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Vindaloo vs. Madras Curry Powder: Goan Dish Blend vs. British Curry Powder

By · Reviewed · 17 sources

Vindaloo curry powder vs. madras curry powder

Vindaloo started out in Portugal as a dish of meat marinated in wine vinegar and garlic, and ended up in Goa with palm vinegar and chiles.1 Madras curry powder has a British story instead: it’s a curry powder with chile added, the usual turmeric, coriander and cumin base plus heat.2 Two of the three vindaloo blends compared below skip turmeric and should cook up redder than Madras. And that popular claim that vindaloo powder is always the hotter one? Neither has a fixed recipe or a published heat measurement, so there’s no way to check it.

Side by side

Vindaloo curry powderMadras curry powder
Made forVindaloo, a dish from Goa, India, influenced by Portuguese cuisineGeneral curry cooking, with more heat than plain curry powder
NameA garbled pronunciation of the Portuguese carne de vinha d’alhos (Collingham)1Madras, the former name of Chennai
OriginThe dish: Portuguese meat in wine vinegar and garlic, adapted in Goa with palm vinegar and local spices13British trade: advertisements for “Genuine Madras Curry Powder,” often promoted as spicier than the Bengal and Bombay styles2
Core spicesIn all three blends below: chiles, cumin, black pepper, cinnamon, cloves456Coriander, brown mustard seed, turmeric, cumin, fenugreek, black pepper, red chile flake, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger (World Spice)7
TurmericIn one of the three blends below4Yes; 19th-century recipes were heavy on turmeric and chile27
Coriander and fenugreekIn two of three (Savory Spice, America’s Test Kitchen)45Yes, in World Spice’s blend and Dan Toombs’s recipe78
HeatMedium (Savory Spice’s own) to “fiery complex heat” (America’s Test Kitchen’s recipe)45World Spice rates its blend 2 of 5; Toombs says his can be as spicy or mild as you like78
ColorRed-brown where chiles and paprika lead and turmeric is absentYellow to orange, from turmeric plus chile
VinegarNone of the three blends lists it; it goes into the marinadeNot part of the blend
Official standardNone foundNone for Madras; plain curry powder has a USDA purchasing minimum that names no chile9

The differences that change a dish

What the blend is built around

The vindaloo blends here vary a lot, but five ingredients show up in all three: chiles, cumin, black pepper, cinnamon and cloves.456 Collingham’s history explains the cinnamon and pepper: Goan cooks added tamarind, black pepper, cinnamon and cardamom to the Portuguese marinade.1 Madras curry powder starts from the curry powder lineup instead. The USDA’s purchasing specification lists turmeric, coriander, fenugreek, cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, ginger and cardamom for plain curry powder, with no chile,9 and Toombs describes Madras curry powder as a blend like any curry powder that also has dried chiles in it for a spicy kick.8

Turmeric and color

Turmeric is in World Spice’s Madras blend and was prominent in the 19th-century Madras recipes Julia Fine describes.72 Only Savory Spice’s vindaloo blend lists it. America’s Test Kitchen and Silk Road leave it out and use paprika with their chiles.456 Curcumin gives turmeric its yellow, and paprika’s red comes mainly from capsanthin and capsorubin.10 So a Madras powder should generally cook up yellower, and a turmeric-free vindaloo powder redder. That’s our read of the ingredient lists; no source actually compares the colors.

Fenugreek

Fenugreek is in World Spice’s Madras blend and Toombs’s recipe, and in two of the three vindaloo blends.7845 PROSEA credits it with a characteristic curry aroma and describes the taste as strong, sweetish and somewhat bitter.11 A vindaloo blend without it, like Silk Road’s, will taste less like curry powder.6

Heat

Chile heat comes from capsaicinoids,12 and in both blends it comes down to how much chile, and which chile, the maker uses. The sources don’t support a fixed ranking:

SourceWhat it says about heat
Savory Spice (vindaloo)Vindaloo spices tend to be quite hot; its own blend is closer to medium and “not as hot as typical vindaloo”4
Tony Jackman (the dish)Vindaloo, “both in Goa and in Britain, is a hot curry”3
America’s Test Kitchen (vindaloo)Árbol chiles, cayenne and paprika give “fiery complex heat”5
World Spice Merchants (Madras)Heat level 2 of 57
Julia Fine (Madras, historical)Often promoted as spicier than the Bengal and Bombay styles2
Dan Toombs (Madras)Can be made as spicy or mild as you like8

You’ll often see vindaloo called the hottest curry powder. Collingham’s account hints at where that reputation comes from: in Britain, she writes, vindaloo became just another hot curry, its balance of spices lost under an excess of chiles.1 That’s about the restaurant dish, not a measured blend.

Where each came from

Vindaloo. Food historian Lizzy Collingham traces the dish to carne de vinha d’alhos, which reached India with Portuguese explorers in the 15th century. India had no wine vinegar, so Franciscan priests made their own from palm wine, and local cooks added tamarind, black pepper, cinnamon and cardamom. Chiles were part of Portugal’s legacy too, brought to India from the Americas.1 Tony Jackman describes the same swap of palm vinegar for red wine.3 Vindaloo is a dish from Goa influenced by Portuguese cuisine.

