Food trivia questions and answers.

The short answer

Below are 33 food trivia questions with answers, split into six rounds that run from where foods come from to records and firsts. Two examples: you can't make Stilton cheese in the village of Stilton, and a 12-year-old on the island of Réunion worked out how to pollinate vanilla by hand.

Each answer sits right under its question and names its source, and the nine hardest questions carry a "hard" label.

Round 1: Where foods come from

1. Stilton cheese takes its name from the village of Stilton. Can you make Stilton there? (hard)

   Answer: No. The name belongs to cheese made in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, and the village sits in Cambridgeshire. The cheese took the village's name because it sold there, on the Great North Road stagecoach route. (Wikipedia, Stilton cheese)

2. Does Dijon mustard have to come from Dijon? (hard)

   Answer: No. A French decree of 1937 treats the name as generic, so you can make it anywhere. Jean Naigeon of Dijon gave the recipe its modern form in 1856, when he swapped vinegar for verjuice, the sour juice of unripe grapes. (Wikipedia, Dijon mustard)

3. The first known written mention of the bagel turns up in 1610, in community rules from which city?

   Answer: Kraków, in Poland. The city's Jewish community ordinances of that year mention bagels. (Wikipedia, Bagel)

4. The croissant descends from a crescent-shaped pastry from which country?

   Answer: Austria, home of the kipferl since at least the 13th century. An Austrian officer, August Zang, opened a Viennese bakery in Paris in 1838 or 1839. Tales linking the shape to the Ottoman siege of Vienna have no contemporary source. (Wikipedia, Croissant)

5. Nigiri sushi caught on in the 1820s or 1830s in which city?

   Answer: Edo, today's Tokyo. One common story credits the chef Hanaya Yohei, who invented or perfected it at his shop in Ryōgoku in 1824. The guide to where sushi originated has the longer story. (Wikipedia, Sushi)

6. Fortune cookies trace back to which country?

   Answer: Japan. The likeliest source is cookies made by Japanese immigrants in the United States, and Kyoto had a similar cracker, tsujiura senbei, in the 19th century. San Francisco and Los Angeles both claim the first American one. (Wikipedia, Fortune cookie)

Round 2: Ingredients and their journeys

7. Wild coffee plants first grew in which country?

   Answer: Ethiopia. The first firm evidence of coffee drinking comes from Sufi communities in Yemen in the late 15th century. The tale of a goatherd who discovered coffee doesn't appear in writing before 1671. (Wikipedia, History of coffee)

8. The oldest known traces of people using cacao come from which country? (hard)

   Answer: Ecuador. A pot from Santa Ana-La Florida, a Mayo-Chinchipe site, held cacao remains about 5,300 years old, around 1,500 years before the Olmec and Maya made chocolate drinks. (Science News; Wikipedia, Santa Ana (La Florida))

9. Chillies come from the Americas. In which century did they reach Korea, where cooks now put them in kimchi?

   Answer: The 17th. Koreans didn't know chillies until the early 1600s, and a Korean encyclopedia first mentions them in 1614. Kimchi made with chilli didn't become widespread until the 19th century. (Wikipedia, Kimchi)

10. Vanilla vines would not fruit outside Mexico until a 12-year-old found a way to pollinate them by hand. On which island did he live? (hard)

    Answer: Réunion. Edmond Albius, enslaved from birth, worked out the method in 1841, using a thin stick or a blade of grass and his thumb. (Wikipedia, Edmond Albius; Wikipedia, Vanilla)

11. The Treaty of Breda in 1667 left the Dutch with Run, a tiny nutmeg island in Indonesia's Banda group. Which island did England keep? (hard)

    Answer: Manhattan. England had seized New Amsterdam in 1664, and the treaty let each side keep what it held, so the Dutch kept Run and their monopoly on nutmeg and mace. (Wikipedia, Run (island); Wikipedia, Nutmeg)

Round 3: Food words and names

12. The sandwich takes its name from an 18th-century English aristocrat. What was his title?

    Answer: Earl of Sandwich. The tale that John Montagu, the 4th Earl, ate meat between slices of toast to keep gambling comes from a French writer's 1770 book about London. His biographer, N. A. M. Rodger, suggests he ate at his desk instead. (Wikipedia, Sandwich)

