Irish Food Trivia
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98 free Irish Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Irish food is a lot more than corned beef and cabbage, which, as one of these questions explains, is really an Irish-American invention. This quiz covers the real table: soda bread and wheaten bread, colcannon and champ, coddle, boxty, crubeens and drisheen, the Ulster fry, the barmbrack ring, and the modern classics of the chicken fillet roll and the spice bag. The drinks get their due too: Guinness's 9,000-year lease, why Irish whiskey is usually distilled three times, how Baileys was invented in a London office, and which airport gets credit for Irish coffee. The questions range from easy (what makes soda bread rise) to hard (what luncheon meat Waterford people call 'red lead', which potato variety failed in 1845, and where the Twirl bar was invented). It works for a St Patrick's Day party round, a pub quiz, or a classroom unit on Irish culture. Every answer has been checked against a source and each question shows its citation and a short explanation once you answer.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Soda bread rises because baking soda reacts with the lactic acid in which ingredient?
Buttermilk
Buttermilk supplies the lactic acid that reacts with the bicarbonate of soda to release carbon dioxide, so the dough is mixed lightly and baked at once rather than kneaded.
Q 02What is soda bread made with raisins colloquially called in Ireland?
Spotted dog
Spotted dog is white soda bread studded with raisins or sultanas, once carried warm to farm workers in the fields as a treat; in some parts of Ireland the same loaf is called railway cake.
Q 03In Ulster, the sweetened wholemeal variety of soda bread usually goes by what name?
Wheaten
Wheaten bread is the Ulster name for the brown wholemeal soda loaf, often lightly sweetened; further south the same loaf is simply called brown bread, and Ulster keeps 'soda bread' for the white kind.
Q 04Colcannon is a traditional dish on St Patrick's Day and on the feast day of which other Irish saint?
St Brigid
St Brigid's Day, 1 February, is the other feast traditionally marked with a dish of colcannon; the name comes from the Irish 'cál ceannann', meaning white-headed cabbage.
Q 05Champ is mashed potato mixed with butter, milk and which allium?
Scallions
Scallions give champ its flavour, though some areas used nettles instead; the dish also lives on in the Ulster insult 'as thick as champ', said of someone dim or sullen.
Q 06On Samhain, a dish of champ with a spoon was left for the fairies under which tree?
A hawthorn
A hawthorn, the 'fairy thorn' of Irish folklore, was where the bowl of champ and its spoon were set out for the fairies on Halloween; the dish was also made with the first new potatoes of the harvest.
Q 07An old rhyme warns that if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a what?
Man
Man is the rhyme's payoff: 'Boxty on the griddle, boxty on the pan, if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man'; boxty is the potato pancake of Leitrim, Cavan and Fermanagh.
Q 08Whatever the recipe, every version of boxty contains what?
Finely grated raw potato
Finely grated raw potato is the constant; in one classic method it is wrung dry in a cloth and mixed with mashed potato and flour, then fried as pancakes, baked as a loaf or boiled as dumplings.
Q 09Which layered stew of sausages, rashers, potato and onion was reputedly a favourite of Jonathan Swift?
Coddle
Coddle is simmered in stock rather than browned, so its sausages come out pale enough to alarm newcomers; Swift is reputed to have loved it, and it turns up in James Joyce's Dublin.
Q 10In 'Molly Malone', Dublin's unofficial anthem, which shellfish does the heroine sell alongside her cockles?
Mussels
Mussels are the other half of Molly's cry; no record shows that she ever lived, which did not stop Dublin raising a statue to her for its millennium celebrations.
Q 11Irish stew is traditionally made with root vegetables and which meat?
Lamb or mutton
Lamb or mutton is the traditional meat: sheep were kept for wool and milk, so older animals went into the stew and needed hours of slow simmering with potatoes and onions.
Q 12Sloke, a seaweed stewed in Ireland, is the plant the Welsh make into which dish?
Laverbread
Laverbread is laver boiled for hours into a dark paste; in Ireland, where the seaweed is called sleabhac, it was eaten from the pot with a piece of bacon or from the pan with butter.
Q 13According to Irish stew purists, which of these ingredients spoils the true dish?
Carrots
Carrots, like turnips and pearl barley, are additions that purists say spoil the true flavour; their pot holds only the meat, potatoes, onions and water, simmered slowly.
Q 21In which city did admen invent Baileys Irish Cream in the 1970s?
London
London is where admen working to a brief from Gilbeys of Ireland stirred whiskey, cream and chocolate powder together; they took the name from Baileys Bistro, the restaurant beneath their Soho office.
