Meat Trivia
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98 free Meat trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
42 free meat trivia questions with answers. This meat trivia quiz carves through everything carnivorous: which animal supplies the most meat on Earth, why red meat is red, what dry-aging does, the Maillard reaction that browns a steak, and the cuts from tenderloin to skirt. It travels the world's charcuterie board — Kobe and Wagyu, Prosciutto di Parma, jamón ibérico de bellota, bresaola, chorizo, mortadella, pastrami, corned beef, biltong and jerky — and stops at haggis, black pudding, foie gras, kangaroo, Rocky Mountain oysters, turducken, Spam and the first lab-grown burger. Frankfurters, wieners, bratwurst and the döner kebab get their due too. Early questions suit anyone who has stood at a barbecue; later ones reward cooks and food-history buffs who know why haggis is banned in the US and what pemmican is named for. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which meat was the most produced in the world in 2023, at about 34% of global output?
Chicken
Chicken took the lead as its output more than doubled after 2000, while pork's share of the world total slid from 38% to just under 34%.
Q 02Which pigment gives red meat its colour and turns brown when it oxidises?
Myoglobin
Myoglobin stores oxygen in muscle, and its iron browns as it oxidises; nitrite locks that iron into a pink form, which is why cured ham and bacon stay rosy when cooked.
Q 03What is the name of the process, involving amino acids and sugars, that browns a seared steak?
The Maillard reaction
The Maillard reaction, first described by French chemist Louis Camille Maillard in 1912, only takes off at around 140°C, which is why so many recipes insist on a properly hot oven or pan.
Q 04What is 'marbling' in a cut of beef?
Fat deposited near the muscle fibres
Fat deposited near the muscle fibres is prized for flavour and juiciness, yet a USDA study found that marbling accounts for only about 5% of how good a steak tastes.
Q 05Which of the four Wagyu breeds is actually responsible for the famous rich marbling?
Japanese Black
Japanese Black makes up more than 90% of Japan's Wagyu, yet until the Meiji era of the late 1800s such cattle were kept only as draught animals, never for their meat.
Q 06In which Japanese prefecture must cattle be raised to qualify as Kobe beef?
Hyōgo
Hyōgo is the prefecture around the city of Kobe, and only Tajima-strain cattle born and raised there qualify; none was exported until 2012, so earlier 'Kobe beef' abroad was not the real thing.
Q 07Filet mignon and chateaubriand both come from which cut of beef?
Tenderloin
Tenderloin's thick centre gives chateaubriand, a dish said to be named after the French writer of that name, whose chef Montmireil is credited with creating it.
Q 08How is dry-aged beef produced?
Hung or racked to dry for several weeks
Hung or racked to dry for several weeks in a chilled room, the beef loses water, which concentrates its flavour, while its own enzymes soften it.
Q 09Which cut of the pig is 'streaky' bacon made from?
The belly
The belly has long alternating layers of fat and muscle, which give the rashers their streaks; this side bacon is the most common kind in the United States.
Q 10Hams that pass inspection as genuine Prosciutto di Parma are branded with which symbol?
A five-pointed crown
A five-pointed crown is branded on only at the end of ageing, as the last of several marks, and the rules allow just two ingredients in the ham: pork and salt.
Q 11The finest jamón ibérico, labelled 'de bellota', comes from pigs fattened on what?
Acorns
Acorns: bellota is the Spanish word for them, and each autumn the black Iberian pigs are turned loose in oak pastures called dehesas to gorge on the fallen crop.
Q 12Bresaola, air-dried beef from the Alpine valley of Valtellina, comes from which region of Italy?
Lombardy
Lombardy's Valtellina runs up against the Swiss border; there lean beef is salted and hung for two or three months until it is hard and a dark, almost purple red.
Q 13What must mortadella contain at least 15% of, by rule?
Cubes of pork fat
Cubes of pork fat, cut mainly from the hard fat of the pig's neck, must make up at least 15% of the sausage, whereas the pistachios many people expect are an optional modern addition.
Q 21What is Spam made from?
Pork and ham
Pork and ham go into every can: Hormel created Spam partly to shift pork shoulder, a cut that was selling badly.
Q 22Whose sketch probably named spam email?
Monty Python
Monty Python's 1970 sketch drowns out all conversation with a chorus of 'Spam', and early internet users are thought to have borrowed the word for messages that flooded their forums.
Q 23The word 'frankfurter' comes from Frankfurt, but 'wiener' refers to which city?
Vienna
Vienna is Wien in German, so a wiener is simply a 'Viennese' sausage; in Austria itself, though, the same sausage is usually called a Frankfurter.
Q 14Pastrami originated in the Jewish community of which country?
Romania
Romania's Jewish cooks cured goose as pastramă; emigrants to New York switched to beef, which was cheaper there than goose, creating the deli classic.
Q 15Where does the word 'corned' in corned beef come from?
Large grains ('corns') of rock salt
Large grains ('corns') of rock salt were rubbed into the beef to cure it; corned beef and cabbage is an Irish-American dish, born when immigrants swapped their usual bacon for cheap American beef.
Q 16'Jerky' reached English via Spanish from which South American language?
Quechua
Quechua ch'arki, dried meat, passed into Spanish as charqui, and English speakers reshaped that into 'jerky', along with the verb 'jerk' for curing meat in strips.
Q 17How does biltong differ from jerky in its production?
It is air-dried rather than heated
It is air-dried rather than heated: the strips are cured with vinegar, salt and spices and hung to dry, whereas jerky is dried with heat and is often smoked.
Q 18What is the traditional casing for haggis?
A sheep's stomach
A sheep's stomach traditionally holds the minced heart, liver and lungs with oatmeal and suet; because the US has banned lungs in food since 1971, real haggis cannot be sold there.
Q 19What is black pudding made from?
Pork blood, fat and cereal
Pork blood, fat and cereal, usually oatmeal, fill the sausage; each September in Ramsbottom, contestants hurl black puddings at Yorkshire puddings stacked on a 20-foot plinth.
Q 20By French law, foie gras must be the liver of a duck or goose fattened by what method?
Gavage (force feeding)
Gavage (force feeding) swells the liver to around ten times its normal size, which is why several countries and California have outlawed producing foie gras.
Q 24Which German city traces its bratwurst recipe to a council ruling of 1313?
Nuremberg
Nuremberg's council is said to have laid down the recipe in 1313, and under EU protection the city's small Rostbratwurst may be made only inside the city limits.
Q 25How is a döner kebab cooked?
On a vertical rotisserie
Döner meat is stacked on a vertical rotisserie and shaved off as the outside cooks, a 19th-century Ottoman technique that also gave rise to shawarma, gyros and Mexican al pastor.
Q 26What is a turducken?
A turkey stuffed with duck and chicken
A turkey stuffed with duck and chicken, each bird boned first, went national after commentator John Madden championed it during NFL Thanksgiving broadcasts.
Q 27What are Rocky Mountain oysters?
Bull testicles
Bull testicles, usually taken from calves at branding time, are a by-product of castrating ranch cattle; they are peeled, rolled in flour and fried.
Q 28Which glands are served as 'sweetbreads'?
Thymus or pancreas
Thymus or pancreas, taken from calves or lambs: the thymus shrinks away as an animal matures, so this 'throat' sweetbread comes from young animals.
Q 29What is veal?
Meat from calves
Meat from calves comes mostly from young males of dairy breeds, which will never give milk and are not needed for breeding.
Q 30What is meat from a sheep in its second year called?
Hogget
Hogget is meat from a sheep in its second year, roughly 12 to 24 months old; lamb is under a year and mutton comes from older sheep, its name from the French mouton.