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48 free Soup trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Soup trivia questions with answers. Soup is the oldest cooked food there is, and it turns out to be excellent quiz material. These 48 questions travel from Marseille to Yokohama by way of Kyiv, Andalusia, Hanoi and a New Jersey cannery, asking what the word actually means, why ramen noodles are yellow, and what a bird's nest is really made of. The quiz covers technique as well as geography: how Escoffier divided the whole category in two, what clarifies a consommé, why Manhattan clam chowder is an insult in New England, and how a Polish king in exile got onion soup onto the table at Versailles. Every answer was checked against a primary reference before publication, so the dates, origins and prices here are accurate rather than restaurant folklore. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few questions that will only fall to someone who reads cookbooks for pleasure.
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Q 01Which thick Córdoban purée of tomato, olive oil and garlic is topped with jamón serrano?
Salmorejo
Salmorejo, from Córdoba in Andalusia, is a dense purée of tomato, olive oil and garlic, thicker than gazpacho, traditionally topped with diced jamón serrano.
Q 02In Old French, what did 'soupe' originally mean?
Bread soaked in liquid
Soupe in Old French meant bread soaked in liquid: a slice of bread with broth poured over it was the dish itself, and French onion soup with its raft of baguette is a direct survivor.
Q 03How did Escoffier divide soups?
Into clear and thick
Escoffier split soups into clear and thick, a scheme set out in his 1903 Le Guide Culinaire; the thick group takes in purées, veloutés and cream soups.
Q 04Which American company introduced condensed canned soup in 1897?
Campbell's
Campbell's launched condensed soup in 1897; with most of the water removed, a can was cheaper to ship and stock and sold for a dime against competitors' 30 cents.
Q 05Who worked out how to condense soup commercially in 1897?
John T. Dorrance
John T. Dorrance, a chemist with degrees from MIT and a doctorate from Göttingen, joined his uncle's firm in 1897 and devised condensed soup by removing most of the water; he later bought the company outright.
Q 06Where did the red-and-white colour scheme of the condensed-soup cans come from?
A university football uniform
A university football uniform inspired it: in 1898 company treasurer Herberton Williams saw Cornell play in carnelian red and white and proposed the colours for the label.
Q 07Which artist's 1962 paintings of soup cans became a pop art icon?
Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol's 32 soup-can canvases, one for each variety then sold, were shown at the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in July 1962 and became a defining image of pop art.
Q 08In which year was the company behind condensed soup founded in Camden, New Jersey?
1869
The company was founded in 1869 in Camden, New Jersey, by a fruit merchant and an icebox manufacturer; condensed soup came 28 years later.
Q 09Where can the origins of ramen be traced to?
Yokohama Chinatown
Yokohama Chinatown, where Chinese immigrants sold wheat noodles in broth in the late 1800s, is the usual starting point of ramen's history; Tokyo's Rairaiken popularised the dish from 1910.
Q 10What gives ramen noodles their yellow colour and springy bite?
Alkaline water, kansui
Kansui, alkaline mineral water rich in sodium and potassium carbonate, gives ramen noodles their yellow tint and springy bite by changing how the wheat gluten behaves.
Q 11Who invented instant noodles in 1958?
Momofuku Ando
Momofuku Ando, founder of Nissin, launched Chikin Ramen in 1958 and followed it with Cup Noodles in 1971; the Cup Noodles Museum in Ikeda, Osaka, commemorates him.
Q 12Which Japanese city is the birthplace of miso ramen?
Sapporo
Sapporo's Aji no Sanpei restaurant is credited with creating miso ramen in the mid-1950s by stirring miso into a pork broth; the style spread across Japan in the 1960s.
Q 13Which country is pho from?
Vietnam
Pho is from Vietnam, emerging around Hanoi in the early 1900s; its broth is simmered for hours with bones, charred onion and ginger, star anise and cinnamon.
Q 21Which ingredient thickens a traditional gazpacho?