13. One theory traces the word "ketchup" to a Hokkien word for brine. Brine from pickling what?

    Answer: Fish or shellfish. Early British ketchups used mushrooms or walnuts, and James Mease published the first known tomato ketchup recipe in 1812. (Wikipedia, Ketchup)

14. English took the words "tomato" and "avocado", by way of Spanish, from which language of Mexico?

    Answer: Nahuatl. Its tomatl became Spanish tomate, and its āhuacatl became Spanish aguacate. (Wikipedia, Tomato; Wikipedia, Avocado)

15. Cappuccino takes its name from the Capuchin friars. Which detail of the friars gave the drink its name?

    Answer: The colour of their habits. Coffee turns that shade of brown when you add milk in small amounts, and Vienna's older Kapuziner coffee got its name the same way. (Wikipedia, Cappuccino)

16. Legend says an English king knighted a loin of beef, giving us "Sir Loin". Is it true? (hard)

    Answer: No. Sirloin comes from Old French surloigne, "above the loin". The word is older than any of the kings named in the story, which at most changed the spelling from "sur" to "sir". (Wikipedia, Sirloin steak)

17. New Zealand exporters gave the Chinese gooseberry a new name in 1959. What was it?

    Answer: Kiwifruit. Turners & Growers picked it after a US buyer warned that fruit called "Chinese gooseberry" might be having trouble at quarantine. The plant is native to central and eastern China. (Wikipedia, Kiwifruit)

Round 4: Sweets and drinks

18. J. S. Fry & Sons moulded an eating-chocolate bar in 1847, often called the first. In which English city was the firm based?

    Answer: Bristol. Fry's chocolate works had moved to Union Street in Bristol in 1777. (Wikipedia, J. S. Fry & Sons)

19. The name Haribo joins its founder's name to his home city. Name both.

    Answer: Hans Riegel and Bonn. The company registered in 1920, and in 1922 it made its first gummy bears, then called dancing bears. (Wikipedia, Haribo)

20. PEZ went on sale in Vienna in 1927 as a peppermint for adults. Its name shortens which German word?

    Answer: Pfefferminz, German for peppermint. Eduard Haas III sold it as an alternative to tobacco, and the first dispensers looked like cigarette lighters. (Wikipedia, Pez)

21. In 1905 Frank Epperson left a drink outside overnight with the stirring stick in it, and it froze into what he later sold as the Popsicle. How old was he?

    Answer: 11. He first called his ice pop the Epsicle, and by 1924 he held a patent for it. (Wikipedia, Popsicle (brand))

22. Did Dom Pérignon invent sparkling wine? (hard)

    Answer: No. Benedictine monks in Limoux made the oldest recorded sparkling wine in 1531, and the English scientist Christopher Merret described adding sugar for a second fermentation in 1662, before Pérignon arrived at Hautvillers. (Wikipedia, Champagne)

Round 5: Kitchen science

23. The browning reaction between amino acids and sugars in cooked food carries the name of which French chemist?

    Answer: Louis Camille Maillard. He described the reaction in 1912, while trying to reproduce how living things build proteins. (Wikipedia, Maillard reaction)

24. In 1908 Kikunae Ikeda of the University of Tokyo identified umami. He traced it to glutamate in which broth?

    Answer: Kombu dashi, a broth made with kombu seaweed. Researchers at the University of Miami found umami receptors on the tongue in 2000. (Wikipedia, Umami)

25. Name the compound that makes your eyes water when you cut an onion. (hard)

    Answer: Syn-propanethial-S-oxide. Your knife breaks open the onion's cells and sets off a chain of enzymes, and the last, lachrymatory factor synthase, makes the compound whose vapour stings your eyes. (Wikipedia, Syn-propanethial-S-oxide)

26. In botany, which of these is a berry: the banana or the strawberry?

    Answer: The banana. A strawberry is an accessory fruit: its flesh grows from the receptacle, and the small seed-like achenes on the outside are the true fruits. (Wikipedia, Berry (botany))

