World Food Trivia
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128 free World Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This world food trivia quiz takes you around the globe one plate at a time. You will find the national dishes (poutine, haggis, feijoada, koshary, jollof rice, adobo), the food that turned out to come from somewhere unexpected (the croissant, ketchup, chicken tikka masala), the dishes UNESCO has declared cultural heritage, and the ones that get banned from planes, hotels and entire trading blocs. There are questions on the ingredients that changed the world too: where the potato, tomato and chili pepper started out, which country grows most of the world's saffron and coffee, and the enslaved boy whose trick made vanilla a global crop. The mix runs from easy questions anyone who eats out will get, to expert ones about who invented what and when. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source, so it is safe to use for a pub quiz, a classroom geography lesson or a dinner-party argument.
30 of 128 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Poutine, the dish of fries, cheese curds and hot gravy, was created in the late 1950s in which country?
Canada
Canada's poutine began in rural Quebec snack bars, where fresh curds from nearby cheese dairies met fries and gravy; it has since spread to fast-food chains and fine-dining menus alike.
Q 02Which savoury pudding of sheep's heart, liver and lungs is the centrepiece of a Burns supper?
Haggis
Haggis is the centrepiece of Burns suppers, held on or near 25 January, Robert Burns's birthday; the traditional recipe cannot be sold in the United States, which bans sheep lung in food.
Q 03In which city is chicken tikka masala, hailed in 2001 as 'a true British national dish', thought to have been invented?
Glasgow
Glasgow's Shish Mahal restaurant is the usual claimant: owner Ali Ahmed Aslam supposedly improvised a creamy tomato sauce for a customer who found his chicken tikka too dry.
Q 04The croissant is descended from the kipferl, a crescent pastry from which country?
Austria
Austria's kipferl reached Paris in the late 1830s, when the Austrian officer August Zang opened a Viennese bakery there; French bakers later remade the crescent in buttery laminated dough.
Q 05The word ketchup most likely comes from Hokkien Chinese words for the brine of what?
Pickled fish
Pickled fish brine, kê-chiap in Hokkien, is the likeliest origin; the word passed into Malay as kicap and into English in the late 1600s, ending up as the name of a sauce with no fish in it.
Q 06Before tomato versions took over, ketchup in Britain was made mainly from which ingredient?
Mushrooms
Mushrooms were the main ingredient of early British ketchup, and mushroom ketchup is still sold in the UK; the tomato version is an American invention of the early 1800s.
Q 07Pavlova, the meringue dessert, is claimed as a national dish by Australia and which other country?
New Zealand
New Zealand and Australia both claim the pavlova, named for ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured both countries in 1926; food historian Helen Leach traced a New Zealand meringue recipe to 1929.
Q 08In 2022 UNESCO listed which country's borscht-cooking culture as heritage in need of urgent safeguarding?
Ukraine
UNESCO added Ukraine's borscht-cooking culture to its urgent-safeguarding list in July 2022, months into Russia's full-scale invasion; the soup's name comes from hogweed, its original fermented base.
Q 09Injera, the spongy sour flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, is traditionally made from which grain?
Teff
Teff, a tiny Ethiopian highland grain, is ground and fermented for a few days to give injera its sour tang and spongy bubbled surface; the bread then doubles as plate and cutlery.
Q 10Ceviche joined UNESCO's heritage list in December 2023 as a traditional dish of which country?
Peru
Peru declared ceviche national heritage in 2004 and then put it forward to UNESCO, whose listing honours the fishers, the growers and the women cooks of traditional cevicherías behind each plate.
Q 11The communal autumn making and sharing of which fermented dish was recognised by UNESCO in 2013?
Kimchi
Kimchi for the whole winter is made at kimjang, when families, relatives and neighbours gather in late autumn to salt and season huge batches together, so that every household has enough.
Q 12According to legend, the pizza Margherita was named in 1889 in honour of whom?
A queen of Italy
A queen of Italy, Margherita of Savoy, is said to have preferred this pizza, in the national flag's colours, on a visit to Naples; yet a writer had recorded the same toppings there decades earlier.
Q 13Which Neapolitan pizzaiolo is credited by legend with creating the pizza Margherita in 1889?
Raffaele Esposito
Q 21Residents of which northern city are credited as the first to create pho, in the early 1900s?
Nam Dinh
Nam Dinh, a textile town southeast of Hanoi, is usually named as pho's birthplace; cooks from its Van Cu village carried the soup to Hanoi, where it became a street food before spreading south.
