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67 free Hard Food and Drink trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This is the hard food and drink trivia quiz. If you already know that saffron comes from a crocus, that Champagne must come from Champagne and that a Negroni has gin in it, these 67 questions go further: who first identified umami, why haggis is banned in the United States, which cheese is deliberately full of live maggots, the tyre company behind the world's most famous restaurant guide, and the cowboy-era pharmacist whose name is on every chilli-heat chart. The drink half is just as tough: the count who invented the Negroni, the airbase where Irish coffee was born, the 1976 tasting that humiliated French judges, the ration the Royal Navy abolished on Black Tot Day, the insects that once coloured Campari, and the mood drug that used to be in 7 Up. Expect food science, forbidden delicacies, dish origins, cocktails, wine, beer, spirits, coffee and soft drinks in roughly equal measure. Every answer was checked against a primary or encyclopedic source before publishing and each question carries its citation. If you want a warm-up, start with our main food and drink trivia quiz and come back for this one.
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Q 01Which Japanese chemist identified umami as a distinct taste in 1908 and co-founded Ajinomoto?
Kikunae Ikeda
Kikunae Ikeda traced the taste to glutamic acid in kombu broth in 1908; Ajinomoto's first product, monosodium glutamate, launched in 1909.
Q 02Which USDA chemist established the mechanism of the Maillard browning reaction in 1953?
John E. Hodge
John E. Hodge, at the USDA laboratory in Peoria, Illinois, published the reaction scheme in 1953; Louis Camille Maillard had first described amino acids browning with sugars in 1912.
Q 03Saffron's golden colour comes from which carotenoid pigment?
Crocin
Crocin, a water-soluble carotenoid, gives saffron its golden colour; safranal supplies the aroma and picrocrocin the bitter taste, and ISO 3632 grades all three.
Q 04Casu martzu, the Sardinian cheese containing live maggots, is made from which animal's milk?
Sheep
Casu martzu starts as sheep's-milk pecorino; larvae of the cheese fly digest the paste until a liquid called làgrima, or teardrop, seeps out.
Q 05Fresh meat of the shark used for Iceland's hákarl is poisonous because of its high content of what?
Urea
Greenland shark flesh is rich in urea and trimethylamine oxide; hákarl is buried under gravel for weeks to press out the fluids, then hung to dry for four or five months.
Q 06Roughly how many copies of the first, free Michelin Guide were distributed to French motorists in 1900?
35,000
About 35,000 copies were given away in 1900, when France had fewer than 3,000 cars; the Michelin brothers hoped more driving would wear out more tyres.
Q 07Since what year has 'Worcestershire' been a generic sauce name, after a court denied Lea & Perrins a trademark?
1876
In 1876 the High Court ruled Lea & Perrins had no trademark on 'Worcestershire', making it generic; the Worcester chemists had first sold their fermented anchovy sauce in 1837.
Q 08On which 1924 date was Caesar salad created in Tijuana, when a holiday rush emptied the kitchen?
The Fourth of July
Family legend dates it to the Fourth of July, 1924, when a holiday rush emptied Caesar Cardini's Tijuana kitchen and he improvised with what remained, tossing it tableside.
Q 09On an ice sculpture of which animal did Escoffier first serve the dessert that became Peach Melba?
A swan
Escoffier served the peaches on an ice swan at the Savoy, honouring Nellie Melba's Lohengrin at Covent Garden; the dish was first called Pêche au cygne, and raspberry sauce came later.
Q 10Nachos were invented in 1943 by Ignacio Anaya at the Victory Club in which Mexican border city?
Piedras Negras
Piedras Negras sits across the Rio Grande from Fort Duncan in Eagle Pass, Texas; in 1943 Anaya improvised fried tortillas, cheese and jalapeños for a group of officers' wives.
Q 11Under EU law, cheese may only be called Roquefort if it is aged in the natural caves of which mountain?
Combalou
Only cheese ripened in the natural caves of Mont Combalou at Roquefort-sur-Soulzon may carry the name; legend has a shepherd's abandoned lunch returning months later blued by Penicillium roqueforti.
Q 12Kinder Surprise eggs are illegal in the United States under a 1938 law banning candy that contains what?
A non-nutritive object
The 1938 Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act bans confectionery with a non-nutritive object embedded in it; in 1997 the Consumer Product Safety Commission also ruled the toys had small parts.
Q 13Importing traditional haggis to the US has been illegal since 1971 due to a ban on food containing what?
Q 21Swedish surströmming is traditionally released for sale on the third Thursday of which month?
August
A royal ordinance once barred selling the year's fermented Baltic herring before the third Thursday of August; the rule was repealed in the 1990s but producers keep the August 'premiere'.
Q 22Pule, reportedly the world's most expensive cheese, is made in Serbia mostly from which milk?