27. Honey keeps almost indefinitely as long as its water content stays below about what percentage?

    Answer: 18%. Its high sugar and acidity stop many microbes from growing, so keep the jar sealed against damp air. (Wikipedia, Honey)

28. Louis Pasteur worked out his heating method in 1864 to stop which drink from turning sour?

    Answer: Wine. He developed it on a summer holiday in Arbois, where the aged local wines kept turning acidic. (Wikipedia, Pasteurization)

Round 6: Records and firsts

29. Archaeologists found the oldest known bread, baked about 14,400 years ago, in which country?

    Answer: Jordan. Natufian hunter-gatherers baked flatbread at Shubayqa 1 about 4,000 years before farming began. (The Local Denmark)

30. The oldest known written recipes are on Babylonian clay tablets from the 18th century BCE. Most of them are for which kind of dish? (hard)

    Answer: Stews and broths. The best-kept tablet, held at Yale, lists 25 stews in Akkadian, 21 with meat and four with vegetables. Researchers read them as medical texts until the mid-1980s. (Wikipedia, Yale culinary tablets; Guinness World Records)

31. Guinness World Records lists a Madrid restaurant as the oldest in the world. Name it.

    Answer: Botín, on Calle de Cuchilleros. Guinness says the French cook Jean Botín and his wife opened it in 1725, but Wikipedia calls that date a legend and puts the opening on Cuchilleros in 1865, so the year is disputed. (Guinness World Records; Wikipedia, Sobrino de Botín)

32. The Michelin Guide began in 1900 as a guide for French motorists. The Michelin brothers' company made which product?

    Answer: Tyres. The brothers wanted people to drive more and wear out more tyres. Stars for restaurants came in 1926, and the scale of zero to three stars in 1931. (Wikipedia, Michelin Guide)

33. Guinness World Records named which pepper the world's hottest chilli in 2023?

    Answer: Pepper X, bred by Ed Currie in South Carolina, at an average of 2.693 million Scoville heat units. No independent lab has tested it, which has drawn criticism. (Wikipedia, Pepper X; Wikipedia, Scoville scale)

How to run a food quiz night

Split the room into teams of four to six and give each team an answer sheet with a numbered line per question. Read each question twice. After each round, have teams swap sheets and mark each other's while you read out the answers.

Score one point a question and two for the hard ones. Cut a round if you want a shorter night, or let each team play a joker on one round to double its points.

For a tie, ask a question with a number for an answer, such as the year Tabasco's maker says it first made the sauce (1868), and give the win to the closest guess. A map also settles ties. Hand each tied team a printed world map, name a food, and ask them to mark where it comes from; the nearest mark wins. Meridish runs that game every day with seven dishes, and you can play today's menu.

For a bonus round on one food, the guide to where pizza was invented has enough dates and names for six more questions.

Questions

Sources

1. Wikipedia, round 1: Stilton cheese, Dijon mustard, Bagel, Croissant, Sushi and Fortune cookie.
2. Wikipedia, round 2: History of coffee, Santa Ana (La Florida), Kimchi, Edmond Albius, Vanilla, Run (island) and Nutmeg.
3. Science News, Ancient South Americans tasted chocolate 1,500 years before anyone else.
4. Wikipedia, round 3: Sandwich, Ketchup, Tomato, Avocado, Cappuccino, Sirloin steak and Kiwifruit.
5. Wikipedia, round 4: J. S. Fry & Sons, Haribo, Pez, Popsicle (brand) and Champagne.
6. Wikipedia, round 5: Maillard reaction, Umami, Syn-propanethial-S-oxide, Berry (botany), Honey and Pasteurization.
7. The Local Denmark, Danish archaeologists find 14,000 year-old bread in Jordan, 17 July 2018.
8. Guinness World Records, Oldest written recipes and Oldest restaurant.
9. Wikipedia, round 6 and tie-breakers: Yale culinary tablets, Sobrino de Botín, Michelin Guide, Pepper X, Scoville scale and Tabasco sauce.