Recipes for that Friday-night special the curry were quite common in manuscripts in the second half of the eighteenth century; Hannah Glasse included a recipe for a very mild curry in her printed recipe book in 1751. But other influences from the East were also apparent.
Take these recipes for pilau rice and kebabs, from an anonymous manuscript book in the papers of the Welby family of Allington, Lincolnshire (these are undated, but some of the recipes near them are from 1751):
Arabian pillaw
Boil some mutton or beef that is quite lean to a strong gravey & strain it thro a sive, then put a quantity of rice to it & some peper corns, & lat it stue some hours, over a slow fire, till the rice has sucked up all the gravey; lay a boiled fat fowl in the middle of the dish, & the rice round it, garnish with sliced lemmon
Cababs
Cut the lean part of a loin of mutton into peices of the bigness of a crown peice & beat them well. & cut peices of the fat, of the same size, spit them on hark spits, a peice of lean, a peice fat, a thin slice of onion, till all is spited, season them with peper & salt, & roast them not too much, serve them up with gravey, the slices of onion may be left out, & only a little in the gravey
Anyone for chips?
Eighteenth-century recipes 
I love curry. That makes me hungry for it. I tweeted.