Stale bread
Stale bread, soaked and pounded with oil, vinegar and garlic, thickens a traditional gazpacho, to which tomato, cucumber and pepper are added; it began as food for Andalusian farm labourers.
Q 22Which French port is bouillabaisse from?
Marseille
Marseille is the home of bouillabaisse, which began as a fishermen's dish made from the bony rockfish they could not sell; a 1980 charter by the city's restaurateurs codified the recipe.
Q 23What does the name 'bouillabaisse' literally describe?
Boiling then lowering the heat
Q 14Which kind of noodle goes into pho?
Flat rice noodles
Flat rice noodles, bánh phở, go into the bowl; their width varies by region, and the broth is simmered with bones, charred onion and ginger and spices.
Q 15How does southern Vietnamese pho differ from the northern version?
It is sweeter and cloudier
Southern pho is sweeter and cloudier, often with rock sugar in the broth and a pile of bean sprouts, chilli, hoisin and herbs; northern pho keeps the broth clear and the garnishes minimal.
Q 16Which vegetable gives borscht its colour?
Beetroot
Beetroot gives borscht its deep red colour; the soup is served hot in winter and chilled in summer, often with sour cream, and there are green and white variants made without beets.
Q 17Which country's borscht tradition did UNESCO list as intangible heritage in need of urgent safeguarding?
Ukraine
Ukraine's borscht-cooking culture was inscribed on 1 July 2022, months into the Russian invasion, on UNESCO's urgent-safeguarding list, with the war's threat to the tradition cited.
Q 18Before its familiar red vegetable, what plant was borscht originally made from?
Common hogweed stems
Common hogweed stems, leaves and flower buds were fermented into the original sour soup; the Slavic word borshch itself meant hogweed, and the familiar red version came centuries later.
Q 19Gazpacho is served at what temperature?
Cold
Gazpacho is served cold, often chilled for hours, as a summer dish from Andalusia in southern Spain.
Q 20When were tomatoes added to gazpacho?
In the 19th century
Tomatoes only joined gazpacho in the 19th century, long after they reached Spain from the Americas; the older Andalusian version was a pale soup built on olive oil, vinegar, garlic and water.
Bouillabaisse is usually traced to Provençal bolhir, 'to boil', and abaissar, 'to lower', describing boiling then lowering the heat as each fish goes in; rascasse, the scorpion fish, is the one fish every traditional version insists on.
Q 24What is rouille, served with bouillabaisse?
Garlic and saffron mayonnaise
Rouille is a garlic and saffron mayonnaise spiked with cayenne, whose rust colour gives it its name; it is spread on grilled bread and floated on the broth.
Q 25What is the main difference between New England and Manhattan clam chowder?
Cream against tomato
The tomato version is a long-running culinary insult in New England. Both are properly full of clams and potato.
Q 26According to Alexandre Dumas, how did onion soup reach the French royal court?
An exiled Polish king learned the recipe at an inn
Louis XV's father-in-law Stanislas was the enthusiast. Onions had until then been regarded as peasant food.
Q 27Which stock is normally used in French onion soup?
Beef
Beef stock is the classic base for French onion soup; the onions are first cooked slowly in butter until deeply golden, and the bowl is topped with bread and grated Gruyère under a grill.
Q 28How was onion soup regarded socially before the 18th century?
Peasant food, avoided by the rich
Onion soup was peasant food, avoided by the rich: onions were cheap, plentiful and thought to cause bad breath, until 18th-century court enthusiasm made the soup fashionable.
Q 29What are the two basic components of miso soup?
Fermented paste and dashi stock
Miso soup's two basic components are fermented soybean paste, the miso, and dashi stock; the paste is whisked in off the boil so its aroma and live cultures are not destroyed.
Q 30Which of these is a common base for the dashi in miso soup?
Dried kelp
Dried kelp, kombu, is the classic dashi base, often paired with katsuobushi bonito flakes; niboshi sardines or dried shiitake do the same job, and the stock takes minutes rather than hours.