Garlic Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
48 free Garlic trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This garlic trivia quiz covers everything about the world's most pungent bulb. It starts with the plant itself: what genus it belongs to, where it is native, why crushing a clove is what releases the smell, and what a garlic scape actually is. It moves through the kitchen, with questions on toum, aioli, skordalia, black garlic, garlic bread, green garlic and how to keep garlic from turning blue in the pickling jar. History and folklore get their share: the garlic found in Tutankhamun's tomb, the Greek offerings to Hecate at crossroads, the Mishnah's 'garlic eaters', the Korean bear who became a woman on a garlic diet, the Israelites longing for it in the wilderness, and the Central European belief that it wards off vampires. There are also questions on where garlic is grown today, why milk beats water for garlic breath, and what happened to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's articles on garlic and its relatives and the sources they cite, and each question quotes the sentence that supports it.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which of these kitchen staples is a close relative of garlic, in the same plant genus?
Shallot
Shallot shares garlic's genus with onions, leeks and chives, but garlic packs by far the most of the flavour compounds the group has in common, which is why it tastes the strongest.
Q 02To which region is garlic native?
Central Asia
Central Asia, along with north-eastern Iran, is where garlic grows wild; around the Mediterranean it arrived as a crop and later escaped, so botanists class it there as naturalised, not native.
Q 03Which country grows roughly three-quarters of the world's garlic?
China
China grows roughly three-quarters of the world's garlic, far ahead of second-placed India, and its cheap exports have faced anti-dumping duties in the United States since 1994.
Q 04What is a whole bulb of garlic commonly called in the kitchen?
A head
A head is the cook's word for the whole bulb: slice off the top, drizzle it with oil and roast it, and the cloves soften until they can be squeezed out of their skins like paste.
Q 05What triggers the sharp flavour and smell of garlic?
Damaging the plant's cells
Damaging the plant's cells is the trigger: an enzyme kept in the vacuoles meets stored compounds only when a clove is chopped, chewed or crushed, which is why an unbroken clove has barely any smell.
Q 06Which compound is most responsible for the 'hot' sensation of raw garlic?
Allicin
Allicin opens the heat-sensing channels in nerve endings, which is why raw garlic burns; it is unstable, and cooking removes it, so cooked garlic mellows.
Q 07Scientists think garlic evolved its pungent compounds mainly for what purpose?
To deter animals that eat it
To deter animals that eat it: the sharp chemicals put off birds, insects and worms, and garlic makes far more of them than onions or leeks do.
Q 08Why does brushing do so little for garlic breath?
It comes from the lungs
It comes from the lungs: a garlic compound the body is slow to break down passes into the blood and is breathed out, and released through the skin, for hours afterwards.
Q 09According to studies, which drink neutralises garlic breath best when taken with the garlic?
Milk
Milk, drunk with the garlic rather than after it, cut the main garlic-breath compound most in a 2010 Ohio State University study; whole milk beat skimmed, so the fat-and-water mix is the key.
Q 10Why can pickled garlic turn green or blue?
Its own compounds form coloured pigments
Its own compounds form coloured pigments: acid lets garlic's flavour chemicals react with amino acids to build ring-shaped pyrroles, blue with three rings and green with four, and they are safe to eat.
Q 11What are the two main subspecies of cultivated garlic?
Hardneck and softneck
Hardneck and softneck: hardnecks suit cold winters and grow fewer, bigger cloves, while softnecks keep longer and have pliable stems, which is why braided strings of garlic are softneck.
Q 12So-called elephant garlic is actually a variety of which plant?
Wild leek
Wild leek is the species elephant garlic belongs to: its huge bulb looks like giant garlic, but it is a leek in disguise, with a flavour mild enough to eat raw in salads.
Q 13How is almost all commercial garlic propagated?
By planting individual cloves
Q 21Which ancient writer credited garlic with sixty-one remedies?
Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder gave garlic its own chapter in the Natural History, claiming its very smell drove off serpents and scorpions; a century later Galen praised it as the 'rustic's theriac', a countryman's cure-all.
Q 22In Korea's Dangun myth, which animal quits the garlic-and-mugwort diet that turns a bear into a woman?
Tiger
A tiger shared the bear's cave but quit the fast; the bear held out on 20 cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort, became the woman Ungnyeo, and bore Dangun, legendary founder of the first Korean kingdom.
