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47 free Lemon trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
45 free lemon trivia questions with answers. The lemon is not a wild fruit at all but a hybrid, and almost everything about it is a little stranger than it looks: it reached Rome before the year 200, crossed the Atlantic with Columbus, cured a disease that killed more sailors than battle did, and gave a name to bad cars and good advice. This quiz runs 47 questions from the easy end (what vitamin is a lemon famous for, what liqueur is made from its zest on the Amalfi Coast) up to questions for produce nerds and food historians: which USDA plant explorer brought the Meyer lemon out of China, why California destroyed most of its Meyer trees, what a 13th-century Egyptian lemon drink was called, and how much the heaviest lemon on record weighed. Every answer has been checked against an encyclopaedia entry or the primary record, and the source is shown under each question once you have answered, so it works for a kitchen quiz night, a classroom food-science warm-up or a themed round at the pub.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01A true lemon is a hybrid of the bitter orange and which other citrus fruit?
Citron
The citron is one of the handful of original citrus species from which every modern variety descends.
Q 02Some evidence suggests lemons originated during the 1st millennium BC in what is now which country?
India
Lemons are thought to have first grown in India's Assam region, then moved west across southwest Asia and the Mediterranean over the following centuries.
Q 03Roughly what percentage of lemon juice is citric acid?
5-6%
Lemon juice is roughly 5-6% citric acid by volume, about twice the concentration found in grapefruit juice and five times that of orange juice.
Q 04Lemon juice has a pH of roughly what value?
2
Lemon juice has a pH of about 2, making it strongly acidic; the sourness comes mainly from its high citric acid content.
Q 05Botanically, a lemon is a hesperidium, which is a modified form of what?
Berry
A hesperidium is a berry with a tough, leathery rind, the same structure shared by oranges and grapefruits.
Q 06The word 'lemon' ultimately traces back to which language, where it was a generic term for citrus fruit?
Persian
The route was Old French limon, Italian limone, Arabic laymun or limun, and finally the Persian limun.
Q 07The first substantial European cultivation of lemons began in the mid-15th century in which city?
Genoa
Genoa, a maritime republic whose traders worked the eastern Mediterranean, began the first substantial European cultivation of lemons in the mid-1400s.
Q 08Who brought lemon seeds to Hispaniola in 1493, introducing the fruit to the Americas?
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus carried lemon seeds to Hispaniola on his second voyage in 1493, a year after his first landfall in the Americas.
Q 09The lemon spread across the Mediterranean between roughly 1000 and 1150 during which historical movement?
The Arab Agricultural Revolution
The Arab Agricultural Revolution carried crops west across the Islamic world; lemons reached Iraq around AD 700 and were spread around the Mediterranean by 1150.
Q 10The lemon belongs to which plant family?
Rutaceae
The lemon belongs to Rutaceae, the rue family, which holds every Citrus species including oranges, grapefruit and kumquats.
Q 11What colour is an unripe lemon?
Green
Unripe lemons are green; the peel turns yellow as chlorophyll breaks down during ripening, a change growers can also trigger in storage with ethylene gas.
Q 12The 'Bonnie Brae' lemon, an oblong, thin-skinned, seedless variety, is mostly grown in which area?
San Diego County, California
The Bonnie Brae lemon is grown mostly in San Diego County, California; its smooth, thin-skinned, seedless fruit is rarely seen outside that area.
Q 13The 'Yen Ben' lemon is a cultivar from which part of the world?
Australasia
Yen Ben is an Australasian cultivar, a Lisbon-type selection made in Queensland and grown commercially in New Zealand and Australia.
Q 21In which country did Frank Meyer collect the Meyer lemon he introduced to the US in 1908?
China
Frank Meyer found the fruit growing as a pot plant in China and sent it to the US in 1908, where it was catalogued as S.P.I. #23028.
Q 22Most US Meyer lemon trees were destroyed in the 1940s because they were symptomless carriers of what?
Citrus tristeza virus
The trees carried Citrus tristeza virus without showing symptoms, threatening other citrus; a virus-free selection found in the 1950s was released in 1975 as the 'Improved Meyer lemon'.