Donkey
Pule is made mostly from Balkan donkey milk at Serbia's Zasavica reserve, blended with some goat milk; about 25 litres of donkey milk go into a single kilogram.
Q 23Which food technologist developed Vegemite in 1922 from yeast that breweries were throwing away?
Cyril Callister
Sheep lung
Lung makes up 10 to 15 percent of the traditional recipe. The separate ban on British lamb was lifted in 2022, but the lung rule remained.
Q 14Wilbur Scoville, whose 1912 test gave us the chilli-heat scale, worked in which profession?
Pharmacist
Scoville was a pharmacist at Parke-Davis when he devised his 1912 organoleptic test, in which tasters diluted pepper extract until the heat vanished; labs now use chromatography.
Q 15Variations in which gene are blamed for coriander (cilantro) tasting soapy to some people?
OR6A2
OR6A2 variants make coriander taste soapy or rotten. Surveys found about 21 percent of East Asians and 17 percent of Caucasians dislike the herb, versus 3 percent of Middle Eastern respondents.
Q 16The true nutmeg tree, Myristica fragrans, is native to which island group?
The Banda Islands
Myristica fragrans is native to the Banda Islands in Indonesia's Maluku province; the same fruit yields mace from its red seed covering, and its oil contains toxic myristicin.
Q 17Under what brand name did Momofuku Ando launch the world's first instant noodles in 1958?
Chikin Ramen
Ando's Chikin Ramen went on sale in Osaka in 1958, pre-cooked by flash-frying so it needed only hot water; Nissin's Cup Noodles did not follow until 1971.
Q 18Tabasco sauce has been made by the McIlhenny family since 1868 on which Louisiana island?
Avery
Tabasco has come from Avery Island since Edmund McIlhenny, a former banker from Maryland, created it in 1868. A New Orleans politician, Maunsel White, was bottling a tabasco pepper sauce two decades earlier.
Q 19A cookie like the modern fortune cookie was being made in the 19th century in which city?
Kyoto
Kyoto bakeries near Fushimi Inari made tsujiura senbei, sesame-and-miso crackers folded around paper fortunes, in the 1800s; Makoto Hagiwara of San Francisco's Japanese Tea Garden served the US version in the early 1900s.
Q 20Before Escoffier's five mother sauces, which chef described four 'grandes sauces' in 1833?
Marie-Antoine Carême
Marie-Antoine Carême's 1833 L'Art de la cuisine française named espagnole, velouté, allemande and béchamel as the grandes sauces; Escoffier later dropped allemande and added hollandaise and tomate.
Cyril Callister, hired by Fred Walker's Melbourne company, turned spent brewer's yeast into Vegemite in 1922 while Marmite imports were disrupted; it reached shops in 1923.
Q 24Which Neapolitan pizzaiolo reportedly created the pizza Margherita for the queen in June 1889?
Raffaele Esposito
Raffaele Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi made three pizzas for Queen Margherita in June 1889; she preferred the one in the flag's colours of tomato, mozzarella and basil.
Q 25Hawaiian pizza was invented in 1962 by Sam Panopoulos in which country?
Canada
Panopoulos, a Greek-born restaurateur, first put pineapple on pizza at his Satellite Restaurant in Chatham, Ontario, Canada, naming it after the tinned pineapple brand he used.
Q 26Which glycoprotein in Synsepalum dulcificum berries makes sour food taste sweet?
Miraculin
Miraculin binds to taste buds and switches on the sweet receptors only at low pH, so lemons taste like lemonade for up to half an hour.
Q 27The prized white truffle, Tuber magnatum, is most famously found around the towns of Alba and Asti in which Italian region?
Piedmont
Piedmont's Langhe and Montferrat areas are the white truffle's heartland. The black Périgord truffle is the second most valuable species and grows with oaks and hazelnuts.
Q 28Count Negroni created his 1919 cocktail by swapping which Americano ingredient for gin?
Soda water
An Americano is Campari, sweet vermouth and soda water; at Florence's Caffè Casoni bartender Fosco Scarselli poured gin in place of the soda water and swapped the lemon garnish for orange.
Q 29Why did the Sazerac's base spirit switch from cognac to rye whiskey around 1870?
The Great French Wine Blight
The Great French Wine Blight, the phylloxera epidemic that ruined French vineyards from the 1860s, made cognac scarce, so New Orleans bars poured rye instead; Herbsaint later replaced banned absinthe.
Q 30What was the Bloody Mary originally called at Harry's New York Bar in Paris in 1921?
Bucket of Blood
Fernand Petiot reputedly called his 1921 vodka-and-tomato mix the Bucket of Blood, after a Chicago club; he later claimed to have perfected it in 1934 at New York's St. Regis, which sells it as a Red Snapper.