Q 22The friendly "Jollof wars" over the best jollof rice are fought mainly between Nigeria and which country?
Ghana
Ghana and Nigeria trade jollof bragging rights online and at cook-offs, yet food historians trace the dish to neither: it comes from Senegal, where it is still the national dish, thieboudienne.
Q 23"Paella" is the Valencian word for what?
Frying pan
Frying pan is all paella means in Valencian, from the Latin patella: the dish is simply named after the wide, shallow pan it is cooked in, traditionally over an open fire of orange and pine wood.
Raffaele Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi supposedly baked it for Queen Margherita's 1889 visit to Naples; Gennaro Lombardi, by contrast, is credited with opening America's first pizzeria in New York in 1905.
Q 14In the strictest Neapolitan tradition there are only two true pizzas: the Margherita and which other?
Marinara
Marinara has no cheese at all, just tomato, garlic, oregano and oil; the name means 'sailor style', and seamen are said to have favoured it because its toppings kept well on board.
Q 15The name of the dessert tiramisu translates from Italian as what?
Pick me up
Pick me up is what tirami sù means in Italian: the lift comes from the espresso soaked into the savoiardi biscuits, which are layered with sweet mascarpone cream.
Q 16In which city was tiramisu reportedly invented at Ado Campeol's restaurant Le Beccherie in 1969?
Treviso
Le Beccherie in Treviso, in the Veneto, credits Campeol's wife Alba di Pillo and pastry chef Roberto Linguanotto with the dessert; the recipe was first published by Giuseppe Maffioli in 1981.
Q 17The Turkish word döner, as in döner kebab, comes from a verb meaning what?
To rotate
Döner comes from the Turkish verb dönmek, 'to turn' or 'to rotate': the meat cooks on a rotating vertical spit, and the sandwich version was popularised by Turkish immigrants in 1970s West Germany.
Q 18Which country's Cheese Union, a cartel trying to sell more cheese, promoted fondue as a national dish in the 1930s?
Switzerland
Switzerland's Cheese Union fixed milk prices and bought up the country's cheese, then pushed fondue to shift it; until about 1930 the dish was little known outside the French-speaking west.
Q 19What is the name of the communal pot in which fondue is served?
Caquelon
The caquelon, a wide ceramic or enamelled cast-iron pot, sits over a small spirit burner (réchaud) so the cheese-and-wine mixture stays liquid throughout the meal.
Q 20Pho, the broth-and-rice-noodle soup usually made with beef, comes from which country?
Vietnam
Pho is Vietnam's signature soup; one theory ties the name to the French pot-au-feu, since beef became common under colonial rule, and Vietnamese refugees carried it worldwide after 1975.
Q 24Which meat joins chicken among the ten basic ingredients of an officially recognised paella valenciana?
Rabbit
Rabbit and chicken are the only meats on the list of ten that Valencian authorities recognise; seafood, in the words of purists, is absolutely out of the question.
Q 25Often assumed to mean raw fish, sushi is actually defined by which ingredient?
Vinegared rice
Vinegared rice is what makes sushi sushi: the dish began as fish preserved in fermenting rice that was thrown away, until cooks dropped the long ferment and began eating the seasoned rice as well.
Q 26Which style of sushi is Hanaya Yohei credited with inventing as a fast food in 1820s Edo?
Nigiri
Nigiri means hand-pressed: Yohei laid a slice of seafood on a small ball of seasoned grains shaped in the hand, quick enough to make and sell on the spot from a street stall.
Q 27Which country produces around 90% of the world's saffron?
Iran
Iran, chiefly its Khorasan region, grows around 90% of the world's saffron; every thread is picked by hand at harvest, which is why it is the most expensive spice by weight.
Q 28Roughly how many crocus flowers does it take to produce one kilogram of saffron?
150,000
Each crocus yields just three crimson stigmas, all picked by hand, so roughly 150,000 flowers go into a kilogram of dried saffron, which is the whole reason for the price.
Q 29Which pungent 'king of fruits' is banned from hotels and public transport in Singapore?
Durian
Durian's smell can linger for several days, which is why some hotels and public transport systems in Singapore and Bangkok refuse to let the fruit through the door.
Q 30Casu martzu, a Sardinian sheep-milk cheese outlawed across the EU, is famous for containing what?
Live fly maggots
Live fly maggots, the larvae of the cheese fly, digest the pecorino into a soft cream; the name means 'rotten cheese', and diners shield each bite with a hand because disturbed larvae can leap.