Madras curry powder. Curry powder was adapted by British settlers in India, while Indian home cooks make their own spice mixtures, or masala. Fine places Madras curry powder in that British trade. Madras was home to one of the earliest English trading posts, one English cookbook of the period gives separate recipes for Delhi, Madras and Bengal curry powders, and ads for “Genuine Madras Curry Powder” multiplied.2 Atlas Obscura’s history notes that curry powder has never had a set combination of spices.13

So it isn’t accurate to call both blends European takes on South Indian spices. Madras curry powder grew out of British trade. Vindaloo is a dish from Goa, which Jackman notes was under Portuguese colonial rule, and the powders sold for it are blends made to season that dish.3

Can one stand in for the other?

Yes, as long as you adjust the heat.

SwapStarting amountTreatment
Madras curry powder for vindaloo powderThe same amount, plus cayenne to tasteMethod
Vindaloo powder for Madras curry powderHalf vindaloo powder, half plain curry powder, then tasteMethod
  • Madras in place of vindaloo. Our vindaloo curry powder page names Madras or plain curry powder with added cayenne as the closest stand-in: start with the same amount and adjust the heat. Savory Spice also suggests adding extra cayenne to its own blend for more kick.4 Add a pinch of cinnamon and clove if your Madras blend doesn’t have them, and remember the vinegar and garlic go in the marinade either way.
  • Vindaloo in place of Madras. Cutting the vindaloo powder with plain curry powder brings back the turmeric and coriander base and tames the heat. For other options, see Madras curry powder substitutes, which starts from curry powder plus 1/8 teaspoon cayenne per tablespoon.

Bloom either blend in fat before adding liquid. America’s Test Kitchen says ground spices added straight to liquid can taste bland and musty, and that they burn fairly quickly.14

When to reach for each

  • Vindaloo powder for vindaloo: meat marinated in vinegar and garlic, then cooked with the spices. Collingham notes that Christian Goan cooks were free to make the pork and beef dishes expatriates loved.1 Savory Spice suggests about a teaspoon of its blend per pound of beef, pork, poultry or fish.4 Silk Road says its blend can go into any recipe that calls for curry powder.6
  • Madras curry powder anywhere you’d use curry powder and want more heat. Heat varies by brand, so start with less than the recipe calls for and taste.

What isn’t known

  • We didn’t find a published heat measurement for any vindaloo or Madras curry powder, so neither can be ranked as hotter.
  • There’s a claim going around that restaurant vindaloo powder is just Madras curry powder with extra chile. We found no source that supports it.
  • The sources we reviewed don’t say whether Indian home cooks use Madras curry powder today.

Footnotes

  1. Lizzy Collingham, “Fired Up: The History of Vindaloo”, Saveur, 2014. saveur.com · Publication ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  2. Julia Fine, “From Delhi to Durban: The Many Homes of Madras Curry Powder”, Diaspora Co., 2022. diasporaco.com · Merchant ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  3. Tony Jackman, “Throwback Thursday: The fascinating history of vindaloo”, Daily Maverick, 2023. dailymaverick.co.za · Publication ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. Vindaloo, Savory Spice, product page. savoryspiceshop.com · Merchant ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7 ↩8 ↩9 ↩10

  5. Leah Colins, “Vindaloo Curry Powder”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2020. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  6. Vindaloo Curry Powder, Silk Road Spices, product page. silkroadspices.ca · Merchant ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  7. “Madras South Indian Curry”, World Spice Merchants, product page. worldspice.com · Merchant ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  8. Dan Toombs, “Take your curries to the next level with homemade hot Madras curry powder”, Great Curry Recipes, 2015. greatcurryrecipes.net · Publication ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  9. Commercial Item Description A-A-20001C, Spices and Spice Blends, USDA Agricultural Marketing Service, 2023. ams.usda.gov · Regulator ↩ ↩2

  10. “Paprika extract”, Chemical and Technical Assessment, FAO/WHO JECFA, 2008 (rev. 2013). fao.org · Regulator ↩

  11. C.S. Tawan and N. Wulijarni-Soetjipto, Trigonella foenum-graecum, Plant Resources of South-East Asia (PROSEA). uses.plantnet-project.org · Reference work ↩

  12. Bosland and Walker, “Measuring Chile Pepper Heat”, New Mexico State University, 2010. pubs.nmsu.edu · Reference work ↩

  13. Rohini Chaki, “The Subversive, Surprising History of Curry Powder”, Atlas Obscura, 2019. atlasobscura.com · Publication ↩

  14. “How to Bloom Spices”, America’s Test Kitchen, 2023. americastestkitchen.com · Publication ↩

Also drawn on

  • Curry (Britannica Editors, revised by Charles Preston, updated 29 Aug 2026), Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com
  • Chennai, Encyclopaedia Britannica. britannica.com
  • Turmeric: Usefulness and Safety (last updated April 2025), National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), NIH. nccih.nih.gov