Kare-kare Period COrigin theory CVerified

Kare-kare is a dish in an orange sauce, made by stewing oxtail, beef shank, and tripe until tender and thickening it with ground peanuts for body and sweetness. Achuete (annatto) seeds provide the color, lending a golden-brown sheen across the plate. It is served with bagoong (fermented shrimp paste) alongside to add salt and savor, the Filipino way. It has long been a home dish of the Kapampangan region of central Luzon, and a plate that graces the festival table.

Two ingredients of New World origin are central to this dish: the peanut that leads the sauce, and the achuete that gives its vivid color, both native to the Americas. They crossed the Pacific through the galleon trade that began in the late sixteenth century and took root in Philippine soil and on Philippine tables. The thick sauce of ground peanuts that defines kare-kare today took form only after these ingredients had settled in. By around 1620 the conditions were in place.

Cattle were introduced under Spanish rule and became naturalized, and stewing cuts like tail and offal long and slow called for no special technique. What gave kare-kare its shape was the way these assembled ingredients crystallized into a peanut sauce with a distinctly Southeast Asian character. Echoing the Malay-style stews that use ginger and turmeric, it grew into a dish all its own.

The origin most often cited for kare-kare is the sepoy theory. During the British occupation of Manila from 1762 to 1764, sepoys (mercenaries) brought from southern India are said to have settled around Cainta after discharge. They recreated the curry (kari) of their homeland with local ingredients, and it turned from kari-kari into kare-kare—so the account goes. The echo of the names lines up, and it has circulated widely as a plausible-sounding story.

But no contemporary record supports this theory. When the word first appeared in a Philippine language cannot be pinned down either. And a sauce of ground peanuts is rare in Indian curry, closer instead to the dishes of the Malay and Indonesian world. Appealing as the etymological tale is, it does not rise above an origin legend unsupported by independent evidence.

As for the true origin, one can only say honestly that it is not known. Beyond the sepoy account stand others: that Kapampangan cooking of Pampanga took in Malay-style kari by way of Mindanao and the Moro peoples and made it its own; that the name derives from calling the golden-brown of achuete cari (tawny). None commands a decisive primary source, and none converges on a single answer—this is where food history has arrived (Datiles & Acabado 2019; Amano et al. 2021).

What can be said for certain is limited. Only after peanuts and achuete, New World ingredients, settled in the Philippines through the galleon trade could the peanut-sauce kare-kare we know come into being. This single point is the one fixed marker in time, and beyond it—who first made the dish—remains an open question to this day.