Q 22As of 2025, which drinks giant owns both Baileys and Guinness?
Diageo
Diageo was formed in 1997 when Guinness merged with Grand Metropolitan, whose drinks arm made Baileys, so the stout and the cream liqueur ended up under one owner.
Q 23Ornua, the co-operative behind Kerrygold butter, takes its name from the Irish 'ór nua', meaning what?
New gold
New gold is the meaning of 'ór nua', the name the Irish Dairy Board took in 2015; Kerrygold itself was picked in 1962 from a shortlist that also offered Leprechaun and Tub-o-Gold.
Q 14What does finding the ring in a Halloween barmbrack traditionally foretell?
They will marry within the year
'They will marry within the year' is the ring's promise; the pea meant no wedding that year, the stick a quarrelsome marriage and the coin riches, and shop-bought bracks keep only a toy ring.
Q 15What does 'bairín breac', the Irish name behind barmbrack, literally mean?
Speckled loaf
Speckled loaf is the literal meaning, the speckles being the sultanas and raisins, which most recipes soak overnight in cold tea or whiskey.
Q 16Irish coffee is credited to a 1940s chef warming passengers who reached Foynes by what?
Flying boat
Flying boat passengers, in the Foynes museum's telling, had turned back from an Atlantic crossing in rough conditions when chef Joe Sheridan put whiskey in their coffee; the old terminal now houses that museum.
Q 17Which San Francisco bar began serving Irish coffee in 1952 after a travel writer brought the idea home?
Buena Vista Cafe
Buena Vista Cafe began serving Irish coffee on 10 November 1952 after columnist Stanton Delaplane, who had tasted it at Shannon, spent hours with owner Jack Koeppler working out how to recreate it.
Q 18What was the first flavour of Tayto crisps, said to be the world's first seasoned crisp, in 1954?
Cheese & Onion
Cheese & Onion was the flavour Joe 'Spud' Murphy's Dublin firm launched in 1954, billed as the world's first seasoned crisp; earlier crisps came plain with a twist of salt in the bag.
Q 19Tayto's visitor attraction near Ashbourne, opened in 2010, was renamed what in 2023?
Emerald Park
Emerald Park became the name on 1 January 2023 when Tayto's sponsorship deal ended; the theme park and zoo near Ashbourne, County Meath, had opened as Tayto Park in 2010.
Q 20A Black Velvet cocktail mixes Guinness with which other drink?
Champagne
Champagne and stout make a Black Velvet, said to have been first mixed at Brooks's Club in 1861 to mourn Prince Albert, its colour recalling the black worn by mourners.
Q 24In which country was the Kerrygold brand first test-launched in October 1962?
England
England hosted the October 1962 test launch, in the north-west; the butter was sold abroad for eleven years, reaching Germany in 1973, before it finally went on sale in Ireland itself.
Q 25The Limerick dish 'packet and tripe' pairs tripe with which gelatinous pudding?
Drisheen
Drisheen is the soft, gelatinous Munster pudding, like a very smooth black pudding set with milk, salt and fat, that goes with tripe in packet and tripe; it was once flavoured with tansy until that herb proved toxic.
Q 26What are crubeens?
Boiled pigs' trotters
Boiled pigs' trotters, from the Irish 'crúibín' meaning little hoof, were rural pub food eaten by hand like corn on the cob, and their saltiness conveniently made drinkers thirstier.
Q 27The blaa, a soft square white roll dusted with flour, is a speciality of which Irish city?
Waterford
Waterford is the home of the blaa, traditionally traced to Huguenot bakers who settled there in the late 1600s; since 2013 EU protection has meant only rolls baked locally may use the name.
Q 28County Armagh, nicknamed the Orchard County, holds protected status for which apple?
Bramley
Bramley apples grown in Armagh carry protected geographical status, though the variety began in an English garden: a girl in Southwell, Nottinghamshire, planted the first pip in 1809.
Q 29Which takeaway dish did staff at Templeogue's Sunflower restaurant create off-menu around 2006?
Spice bag
Spice bag began as the Sunflower staff's own after-hours meal of chips and crispy chicken shaken with spices in a bag; friends kept asking for it, so it went on the menu.
Q 30Ireland's favourite deli food, sold in every petrol station, is a baguette filled with what?
A breaded chicken fillet
A breaded chicken fillet, sliced into a buttered baguette with lettuce and taco sauce, makes the chicken fillet roll, the deli-counter staple of Irish petrol stations and convenience shops.