Thanks for the tip, but I've had butter chicken at bangla run Indian places and yellow it is, but it tastes Indian. The stuff I'm thinking about has a distinctive taste I've never met in a real Indian restaurant., although it could never be mistaken for anything but "curry".

Although I live among several excellent Indian restaurants, ungrateful sow that I am I've developed a yen for the kind of old-fashioned, very un-authentic curry I used to get served in British hotels with names like The Balmoral or the The Belgravia. It was a mild yellow sauce - no nasty capsicum surprises - rather on the sweet side with a nonetheless robust aftertaste. It has more of something - tumeric? fenugreek? - than real marsala, and it dyed clothing permanently. I've also had it in France, Belfast and Idaho, never in a restaurant with the faintest pretentions to South Asian authenticity. Even my San Francisco supermarket curry powders are more authentic nowadays.

Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Or how I can recapture the magic of this dish?