Soy Sauce Trivia
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48 free Soy Sauce trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Soy sauce is roughly 2,200 years old, and it is on restaurant tables from Tokyo to Lima. This soy sauce trivia quiz covers where it came from (Han-dynasty China, as a way to stretch expensive salt), how it is actually made (koji mould, brine and months of patient fermentation), and how it differs across Asia, from Japan's five official shoyu types to Indonesia's syrupy kecap manis and Korea's soup soy sauce. You will also find the food-science oddities: why it browns, why it can legally count as alcohol, why Europeans could not brew it for centuries, and how a 1961 dispenser bottle became a design classic. Questions range from easy to expert, and every answer is verified and cited to its reference page. Hungry for more? Try our other food and drink quizzes.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Japanese cooking style glazes grilled food with soy sauce, mirin and sugar?
Teriyaki
Teriyaki takes its name from teri, the gloss its sweet glaze gives; outside Japan the name now covers the bottled sauce as well as the dish.
Q 02An early Japanese soy sauce began as a by-product of which fermenting food?
Miso
Miso gives off a liquid that pools in the vat as it matures; cooks who collected it had the forerunner of the soy sauces Japan brews today.
Q 03Which taste, besides saltiness, is soy sauce best known for?
Umami
Umami comes from the amino acids set free as the brewing mould's enzymes break down the proteins in the soybeans and wheat.
Q 04What do Japanese brewers call the mould-covered grain that starts soy sauce and sake?
Koji
Koji does the heavy lifting: the mould's enzymes break proteins and starches down into the amino acids and sugars that give the brew its flavour.
Q 05Usukuchi, the pale soy sauce, is used mostly in the region around which Japanese city?
Osaka
Osaka and Kyoto cooks favour the pale sauce because it seasons a dish without darkening it, while Tokyo's region leans on the dark standard kind.
Q 06What is soy sauce called in Japan?
Shoyu
Shoyu is where English got the word soy: traders carried the name west in the 1600s, so the bean ended up named after the sauce.
Q 07Which acid do bacteria mainly produce in fermenting soy sauce mash?
Lactic acid
Lactic acid, the same one that sours yogurt, comes from bacteria feeding on the mash's sugars, and it helps give the sauce its rich flavour.
Q 08Which trading power began exporting Japanese shoyu in 1647?
Dutch East India Company
By 1737 its records list 75 large barrels shipped from Dejima to Batavia, 35 of which went on to the Netherlands.
Q 09What is soy sauce called in Korea?
Ganjang
Ganjang was once brewed at home by nearly every Korean household, and royal records list it among the foods prepared for a king's wedding in 683.
Q 10Before the mould goes to work, what do soy sauce brewers do to the wheat?
Roast and crush it
Roast and crush it: the roasted grain deepens the sauce's colour and aroma, while the soybeans are soaked and steamed.
Q 11Which Korean barbecue dish marinates thin-sliced beef in soy sauce, sugar, garlic and sesame oil?
Bulgogi
Bulgogi means 'fire meat'; cooks traditionally grate a Korean pear into the marinade to flavour and tenderise the beef.
Q 12The Yamajo Soy Company was brewing Japanese-style soy sauce by 1908 in which part of the United States?
Hawaii
Hawaii had drawn Japanese plantation workers since 1868, and brewing their style of soy sauce soon became an established island industry.
Q 13Which brand began selling hydrolysed-protein soy sauce in the US in the early 1930s?
La Choy
La Choy started out in Detroit selling canned mung bean sprouts, then widened its range to soy sauce, chow mein noodles and more.
Q 21Why can brewed soy sauce fall foul of liquor laws?
Over 1% alcohol
Over 1% alcohol can be left in the bottle by the yeasts that ferment the mash; in 2019 shops in Alice Springs were warned that such sauces needed a liquor licence.
Q 22Which Chinese soy sauce is the everyday seasoning one, used for flavour rather than colour?
Light (sheng chou)
Light (sheng chou) soy sauce at its best is the first drawing from the vat, prized and priced the way extra virgin olive oil is.
Q 23What is often added to Chinese dark soy sauce to give it its distinctive appearance?
Caramel colour or molasses
Q 14What is done to raw soy sauce to stabilise it before bottling?
It is heated
It is heated: pasteurising halts the enzymes and kills off lingering yeasts, so the flavour stops changing once the sauce is bottled.
Q 15Which chemical process gives soy sauce its dark colour and much of its aroma?
The Maillard reaction
The Maillard reaction, which also browns seared steak and toast, slowly darkens the mash as sugars meet amino acids over months of ageing.
Q 16How do brewers separate soy sauce from its fermented mash?
Pressing it in cloth
Pressing it in cloth: the mash is folded into layered cloths and squeezed slowly for hours, and the leftover cake goes to animal feed.
Q 17Why can soy sauce mash ferment for months without rotting?
Salty brine
Salty brine keeps spoilage microbes out while a few salt-loving ones carry on, slowly building the flavour.
Q 18What is the main appeal of making soy sauce by acid hydrolysis, not brewing?
Speed and low cost
Speed and low cost: acid does quickly what brewing microbes need months for, though the flavour and aroma are not the same.
Q 19Which health-food product is essentially hydrolysed vegetable protein sold as a soy-sauce alternative?
Liquid aminos
Liquid aminos are pitched as a healthier swap, yet they are not necessarily low in sodium: the soy-based kind carries about as much as soy sauce itself.
Q 20Which amino acid is the most abundant in Chinese soy sauce?
Glutamic acid
Glutamic acid, the one behind MSG, is set free as the mould's enzymes break down the soy protein, and chemists long ago singled it out as the sauce's key flavouring agent.
Caramel colour or molasses deepens dark soy sauce, which cooks add in small splashes mainly to colour a dish rather than to season it.
Q 24Chinese cǎogū lǎochōu is a dark soy sauce flavoured with what?
Mushrooms
Mushrooms, specifically straw mushrooms, give up their broth to the sauce as it finishes ageing, adding a richer flavour than plain dark soy.
Q 25Which Chinese street snack is made by cracking boiled eggs and simmering them again in soy sauce and spices?
Tea eggs
Tea eggs get their marbled look from the cracks: the dark, tea-scented broth seeps through the shell and stains the egg beneath in a web of fine lines.
Q 26Which Filipino dish simmers meat in vinegar, soy sauce and garlic?
Adobo
Adobo began as an older way of keeping meat by cooking it in vinegar; the soy sauce, called toyo in the Philippines, was a later addition.
Q 27The Indonesian word for soy sauce is a cognate of which English word?
Ketchup
Ketchup and Indonesia's kecap are both usually traced to a Hokkien word for a sauce of pickled seafood, which reached English by way of Malay.
Q 28What gives Indonesian kecap manis its thick, treacle-like sweetness?
Palm sugar
Palm sugar goes in by the handful and the sauce is simmered for hours until it pours like syrup; it is by far Indonesia's favourite soy sauce.
Q 29Which Japanese hot pot simmers thin-sliced beef in soy sauce, sugar and mirin, with raw beaten egg for dipping?
Sukiyaki
Sukiyaki splits Japan in two: in the east everything simmers in a ready-mixed sauce, while in the west the beef is seared first and seasoned in the pan.
Q 30Which Japanese fast-food rice bowl is topped with beef and onion simmered in soy sauce, mirin and dashi?
Gyudon
Gyudon grew out of gyunabe, a Tokyo beef hot pot ladled over rice, and chains such as Yoshinoya turned it into a fast-food staple at home and abroad.