces of marinated, lightly charred chicken submerged in a buttery, creamy tomato sauce; butter chicken can be found on Indian restaurant menus across the globe.
Pieces of chicken, tossed in a simple spice marinade, lightly charred and then submerged in an unctuous, light, buttery, creamy tomato sauce. Butter chicken — or murgh makhani — is a dish so beloved, it’s now ubiquitous on Indian restaurant menus the world over. Yet, it started life as a way of repurposing leftovers.
Traditionally, the dish would begin with tandoori chicken: bone-in meat coated in cumin, coriander, turmeric, chilli and garam masala, partially cooked in a tandoor (a hot clay oven) before later being flash-cooked in the tandoor a second time. Meat has been cooked in tandoor-style ovens in northwest India since around 2600-1900 BCE, according to archaeological finds, but butter chicken only evolved in the first half of the 20th century.
The dish came about in response to discerning restaurant customers who wouldn’t countenance eating day-old tandoori chicken that was past its succulent best. As a solution, leftover pieces were dunked in the simplest of curries, whipped up quickly to disguise their dryness. The sauce was originally made with crushed fresh tomatoes and minimal spicing, including garam masala — a warming blend that would likely have included coriander, cumin and bay leaves — and a touch of chilli. Freshly churned butter was added to finish.
One of the challenges of the dish is creating perfect harmony between the tart tomatoes, creamy butter and bitter aromatics while maintaining a certain lightness — there should be neither excessive chilli heat nor heavy-handed sweetness. Meanwhile, the simplicity of the dish has led to many variations. Some add onion, ginger and garlic to the sauce. Others use honey for sweetness. Tinned tomato, passata and tomato puree have all featured instead of fresh tomatoes to provide uniform taste, tang and smoothness. Some recipes call for whole spices, some for ground spices, some for a mix of both. Creative chefs might incorporate melon seeds, cashews, almonds or smoked butter.
The specifics of butter chicken’s origins are hotly contested, but the story is said to start at a restaurant called Moti Mahal, established in 1920 in Peshawar, in modern-day Pakistan. Two men, Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi, worked here together before moving to Delhi following Partition in 1947. There, along with a businessman called Thakur Dass Mago, they opened a new restaurant, also named Moti Mahal, in Old Delhi’s Daryaganj neighbourhood.
This is where the tale becomes a little hazier. According to the Jaggi family, Moti Mahal in Daryaganj is where butter chicken was invented late one night after a large group of diners arrived unexpectedly, demanding something curried to eat. However, according to Kundan Lal Gujral’s grandson, Monish Gujral, his grandfather invented not just butter chicken but its predecessor, tandoori chicken, when he began using a tandoor — which had been reserved for making breads — to cook other savoury dishes, and the dish evolved from there. “My granddad invented butter chicken, or murgh makhani, out of necessity in the 1930s/40s,” says Monish Gujral. “The kebabs were drying up and becoming inedible. He didn’t want them to go to waste.”
Whatever the truth of the matter, a host of dignitaries and VIPs were captivated by the dish, including Jawaharlal Nehru (the Indian prime minister from 1947 to 1964), his daughter Indira Gandhi (who herself became prime minister in 1966) and her high-profile sons. Butter chicken was propelled to stardom. Eventually, however, as the Indian capital’s commercial centre shifted from Old Delhi to newer neighbourhoods, Moti Mahal in Daryaganj was sold and, in 2003, Monish Gujral set up a franchise operation, Moti Mahal Delux. Kundan Lal Gujral had been the public figurehead of the original Moti Mahal brand, and Monish picked up his grandfather’s mantle, authoring several books, including On the Butter Chicken Trail, badged as being ‘from the home of butter chicken’.
