Household Ingredients Compared › Spice Mixes and Curry Powder (Singapore)

Spice mixes and curry powder: what's actually in it?

A curry powder is a blend of ground spices — no salt, no MSG, no filler in the classic Baba's recipes panelled here. The differences between Baba's Meat, Fish, Chicken, Rendang and Sambar mixes are which spices are in and which are left out: fish curry powder adds fenugreek and dhall and drops the sweet spices; rendang adds shallot, galangal and garlic; sambar adds asafoetida. Curry pastes are a different product (wet, with oil, shallot and salt) and are kept in a separate section below, not mixed into the powder rows. Single spices (turmeric, chilli, cumin, coriander on their own) are not in this category — this page is blends only.

This page does not give a health score or a "best" pick. It shows the ingredient list as printed, with the country of manufacture as printed, and flags where a list could not be verified.

The headline, in 30 seconds

The classic Baba's powders are pure spice blends. Meat Curry Powder lists 13 spices and nothing else — no salt, no MSG, no anti-caking agent. Fish Curry Powder lists 9 items, also with no salt or MSG.
The blends differ by design, not by accident. Fish curry powder has fenugreek and dhall and no cinnamon, cardamom or star anise; rendang powder has shallot, galangal, garlic and kaffir lime leaf; sambar mix has asafoetida. Read the list and you can tell which curry it is for.
A paste is not a powder. Ayam Brand Chicken Curry Paste starts with water, shallot and soya bean oil, and contains salt and sugar. It is panelled in its own section so it is never compared gram-for-gram with a dry powder.
Watch for the other Baba's. An India-sold pack photographed with a similar name lists salt and monosodium glutamate in its fish curry powder. The Malaysia-made Baba's Fish Curry Powder panelled here lists neither. Same brand family, different market recipe — the two lists are not merged.

At a glance

Product	Pack size (as printed)	Type	First ingredient	Country of manufacture (as printed)
Baba's Meat Curry Powder	250g	Curry powder	Coriander	Malaysia
Baba's Hot & Spicy Meat Curry Powder	250g	Curry powder, hot	Coriander	Malaysia
Baba's Fish Curry Powder	not stated	Curry powder	Coriander	Malaysia
Baba's Rendang Curry Powder	not stated	Curry powder	Coriander	Malaysia
Baba's Sambar Mix	not stated	Curry / lentil mix	Coriander	Malaysia
Ayam Brand Chicken Curry Paste	not stated	Curry paste (not a powder)	Water	Not stated

Panelled with verbatim lists: 6 products. Seen-but-not-verified: see the list below. No prices are shown: they change weekly and would go stale. This site compares ingredients only.

Baba's Meat Curry Powder

Pack size: 250g · Made in: Malaysia (as printed)

Ingredients (retailer lists agreeing, Wai Yee Hong and others): Coriander, Chilli, Cumin, Fennel, Turmeric, White Pepper, Cinnamon, Black Pepper, Cardamom, Star Anise, Nutmeg, Bay Leaf, Clove, Dhall.

Fourteen items, all spices (dhall is split lentil). No salt, no MSG, no preservative. Note: some retailer lists give the same 13 spices without Dhall — the Wai Yee Hong list above includes Dhall, and the difference is flagged rather than resolved; the SG pack must settle it. Origin: Malaysia. No salt listed No MSG listed Origin: Malaysia

Baba's Hot & Spicy Meat Curry Powder

Pack size: 250g · Made in: Malaysia (as printed)

Ingredients (Bansan, Malaysia): Coriander, Chilli, Cumin, Fennel, Turmeric, White Pepper, Cinnamon, Black Pepper, Cardamom, Star Anise, Nutmeg, Bay Leaf, Clove.

The same 13 spices as the regular meat powder, without Dhall — the hot version. No salt, no MSG. Serving size 15 g, 16 servings per 250 g pack. Origin: Malaysia. No salt listed No MSG listed Origin: Malaysia

Baba's Fish Curry Powder

Pack size: not stated · Made in: Malaysia (as printed)

Ingredients (retailer lists agreeing): Coriander, Chilli, Cumin, Turmeric, Fennel, Fenugreek, Black Pepper, White Pepper, Dhall.

Nine items. Compared with the meat powder it adds fenugreek and keeps dhall, and drops fennel's companions — no cinnamon, cardamom, star anise, nutmeg, bay leaf or clove. No salt, no MSG. Conflict flagged: a pack photographed for sale in India under a similar Baba's fish-curry name lists salt and monosodium glutamate among its ingredients (with chilli, coriander, turmeric, fennel, mustard, fenugreek, cumin, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, curry leaves). That is a different market recipe; it is not merged into this Malaysia-made list. Origin: Malaysia. No salt listed No MSG listed Origin: Malaysia

Baba's Rendang Curry Powder — UK retailer list, SG pack not transcribed

Pack size: not stated · Made in: Malaysia (as printed)

Ingredients (Tradewinds Oriental Shop, UK): Coriander, Chilli, Fennel, Turmeric, White Pepper, Shallot, Galangal, Garlic, Cinnamon, Kaffir Lime Leaf.

