Potato
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94 free Potato trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
12 free Potato trivia questions with answers. Potato trivia lives in two places on BrainPickle. This page is the shorter set; the main quiz is Potatoes trivia, with our deepest question pool on the topic and a source behind every answer.
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Q 01In which part of the world were potatoes first domesticated?
South America
South America: Andean farmers bred the potato from wild species too bitter to eat, and it reached Europe only after the Spanish conquest of the Incas in the 16th century.
Q 02What is the scientific name for the common cultivated potato?
Solanum tuberosum
Solanum tuberosum: growers plant its tubers rather than seed, so each variety is a clone of its parent, and that lack of genetic diversity leaves popular varieties open to the same pests and diseases.
Q 03Which French queen is said to have worn potato blossoms to make the crop fashionable?
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette: she and Louis XVI are said to have worn the flowers after the pharmacist Parmentier gave them a bouquet, part of his campaign to win respect for a plant the French fed to hogs.
Q 04Which country grows about a quarter of the world's potatoes?
China
China: it grew roughly 95 million of the world's 375 million tonnes in 2022, ahead of India, although the crop reached China only in the late Ming dynasty, about four centuries ago.
Q 05The potato blight behind Ireland's Great Famine was caused by what type of organism?
Water mould
A water mould, Phytophthora infestans, is an oomycete: it looks and behaves like a fungus but belongs to a separate lineage, and it thrives in cool, wet weather.
Q 06Who is traditionally credited with inventing the potato chip in Saratoga Springs, New York?
George Crum
George Crum: the story has the Moon's Lake House cook slicing potatoes paper-thin in 1853 to spite a fussy diner, but printed recipes for fried potato slices predate it by decades.
Q 07Boiled potatoes supply about 14% of the daily value of which nutrient?
Vitamin C
Vitamin C: a boiled potato supplies about 14% of the daily value, and the spread of the crop is credited with making scurvy rare in places such as Scotland, where it had once been endemic.
Q 08Where in a potato plant does solanine, a natural toxin, build up to unsafe levels?
The sprouts and greened parts
The sprouts and greened parts carry solanine, the plant's natural defence: light turns tuber skins green while raising the toxin, and leaves and stems carry it too.
Q 09Which type of potato, higher in starch, suits baking and fluffy mash?
Floury potatoes
Floury potatoes such as Russets hold more starch, so they cook up dry and light, while waxy boiling potatoes, with less, keep their shape.
Q 10What is the transfer of crops like potatoes between the Americas and the Old World called?
Columbian exchange
Columbian exchange: the potato went east with it and, by one estimate, accounts for about a quarter of the Old World's growth in population between 1700 and 1900.
Q 11In which city was the earliest known recipe for potato chips published, in 1817?
London
London: William Kitchiner's The Cook's Oracle, published there in 1817, gave a recipe for potatoes fried in slices or shavings, more than three decades before the Saratoga Springs legend.
Q 12Overcrowded vessels carrying emigrants from famine-struck Ireland in the 1840s earned what grim nickname?
Coffin ships
Coffin ships: the blight that struck in 1845 drove more than a million people to emigrate, many in cheap, badly provisioned vessels on which deaths at sea were common.
Q 13A potato grows underground but is not a root: botanically, the tuber is a swollen what?
Stem
Stem: the tuber is the thickened tip of an underground stem called a stolon, which is why it carries 'eyes' — buds that grow into new shoots.
Q 21Which neighbour of France has long disputed its claim to have invented French fries?
Belgium
Belgium: a popular Belgian story has villagers on the River Meuse frying potato strips in place of small fish when the river froze, though one Belgian food historian concludes fries began in France.
Q 22A Saratoga Springs cook reputedly invented potato chips in 1853 to spite a customer complaining his fries were what?
Too thick and soggy
Too thick and soggy: the legend has a diner sending back the cook's fries as too thick, so he sliced them wafer-thin — yet printed recipes for fried potato slices predate 1853 by decades.
Q 23Which copper sulphate and lime spray, first used on vines, became the standard blight treatment?
Bordeaux mixture
Q 14Roughly how many potato varieties exist worldwide?
About 5,000
About 5,000: most are native Andean types, a gene pool breeders draw on for resistance to pests, disease and harsh weather.
Q 15Which fried pastry, a street-food staple across South Asia, is classically stuffed with spiced potato and peas?
Samosa
Samosa: the pastry reached India from Central Asia and the Middle East, and a poet at the Delhi court around 1300 described it filled with meat, long before any potato had crossed the Atlantic.
Q 16In 1748 the Paris parlement banned potato growing because the crop was thought to cause what?
Leprosy
Leprosy: the 1748 ban on the crop as a suspected cause of the disease stayed on the books until 1772, when Parmentier's campaign got potatoes declared edible.
Q 17The French potato champion Parmentier first lived on the crop while doing what?
Sitting in a Prussian prison
Sitting in a Prussian prison: captured in the Seven Years' War, Parmentier was fed potatoes, a crop Frederick II had ordered his peasants to grow, and came home convinced they were fit to eat.
Q 18Legend says pommes soufflées, puffed potato slices, were born in 1837 because what ran late?
An inaugural train
An inaugural train: the tale has chef Collinet's half-cooked slices going back into the oil, and puffing up, when the royal party arrived late from opening a railway near Paris; historians dispute it.
Q 19Which US president served 'potatoes in the French manner' at a White House dinner in 1802?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson, who acquired a taste for French cooking as minister to France, served 'potatoes in the French manner' at a White House dinner in 1802.
Q 20Until 1990, McDonald's fried its French fries in a mixture that was 93% what?
Beef tallow
Beef tallow: McDonald's cooked its fries in 93% beef tallow and 7% cottonseed oil until 1990, then switched to vegetable oil with added beef flavouring.
Bordeaux mixture: botanist Pierre Millardet noticed that roadside vines sprayed with it to deter passers-by from eating the grapes escaped mildew; he published it in 1885 and it was soon turned on potato blight.
Q 24Which comedian voiced Mr. Potato Head in the first three Toy Story films?
Don Rickles
Don Rickles: the insult comic voiced the grumpy spud from 1995 to 2010, and the fourth film, made after his death, built the part from his unused recordings.
Q 25The worst year of Ireland's Great Famine became known by what nickname?
Black '47
Black '47: 1847 was the famine's deadliest year as fever followed starvation; about a million died and more than a million emigrated between 1845 and 1852.
Q 26Which English adventurer is popularly credited with bringing both potatoes and tobacco to Britain?
Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh: legend credits him with bringing home both, but historians doubt it, since potatoes and tobacco were already known in Europe through the Spanish.
Q 27Which doctrine, embraced by the Whig government that took office in 1846, curtailed famine relief in Ireland?
Laissez-faire economics
Laissez-faire economics: the new Whig ministry assumed the market would supply food, so it halted its predecessor's relief works and refused to interfere with food leaving Ireland.
Q 28In 1952 Mr. Potato Head became the first toy to be what?
Advertised on television
Advertised on television: the first commercial ever made for a toy aired in 1952, when children still pushed the plastic parts into a real potato; a plastic body arrived in 1964.
Q 29Before Hasbro bought the idea, Mr. Potato Head's face parts were meant as prizes in boxes of what?
Breakfast cereal
Breakfast cereal: inventor George Lerner sold his push-in face parts to a cereal maker as box prizes, and the Hassenfeld brothers, later Hasbro, bought the rights to launch the toy in 1952.
Q 30To which plant group does the sweet potato belong?
The morning glories
The morning glories: the sweet potato sits in the family Convolvulaceae, so it is only a distant relative of the nightshade-family potato and more distant still from true yams.