National Curry Week: Top 10 facts about the spicy food favourite

1. The earliest known use of the word “curry” in English was as a verb in the late 13th century meaning to rub down a horse with a comb.

2. The earliest known curry recipe, for a chicken or rabbit curry, was given in Hannah Glasse’s 1747 Art Of Cookery, “To make a Currey the India way”.

3. The first reference to a “Curry-House” in English was in 1883.

4. An older word “cury” was used for any cooked food. It came from the French “cuire” meaning “to cook”. A 1390 cook book was called Form Of Cury.

5. The modern word “curry” comes from the Tamil “kari” which was a soup-like spiced sauce.

6. Bradford has taken the title of Britain’s Curry Capital for the past six years.

7. David Curry was MP for Skipton and Ripon from 1987-2010. Skipton is only 16 miles from Bradford.

8. There are more than 9,000 curry houses and Indian restaurants serving curry in the UK.

9. A 15.34-tonne curry was made in Singapore in 2015 to set a record for the world’s biggest curry.

10. The real name of the superhero Aquaman was Arthur Curry.