IF you want to curry favour with your Indian food loving friends, here are some top ten facts:

1. The world’s biggest ever curry was a 13 tonne biryani, including 187lb of

chillies and 6600lb of rice. It took 60 chefs to make in New Delhi in

June 2008.

2. The word curry in a gastronomic sense is thought to derive from the Tamil ‘karil’, which was a sauce served with rice.

3. The first recipe in English “to make a currey the India way” was in Hannah Glasse’s Art of Cookery published in 1747.

4. We spend more than £250m a year on Indian food in the UK.

5. The town of North Curry is in Somerset but West Curry is in Cornwall

6. A record tower of 1,280 poppadums was piled up in Northampton to celebrate Curry Week in 2012. It was 5ft 8in high.

7. One of the hottest curry dishes ever made is known as a Chicken Naga, made

with a high volume of Naga pepper seeds. On the Scoville Scale, these

deadly seeds measure at 855 000, more than 100 times hotter than

jalapeño peppers! However, the Bit Spicy 3 Chilli Phall is hotter.

8. Chilli is the most popular spice in the world and can help combat heart

attacks and strokes.

9. Chicken tikka masala is the country’s most popular restaurant dish with one in

seven curries sold in the UK being chicken tikka masala.

10. Commercial curry powder first appeared in Britain in 1780 and was sold at Sorlie’s Perfumery Warehouse, No.23 Piccadilly, London.