Top ten facts about curry

This week is National Curry Week so here are some facts about curry

Not only is this National Chocolate Week (see yesterday’s Ten Things) but it is also National Curry Week, so here are some hot and spicy facts.

1. The word curry comes from a Tamil sauce known as kari. It is first recorded in English as carriil in 1598 and carree in 1681.

2. “To curry” meaning to dress tanned leather or rub down a horse and dates back to before 1300.

3. A curry weighing a record 15.34 tonnes was made in Singapore this August.

4. The tallest ever stack of poppadoms was 5ft 7in high and was made in Nottingham in 2012.



Chicken tikka masala was invented in Glasgow, not in Birmingham



5. 85 per cent of the 10,000 Indian restaurants in Great Britain are run by people from Bangladesh.

6. The Curry Capital of Britain award was inaugurated in 2001. It has been won most often by Bradford, which has taken the title five times.

7. Henry IV Part 2 is the only Shakespeare play that includes the word curry but he wasn’t talking about Indian food.

8. Indian food was introduced to the UK by Sake Dean Mahomet who also introduced shampoo.

85 per cent of the 10,000 Indian restaurants in Great Britain are run by people from Bangladesh

9. He opened our first Indian restaurant, the Hindoostanee Coffee House in London, in 1810.

10. In 2009, the House of Commons debated a motion to recognise that chicken tikka masala was invented in Glasgow, not Birmingham