The Highly Disputed Origins Of Butter Chicken

Indian cuisine encompasses a huge variety of delicious dishes, from curries to roasted poultry to spiced nuts and other snack foods, but a select few have especially captured hearts and stomachs internationally. One of these is butter chicken, spiced chicken in a creamy tomato sauce, which has become a signature of Indian restaurants around the world, and is even one of Gordon Ramsay's favorite foods.

Though today butter chicken is one of India's best-known dishes, it's actually less than 100 years old, and its origins are hotly contested by the families behind two rival Delhi restaurants, each of whom claims to have invented the recipe. What is known for sure is that the recipe traces back to a restaurant named Moti Mahal, which originally operated in the city of Peshawar (now considered part of Pakistan), before India's independence in 1947 and the subsequent partitioning.

In 1947, cousins Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi helped reopen the restaurant in Delhi, and it was either within this new Moti Mahal, or the previous iteration, that butter chicken was born. The question of which cousin invented the recipe, however, remains a source of strife between the families of the two restaurateurs, who now operate separate chains in the city. In 2024, the Gujral family even brought the issue to court, though it has yet to deliver a definitive answer.

The spicy rivalry between these two culinary families has long been simmering in Delhi. It gained international recognition in 2024 when the Gujral family, who still own a chain of restaurants named after the original Moti Mahal, sued the descendants of Kundan Lal Jaggi, who operate a chain called Daryaganj, for the sole right to claim their patriarch invented butter chicken. Both of the patriarchs in question are now deceased.

The Gujral family alleges that Kundan Lal Gujral actually invented butter chicken before India's Independence, when the restaurant was still in Peshawar, coming up with an innovative and frugal use for leftover tandoori chicken. The owners of Daryaganj, however, counter that their grandfather was the culinary brain behind the second iteration of Moti Mahal in Delhi and invented the recipe there, while Gujral was only a businessman.

This is more than just a petty business dispute — the right to claim your restaurant invented a dish can have huge advantages in the marketplace, especially when it's a dish as beloved as butter chicken. Similar arguments have broken out over the origins of dishes as disparate as fried potato skins, Cuban sandwiches, and eggs Benedict, though the butter chicken debate may be the only one heated enough to end in legal action.

If the whole saga is making you crave butter chicken, you're not alone. This is your sign to order takeout, heat up the frozen Trader Joe's version, or try making it at home with the aid of your favorite Indian cookbook.