My parental pride is off the Scoville scale after my son’s spicy showdown ...Middle East

And most significantly of all, my son absolutely smashed a chicken madras, much to the surprise of the waiters at my parents’ local tandoori.

When I was a student back in the innocent 90s, a new friend revealed that he had never eaten a curry in his life. He subsequently embarked on a three-year endeavour to explore the heat map of the Indian restaurant nearest to our college. The climax of this journey – a lamb vindaloo, shortly after our finals – left him drenched in sweat and tears, trembling over the remnants of a poppadom and the dregs of his fourth pint of Cobra. His friends remind him of the incident with humbling regularity, even a quarter of a century later.

square WILL GORE

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When I agreed to get a madras from our preferred Indian takeaway some months ago, he dipped some naan into the sauce and followed up a single bite with an entire glass of milk, glowing red all the while. Still, he dipped again – and seemed to enjoy it.

Sure enough, on our subsequent visit just a few days ago, he refused to bow and proceeded to scoff down the lot. The waiter clapped him on the back at the end of the meal, suggesting he try the vindaloo next time – and I beamed with the kind of peculiar pride that only a pasty Englishman can attach to the basic ability to consume a ragingly spicy sauce.

The colonial backdrop to Britain’s love of curry can also be discomforting – even the word curry is a British bowdlerisation of Indian terms relating to spice mixes and cooking implements. The madras dish, meanwhile, is named after the colonial-era designation for the Indian city now called Chennai; and the term vindaloo comes from the Portuguese words for wine and garlic.

All that said, seeing my usually fussy young child take real joy in his food is a win in any situation. And the fact that he can handle the 30,000 Scoville Heat Units of a chicken madras remains a badge of honour. We will teach him about Britain’s colonial past and the history behind his favourite curries. Meanwhile, bring on the vindaloo.

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