Q 23Which chef is credited with rediscovering the Meyer lemon as a food item?
Alice Waters
Q 14Which physician's 1747 experiments on seamen with scurvy involved adding lemon juice to their diet?
James Lind
James Lind, a naval surgeon, ran the 1747 trial on twelve scurvy patients, comparing remedies in pairs; it is regarded as one of the first controlled clinical experiments.
Q 15On which ship did the famous 1747 scurvy trial take place while it patrolled the Bay of Biscay?
HMS Salisbury
The trial took place aboard HMS Salisbury, whose surgeon divided twelve sick sailors into pairs and gave each pair a different supposed remedy.
Q 16In which year did the Admiralty agree to issue lemon juice routinely to the whole fleet?
1795
The Admiralty adopted routine lemon juice issue in 1795, after the Suffolk completed a 23-week non-stop voyage the previous year with the juice issued daily and almost no scurvy.
Q 17Scurvy, the disease that lemon juice prevents, is caused by a lack of which nutrient?
Vitamin C
Vitamin C, chemically ascorbic acid, is the missing nutrient in scurvy; the name 'ascorbic' literally means 'anti-scurvy'.
Q 18On his 1499 voyage, which explorer lost 116 of a crew of 170, mainly to scurvy?
Vasco da Gama
Vasco da Gama lost 116 of 170 men on his 1499 voyage, mostly to scurvy; Magellan fared even worse two decades later, losing 208 of 230.
Q 19Who won the 1937 Nobel in Physiology or Medicine partly for isolating ascorbic acid?
Albert Szent-Györgyi
Albert Szent-Györgyi isolated ascorbic acid, first from adrenal glands and later in bulk from Hungarian paprika, earning the 1937 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
Q 20The Meyer lemon is a cross between one of the original citrus species and a hybrid of which two fruits?
Mandarin and pomelo
The Meyer lemon's other parent is a hybrid of mandarin and pomelo, which is why the fruit is sweeter and less tart than a supermarket lemon, with a hint of tangerine.
Alice Waters, founder of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, put the Meyer lemon on restaurant menus; its popularity climbed further when Martha Stewart began featuring it in recipes.
Q 24In which state did the Ponderosa lemon, a large bumpy-rinded fruit, arise as a chance seedling around 1887?
Maryland
The Ponderosa arose around 1887 as a chance seedling in Hagerstown, Maryland; it is a thick-skinned, bumpy hybrid rather than a true lemon.
Q 25Which lemon variety, also known as Sorrento or Sfusato, is traditionally used to make limoncello?
Femminello St. Teresa
Femminello St. Teresa zest, rich in lemon oil, is steeped in spirit until the oil is released, then mixed with sugar syrup to make limoncello.
Q 26A lemon-juice-and-sugar drink called qatarmizat was being consumed in the 13th century in which country?
Egypt
In 13th-century Egypt a sweetened lemon-juice drink called qatarmizat was drunk and traded, one of the earliest written records of lemonade.
Q 27In 1676, vendors in which city sold lemonade from tanks carried on their backs?
Paris
In Paris the Compagnie de Limonadiers, granted a monopoly in 1676, sent vendors through the streets dispensing cups of lemonade from tanks on their backs.
Q 28One story says pink lemonade was invented in 1857 using water that had rinsed a circus performer's pink what?
Tights
Circus vendor Pete Conklin reputedly used water in which a performer had rinsed her pink tights; a rival story credits Henry Allott dropping red cinnamon candies into a batch.
Q 29In a lemon battery, where does the electrical energy actually come from?
The zinc dissolving into the acid
The energy comes from the zinc dissolving into the acid: zinc atoms give up electrons at that electrode, while hydrogen ions from the juice take them up at the copper.
Q 30What is the typical voltage produced by a single lemon cell with zinc and copper electrodes?
0.9 V
A zinc-copper lemon cell yields about 0.9 V; the classic classroom version uses a galvanized nail and a copper penny pushed into the fruit.