Ten items, including fresh aromatics dried into the blend (shallot, galangal, garlic, kaffir lime leaf) and no cumin. Flag: UK retailer list; Baba's is sold in Singapore, but no SG pack transcription was retrieved, so verify on the SG pack. Origin: Malaysia (retailer-stated). Origin: Malaysia

Baba's Sambar Mix — UK retailer list, SG pack not transcribed

Pack size: not stated · Made in: Malaysia (as printed)

Ingredients (Tradewinds Oriental Shop, UK): Coriander, Chilli, Dhal, Cumin, Turmeric, White Pepper, Asafoetida.

Seven items, including dhal and asafoetida (hing) — the sambar signature. Flag: UK retailer list; verify on the SG pack. Origin: Malaysia (retailer-stated). Origin: Malaysia

Ayam Brand Chicken Curry Paste — paste, not a powder

Pack size: not stated · Made in: not stated (as printed)

Ingredients (Ayam Brand, Malaysia site): Water, shallot, soya bean oil, garlic, curry powder (7.5%) (coriander seed, chilli, turmeric, fennel seed, cumin, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, fenugreek), galangal, lemongrass, chilli, salt, sugar, cornstarch, coriander seed.

A wet paste, panelled here so the curry shelf is complete — but it is not a powder. Water, shallot and soya bean oil come first; the curry powder inside it is only 7.5% of the paste, and salt and sugar are both listed. Ayam Brand states its pastes contain no preservatives, no added MSG and no colouring, and are Halal certified by JAKIM. Flag: brand site (Malaysia) list; the SG pack was not transcribed. Country of manufacture: not stated. Paste — not a powder Contains salt and sugar

Seen but not verified — do not panel until checked

Baba's Chicken Curry Powder — sold in Singapore (125 g and 250 g packs, and in sachets); no verbatim list retrieved in this pass. It is not panelled on the meat powder's list — chicken and meat powders are different blends.
Baba's Kurma Mix — described by retailers as coriander, cumin, fennel, cinnamon, cardamom 'and other aromatic spices', product of Malaysia, no added MSG — but that is a description, not a verbatim list, so it is not panelled.
Baba's Chilli Powder, Turmeric Powder, Coriander Powder, Cumin Powder, Fennel Powder, Soup Spice — single spices and a soup blend sold alongside the curry powders; single spices are out of this category's scope (blends only) and no lists were retrieved for them here.
McCormick curry powder and other McCormick / Schwartz spice mixes — McCormick seasonings are listed at FairPrice, but no SG curry-powder list was retrieved in this pass.
Dollee Chicken Curry Paste and Chicken Rendang Paste — Malaysian pastes sold in SG import channels; retailer lists exist in outline (soya oil, shallot, lemongrass, garlic, chilli, ginger, turmeric, salt, candle nut, sugar, cumin, flavour enhancer) but were truncated in retrieval, so neither is panelled.
Knorr, Maggi and other curry / rendang pastes and sauce mixes — pastes and sauce mixes, not powders; no SG lists retrieved in this pass.
Garam masala, five-spice powder, ras el hanout and other non-curry blends — sold in SG spice aisles; no SG lists retrieved in this pass.

Nutrition — what the numbers say

All figures in the sortable table are as sold, per 100 g (or per 100 ml for liquids, where the source gives per-100 ml). Click a column header to sort low to high; click again for high to low. Rows marked "not stated" always sort last — a missing figure is not zero. Per-serving-only figures are in a separate table below and are never sorted against per-100 g figures.

Salt and sodium: salt = sodium × 2.5. The table shows sodium as printed (in mg) with the salt equivalent in brackets. Sodium is not presented as salt, and salt is not presented as sodium.

Total vs added sugars: Singapore packs list total sugars, not added sugars. A total-sugars figure is never labelled here as "added sugar". Where a source states an added-sugars figure separately, it is noted. The ingredient list remains the evidence for added sugar versus naturally occurring sugars.

Open Food Facts is a community database and is flagged as secondary where used: the pack and the retailer nutrition section take precedence if they disagree. Figures marked "not stated" were not in the source retrieved; they are not estimated, borrowed from another variant, or copied across flavours. No Nutri-Grade is quoted or assigned on any page in this batch — no official Nutri-Grade was found printed on any of these products, and these are not drinks in the Nutri-Grade sense except where a drink is involved (none here).

