Is there any relationship between Britain trying to organize Indian cooking into something that could be exported to Britain, and current day Britain swearing off the very concept of seasoning and focusing on higher quality ingredients?
First, British food focuses a lot on seasoning. It's just much more nuanced and conservative. Britain did not have access to a hot climate which allowed spices to grow. (this is my thesis duh)
Secondly, it's a palate thing. Spices were traditionally used to help cover up rotting, or food that tasted bad. They are a low quality trick. They still are really, it's why there's a massive fast food trend to push spicy food so that they can make lower quality product and sell it for more. - Not all spices are hot, like Cinnamon is a sweater spice. Both seasonings and spices are used interchangeably and fulfil the same purpose. So, if you were to make chinese food without MSG it would taste significantly worse. Now imagine that with rotting, 3 day food with other spices then you get the current lazy trend.
Within India, spices were used to essentially hide the awful taste of stuff. It's basically a means of tricking your taste buds into thinking something tastes nice. Which is why, curries changed significantly for the British palate and there is less of an Izzat competition about the hottest curries (Indians like to go on about how Brits cannot handle spice), unless of course someone wants to prove themselves as tough with a Vindaloo. But, Kormas and Chicken Tikka Masala remain the most popular with them both being creamy curries, more in line really with Persian curries. Chicken Tikka Masala was first made by adding tomato soup to a curry for instance. Us Brits like actual nuanced taste, not spice for the sake of spice. For example, the conservative approach can be seen in how just salt and pepper is used in a cornish pasty, Or only some dried herbs and garlic in a Cottage Pie.
However, this is not to say that Britain did not have spices, this is a common misconception that arose out of the recent colonial backlash towards Britain, with food nationalism being important in a ton of different places and forming a national cuisine can help foster strong intergroup bonds. Think of how people like to go "oh Britain went to India for spices because their cooking was bad". Britain actually had a ton of different spices such as garlic. However, Britain's climate was much harsher and so hearty food was preferred. A lot of meat was eaten and fried. Fried Chicken having emerged in Scotland.
Of course, people went all over for different ingredients to use in their national cuisine. The Columbia exchange is perhaps the most important of these. A lot of staples of international cuisine arose in the New World. The Columbia Exchange brought things like beans, potatoes and tomatoes. We don't say Christopher Columbus (An Italian) went to the New World only to bring back tomatoes right? Even though, the tomato is a staple to Italian cooking with say Spaghetti Bolognese, Lasagne and Pizza.
Finally, I will now go more into depth on how Britain tried to export spices back to Britain. The spices that Britain exported were often done in the form of powders. So, we get Curry powder this way, Curry powder is a British invention, and actually forms quite a few different dishes. So, it was used on the Royal Navy as a means of a space efficient ingredient to make something taste nice (moral being important at sea), and it was this that formed the basis of a ton of different food traditions. This is where the Japanese curry tradition comes from, with the Imperial Japanese Navy being historically modelled on the Royal Navy. Remember, Japan is the last place that there is a British Battleship (a Pre-dreadnought but still). Oh, and Japan did have a British built Battlecruiser serve in both World Wars, the Kongo.
So basically, Britain does not have an aversion or distaste to spice. We just have more nuance, instead of throwing stuff into a pan like an Indian curry, where the point is to hide poor taste. And hey, other cuisines have picked up on this. Japanese Curry being the most famous. Chinese curry also has a similar origin with British curry powder.
Most people like to shit on British cuisine but that's only because people are like vultures to it. Fried Chicken is scottish, as American as Apple Pie makes you not American but English and well, I've already explained both Japanese and Chinese curry so I shall state Cottage/Shepherd's pie as something the Irish tried to claim (Ireland and Britain really belong in the same cuisine though).
I've been up like 24 hours so I hope this at least makes some sense.