Q 23In Bram Stoker's Dracula, who hangs garlic flowers around Lucy's bedroom to keep the Count out?
Van Helsing
Nearly all commercial garlic is propagated by planting individual cloves, each of which grows into a new bulb; the plant is a clone, and raising it from true seed is possible but rarely done.
Q 14What is a garlic scape?
The plant's immature flower stalk
The plant's immature flower stalk is the scape; growers snap it off as it curls so the plant puts its energy into the bulb, then sell the stalks to be stir-fried like asparagus.
Q 15What sets Yunnan's 'pearl' garlic apart from ordinary garlic?
A single clove
A single clove is all each bulb holds: in Yunnan's warm climate the plant misses the winter chill that makes ordinary garlic divide, so it swells into one round bulb, also sold as solo garlic.
Q 16The word 'garlic' comes from Old English words meaning what?
Spear leek
Spear leek: Old English garleac joins gar, meaning spear, with leac, meaning leek, the spear probably describing the pointed cloves or the blade-like leaves.
Q 17Unlike most vegetable crops, garlic in cold climates is usually planted in which season?
Autumn
Autumn planting lets garlic root before the ground freezes, and the winter cold that follows is what prompts each plant to divide into a full bulb by the next summer.
Q 18In which pharaoh's tomb, dating to about 1325 BC, was well-preserved garlic found?
Tutankhamun
Tutankhamun's tomb, sealed about 1325 BC, held well-preserved garlic cloves; Herodotus reported that the builders of the Great Pyramid were fed rations of garlic, onions and radishes.
Q 19The ancient Greeks left garlic at crossroads as part of a supper for which goddess?
Hecate
Hecate, goddess of crossroads, was given a supper there on the night of each new moon: Athenian households set out eggs, small cakes, garlic and fish to win her favour and placate the restless dead.
Q 20In the Book of Numbers, the Israelites in the wilderness long for the garlic they ate in which land?
Egypt
Egypt: in Numbers 11:5 the freed Israelites recall the fish, cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic they ate there, and the Mishnah later uses 'garlic eaters' as shorthand for Jews.
Van Helsing has the garlic sent from Haarlem and even hangs it round Lucy's neck, but her mother, finding the room stuffy, clears the flowers away and opens the window, undoing his work.
Q 24Why does garlic sit on Iran's haft-sin table at Nowruz?
Its local name begins with the letter S
Its local name begins with the letter S: garlic is 'sir' in Persian, and haft-sin means 'seven S's', so the New Year table also carries apple (sib), sumac (somaq) and sprouted greens (sabzeh).
Q 25Some Mahayana Buddhists avoid garlic, onions, leeks and similar plants, known collectively as what?
The five pungent vegetables
The five pungent vegetables, or wu hun, always include garlic, though the other four vary by tradition and may include asafoetida; monastics avoid them because they are held to excite the senses.
Q 26What nickname does garlic go by because of its strong smell?
The stinking rose
The stinking rose is garlic's old nickname; San Francisco's restaurant The Stinking Rose, on Columbus Avenue in North Beach, built its entire menu around the bulb.
Q 27What is toum?
A Levantine garlic sauce
A Levantine garlic sauce, toum is simply the Arabic word for garlic; the cloves are traditionally pounded in a wooden mortar with oil, salt and lemon, and it is served with grilled chicken and shawarma.
Q 28Emulsifying garlic with olive oil produces which sauce?
Aioli
Aioli, from the Provençal and Catalan for 'garlic and oil', is at its purest just those two pounded together; that emulsion is hard to stabilise, so many cooks add egg yolk and end up with garlic mayonnaise.
Q 29Ajoblanco, the cold Spanish soup, is made by blending garlic and soaked bread with which nut?
Almond
Almonds, ground with garlic, soaked bread, olive oil and water, make ajoblanco, served cold with grapes or melon; in lean times such as Spain's post-war years, cooks swapped the nuts for dried-bean flour.
Q 30Laba garlic, served with dumplings at Chinese New Year in northern China, is prepared how?
Soaked in vinegar
Soaked in vinegar from the Laba festival in the twelfth lunar month, the cloves turn a striking jade green by Chinese New Year and are eaten with dumplings across northern China.