Product	Basis	Energy	Protein	Total fat	Saturated fat	Carbohydrate	Sugars	Sodium (salt equiv.)
Baba's Hot & Spicy Meat Curry Powder	Per 100 g, as sold (Bansan, Malaysia)	378 kcal	16.5 g	21.0 g	not stated	50.0 g	not stated	395 mg (salt 0.99 g)
Baba's Fish Curry Powder	Per 100 g, as sold (Asia Market)	373 kcal	16.0 g	18.8 g	not stated	52.8 g	not stated	170 mg (salt 0.43 g)

Per-serving figures (separate table — not sorted against per-100 g figures)

Product	Serving as printed	Energy	Protein	Total fat	Saturated fat	Carbohydrate	Sugars	Sodium (salt equiv.)
Baba's Hot & Spicy Meat Curry Powder	15 g, as printed	57 kcal	2.5 g	3.1 g	not stated	7.5 g	not stated	59.3 mg (salt 0.15 g)

Per-serving figures are quoted exactly as printed, with the serving size as printed. They are not converted to per-100 g.

Observed numbers, no verdict: the two per-100 g rows are close (373–378 kcal, 16.0–16.5 g protein, 18.8–21.0 g fat, 50.0–52.8 g carbohydrate) — both are ground spices, so most of the weight is carbohydrate and fibre from the spices themselves. Note the fish powder's sodium (170 mg per 100 g, from its 0.426 g salt figure) is the sodium naturally present in the spices, not added salt — its ingredient list has no salt. Saturated fat and sugars were not stated for either row.

Seen but not verified (nutrition): no per-100 g nutrition panel was verified in this pass for Baba's Meat Curry Powder, Baba's Rendang Curry Powder, Baba's Sambar Mix, Ayam Brand Chicken Curry Paste. Their ingredient panels are unchanged; their nutrition figures are not estimated here.

How to read a spice mixes and curry powder label — the jargon, in plain English

Curry powder: A dry blend of ground spices, mixed before sale. The blend is the recipe — different powders are different recipes, not different strengths of one recipe.
Dhall / dhal: Split lentils, ground into the blend. In Baba's fish and meat powders it adds body to the curry; it is a legume, not a spice.
Fenugreek: A bitter, maple-like seed. Present in the fish powder, absent from the meat powder — one of the markers that tells the blends apart.
Asafoetida (hing): A pungent resin used in tiny amounts, characteristic of sambar and some vegetarian blends. Present in Baba's Sambar Mix, absent from the curry powders.
MSG / flavour enhancer: Monosodium glutamate. The Baba's powders panelled here list no MSG; some curry pastes (for example Dollee) list a flavour enhancer. The list, not the brand, is the evidence.
Curry paste vs curry powder: Paste is wet (water, oil, shallot, salt, sugar) and ready to fry; powder is dry ground spice and needs oil, onion and liquid. They are not interchangeable gram-for-gram, and this page never compares them that way.

What this page is not

Not a health score, and not a "best" pick. The products above are different products, and this page does not rank them.
Not a taste test, and not a price comparison. Prices change weekly; ingredients change less often, but still change.
Not complete. The products in seen-but-not-verified are not yet panelled, for the verification reasons given, not hidden.

Sources and method

Checked 12 November 2026 from: Wai Yee Hong (Baba's Meat Curry Powder list, with Dhall); Asia Market (Baba's Meat Curry Powder list without Dhall, country of origin Malaysia; Baba's Fish Curry Powder nutrition per 100 g: 373 kcal, protein 16.0 g, fat 18.8 g, carbohydrate 52.8 g, salt 0.426 g); Bansan Malaysia (Baba's Hot & Spicy Meat Curry Powder list and nutrition: per 100 g 378 kcal, carbohydrate 50.0 g, protein 16.5 g, fat 21.0 g, sodium 395 mg, fibre 38.4 g; per serving 15 g: 57 kcal, sodium 59.3 mg); Tradewinds Oriental Shop UK (Baba's Fish, Rendang and Sambar lists, all product of Malaysia); Ayam Brand Malaysia site (Chicken Curry Paste 180 g list); Instagram pack photo (India-market Baba's fish masala listing salt and MSG — conflict note). Cold Storage publishes no ingredient list on any product page, so its shelf could not be panelled from its site. Full per-fact source list is in the accompanying research notes. Nutrition: figures are standardised to per 100 g where the source gives per-100 figures; per-serving figures are quoted exactly as printed and are not converted; salt = sodium × 2.5 (fish powder sodium derived from its printed salt figure: 0.426 g salt ÷ 2.5). Where a full pack list could not be verified, the product is in seen-but-not-verified instead of being panelled.