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50 free Cajun and Creole Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Cajun and Creole are the two great cuisines of Louisiana, and locals will tell you they are not the same thing. Creole is the city food of New Orleans, born among French and Spanish colonists, Africans and Caribbeans before the Louisiana Purchase; Cajun is the country food of the Acadians expelled from Canada, who learned okra from enslaved cooks and file from the Choctaw and cooked everything in one pot. Both start with a roux and the holy trinity of onion, celery and bell pepper. These 50 questions cover the dishes: gumbo and its West African name, red and brown jambalaya, etouffee, boudin, andouille and tasso, dirty rice, red beans and rice, shrimp creole, oysters Rockefeller, Bananas Foster, beignets, king cake, po' boys and muffulettas. There are questions on the Sazerac and Tabasco, the crawfish boil and the boucherie, the courir de Mardi Gras, Paul Prudhomme's blackened redfish and the turducken, and the 1900 Picayune Creole Cook Book. Easy questions cover the trinity and the classics; the hardest ask about parishes, restaurants and dates. Every answer is cited to the page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which three vegetables make up the Cajun 'holy trinity'?
Onion, celery and bell pepper
It is Louisiana's answer to the French mirepoix, which uses carrot instead of pepper.
Q 02The Cajuns descend from French colonists deported by the British from which region?
Acadia
The 18th-century expulsion is known as le Grand Derangement.
Q 03The word gumbo comes from a West African word for which vegetable?
Okra
In Bambara and other languages okra was known as (ki) ngombo.
Q 04Which two thickeners are traditionally used in gumbo?
File and okra
File was historically added when okra was out of season.
Q 05File powder is made from the ground leaves of which tree?
Sassafras
The practice was borrowed from the Choctaw.
Q 06Roughly how long is a dark roux stirred over the heat?
15 to 45 minutes
Burn it and the whole dish is ruined; the smell clings to clothes until they are washed.
Q 07What fat do Cajuns traditionally use for roux, unlike the French?
Oil or bacon fat
Creole roux in New Orleans are lighter and often use butter.
Q 08Which colour of roux suits a seafood gumbo best?
Light
A dark, nutty roux would overpower the seafood but suits chicken and sausage.
Q 09What is boudin?
A pork and rice sausage
Some call it 'dirty rice in a casing'; boudin balls are the fried version.
Q 10What is added to make boudin rouge?
Pork blood
Other versions can even contain crawfish.
Q 11What is tasso?
Smoked seasoned pork shoulder
It is a speciality of the Opelousas area.
Q 12Andouille sausage is a speciality of which stretch of the Mississippi above New Orleans?
The German Coast
It is coarse-ground, spicy and smoked, in a large casing.
Q 13What are gratons?
Fried pork cracklings
They resemble Spanish chicharrones.
Q 14Chaudin, or ponce, is a stuffed and smoked what?
Q 21What French Quarter restaurant did Prudhomme and his wife Kay open in 1979?
K-Paul's
The name blends his and his wife Kay's.
Q 22A turducken is a chicken inside a duck inside what?
A turkey
Prudhomme trademarked the name in 1986; John Madden made it a Thanksgiving TV staple.
Q 23Which fusion style arose from Vietnamese immigration to the Gulf Coast?
Viet-Cajun
Vietnamese-spiced crawfish is its signature dish, found between Houston and New Orleans.
Q 24At a crawfish boil, newcomers are jokingly told not to eat which crawfish?
Pig's stomach
It is filled with spiced pork.
Q 15Which Cajun dish is a popular 'smothered' preparation of crawfish or shrimp?
Etouffee
Smothering means cooking slowly with the trinity and a little stock, then serving over rice.
Q 16Cajun 'brown' jambalaya gets its colour from what?
Browned meat and caramelised onions
Creole 'red' jambalaya is the tomato-rich New Orleans style.
Q 17Which town hosts the annual World Jambalaya Festival?
Gonzales
Brown jambalaya is the style served there.
Q 18Jambalaya is related to which West African rice dish?
Jollof
Spanish paella and Provencal jambalaia are the other ancestors.
Q 19Whose spicy 1980s style gave the public a false idea of classic Cajun cooking?
Paul Prudhomme
He dubbed the blended restaurant style 'Louisiana cooking'.
Q 20Which cooking technique did Prudhomme invent in the 1970s that is not traditionally Cajun?
Blackening
Blackened redfish became so popular that commercial fishing of the species was restricted.
The ones with straight tails
Folk belief says live crawfish curl when boiled and dead ones stay limp.
Q 25What is a boucherie?
A communal hog slaughter and feast
Men butcher and cook the pork; women traditionally make the boudin.
Q 26What does cochon de lait mean?
Suckling pig
The roasted pig is rotated on a rope over a hardwood fire.
Q 27In the rural Courir de Mardi Gras, what do householders traditionally throw to the maskers?
A live chicken
The riders chase it down, symbolising a hunt, and it goes into the gumbo that night.
Q 28The Courir de Mardi Gras was revived in the 1950s in which town?
Mamou
It had been abandoned early in the century because of violence at the event.
Q 29Creole cuisine is stereotyped as what kind of cooking, compared with Cajun?
City food
Creole grew up in New Orleans; Cajun cooking arose about 40 years after the city was founded.
Q 30In what year was The Picayune Creole Cook Book first published?
1900
It has been reissued in 16 editions with few changes to the recipes.