Following the death of Kundan Lal Jaggi in 2018, his grandson, Raghav Jaggi, decided to reclaim the family’s stake in the legacy. In 2019 he teamed up with restaurateur and childhood friend Amit Bagga to open Daryaganj, a restaurant in Delhi’s Aerocity neighbourhood complete with the tagline, ‘By the inventors of butter chicken and dal makhani’ — the latter, a slow-cooked buttery black dal, being another dish the Gujrals claim to have invented in the original Moti Mahal in Peshawar. The menu comes with an explanation of the nuances of the original butter chicken recipe.
“There are three differences between the original butter chicken and what you get now,” says Bagga. “It was bone-in chicken. There were no mixers or grinders, so the curry had texture. And there was no ready cream, so freshly churned cream and butter were used.” Boneless butter chicken evolved as the younger generations preferred their meat off the bone, and along the way, fenugreek made its way into the recipe. Cubes of marinated thigh or breast meat have now become common, and the rise of the food processor has contributed to the popularity of a smooth sauce.
The Gujral and Jaggi families each maintain their respective relative was the true inventor of butter chicken — and in January 2024, Monish Gujral began legal proceedings in the Delhi High Court against the owners of Daryaganj restaurant for ‘falsely’ claiming to have invented butter chicken and dal makhani, seeking $240,000 (£188,970) in damages. Daryaganj’s owners have rejected this, issuing a statement describing the lawsuit as ‘misconceived, baseless and lacking cause of action’. At the time of writing, the case rumbles on.
The result of the lawsuit may, however, be irrelevant — the ‘invention’ stories have been met with doubt by many, including academic and food historian Pushpesh Pant. “Meat has been cooked in a tandoor since Vedic and Indus Valley times [1500-500 BCE and 2600-1900 BCE, respectively],” he says. “Butter chicken existed in many forms in other places in India. This isn’t even a Punjabi claim, let alone a restaurant claim.”
Another story commonly touted is that of India’s first education minister, Abul Kalam Azad, telling the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi: “If you visit Delhi and don’t taste the butter chicken of Moti Mahal, it’s like visiting Agra and missing the Taj Mahal.” According to Pant, it’s highly unlikely this was said, as two Muslims wouldn’t be extolling the virtues of a non-halal dish in this manner. Regardless, in the decades that followed, new entrepreneurs commercialised butter chicken, and it became commonplace on North Indian restaurant menus in Delhi.
Yet, butter chicken’s true origins remain difficult to prove. Both the Kundan Lals have passed away and the Indian courts are notoriously snail-paced. More importantly, though, does anyone care? The fact the ‘original’ Delhi dish has spawned hundreds of different variations, as well as pizzas, pies, samosas and more, suggests not.
Entrepreneurs like Saransh Goila, whose company, Goila Butter Chicken, was the first butter chicken brand not associated with Moti Mahal, adds the untraditional ingredients of smoked tomatoes and cashews to make his version extra rich, creamy and smoky. In Manchester, Mel Kumar and her husband use makhani sauce in multiple ways at their restaurant, Original Third Eye, including with tandoori chicken either on or off the bone, and with tandoori lamb chops. “We also serve on demand makhan vegetables, makhan paneer, makhan aloo… We can add anything to the sauce,” Kumar says.
When restaurateur Iqbal Wahhab put butter chicken on the menu at his London restaurant, Cinnamon Club, 23 years ago, having tasted the Moti Mahal version with his then-chef Vivek Singh, it was so popular that one in three diners were ordering it. Singh has now taken over Cinnamon Club and the wider Cinnamon Collection group, and says the dish is still in regular rotation on his menus. “Butter chicken is important at a deeper level. It combines salt, fat, acid, heat with smoke and herbaceous fenugreek with a hug, bite and kick rolled into one,” he says. “No wonder everyone loves it.”
Mallika Basu’s butter chicken recipe
This recipe from my home keeps as true to the taste of the original Delhi butter chicken as possible, while incorporating hacks for home cooking. The passata adds strong tomato flavour and colour, while the oven mimics the tandoor. Pick a high-quality garam masala, or powder the seeds of two cardamom pods to give it oomph. You can make the chicken in advance and prepare the sauce before serving.
