50 Fun Facts About Caribbean Food

Which staple crop did Indigenous Caribbean peoples cultivate before European colonisation?

Corn, sweet potatoes, peppers, avocados and guavas were also native staples.

What is the green herb-and-oil marinade that seasons much Caribbean cooking called?

Garlic, onions, Scotch bonnets, cilantro and thyme are typical ingredients.

Goat stew is the official national dish of which island?

It is also a signature dish of St Kitts and Nevis.

Which rice dish is known in the Anglophone Caribbean as 'cook-up'?

In Trinidad it starts by caramelising sugar and browning meat before adding rice and pigeon peas.

Black cake, served on special occasions, derives from which English dessert?

Fruit is often soaked in wine or rum for months beforehand.

What were the plots where enslaved people grew their own food called?

In Jamaica they grew eddoes, Guinea yams, dasheen and plantains and sold the surplus.

Jerk cooking originated with which indigenous Jamaican peoples?

Descendants of 17th-century Maroons adopted the technique.

Which two ingredients are the main components of jerk seasoning?

Cloves, cinnamon, scallions, thyme and brown sugar are common additions.

The word 'jerk' is said to derive from which Quechua-origin Spanish term?

The same word became 'jerky' in English.

Which Taino word for a 'framework of sticks' gave English the word barbecue?

Spanish historian Oviedo described Taino meat-curing on one in 1516.

What wood is traditionally used to smoke jerked meat?

Pimento is the allspice tree; its berries flavour the rub and its wood the smoke.

What is Jamaica's national dish?

It is usually eaten at breakfast with breadfruit, dumplings or bammy.

From which African country was ackee brought to Jamaica?

The name comes from the Akan people's word for it; in West Africa it is mostly used for medicine and soap.

Whose name does the ackee's scientific name, Blighia sapida, honour?

He carried the fruit from Jamaica to Kew in 1793.

Why are there restrictions on importing ackee into the United States?

The arils are poisonous before the husk opens on ripening.

What is a Jamaican patty traditionally tucked into to make a full meal?

Bite-sized versions are called cocktail patties.

Which British pastry influenced the Jamaican patty?

Spanish empanadas were the other model.

Which community ran most of Jamaica's bakeries and commercialised the patty in the 1960s?

Tastee (1966) and Juici Patties (1978) grew out of that trade.

In Trinidad and the Windward Islands, callaloo is made from the leaves of which plant?

Jamaicans use the name for a local amaranth instead.

The word callaloo most likely comes from which African language's word for okra?

The rival theory traces it to Tupi caaruru, 'thick leaf'.

Trinidadian doubles consist of curried chickpeas on what?

It is a breakfast and hangover food of Indo-Trinidadian origin.

Where were doubles created in 1936?

Customers asked Emamool Deen to double the bara, and the name stuck.

Mofongo is a Puerto Rican dish built around which ingredient?

They are fried, then mashed with garlic, pork and broth in a wooden pilon.

What is the wooden mortar and pestle used to make mofongo called?

The goal is a tight ball that soaks up broth and hides cracklings inside.

Cou-cou is made mainly from cornmeal and which vegetable?

A flat wooden 'cou-cou stick' shaped like a mini cricket bat is used to stir it.

Cou-cou and what make up the national dish of Barbados?

Barbados calls itself 'the land of the flying fish'.

Which French anti-ship missile is named after the Exocoetidae fish family?

The Exocoetidae family name means 'sleeping outside' in Greek.

The Scotch bonnet pepper is named for its resemblance to what?

It is a cultivar of Capsicum chinense from the Amazon basin.

The pina colada originated in which territory?

It proclaimed the cocktail its official drink in 1978.

What does pina colada literally mean?

The 1924 National Geographic described a 'pina fria', cold pineapple, instead.

Which hotel claims bartender Ramon 'Monchito' Marrero invented the pina colada in 1954?

It began as a milkshake-style drink; rum was added for adult guests.

Which 1954 invention by professor Ramon Lopez Irizarry made the pina colada possible?

He patented a new method for extracting coconut cream.

Which two Florida cities have a friendly rivalry over the Cuban sandwich?

Tampa adds salami; South Florida usually does not.

Which industry drew the Cuban workers whose cafes produced the Cuban sandwich?

Ybor City in Tampa was founded by cigar manufacturer Vicente Martinez-Ybor.

What do Jamaicans call the pigeon peas sometimes used in their rice dish?

Kidney beans, the 'red peas', are the more usual choice.

Oil down, a breadfruit and salt-meat stew in coconut milk, is the national dish of which island?

The pot is 'packed' in layers rather than stirred, and cooked until the liquid is gone.

Bake and shark is associated with which Trinidad beach?

Overfishing means catfish and ray are often substituted for the shark.

What does ropa vieja, a Cuban national dish, mean?

The shredded beef was first reported cooked in Cuba in 1857, brought by Canary Islanders.

Who brought seedless breadfruit from Tahiti to Jamaica in 1791?

His first attempt ended with the mutiny on the Bounty.

Breadfruit was brought to the Caribbean chiefly to feed whom?

Joseph Banks offered a cash bounty and gold medal for the first to succeed.

Rum is distilled from which crop's molasses or juice?

It was probably first made by enslaved people on 17th-century plantations.

Which of these was a 17th-century nickname for rum?

A 1654 Connecticut order confiscated 'Barbados liquors, commonly called rum, kill the devil and the like'.

What is the French term for rum made from fresh cane juice rather than molasses?

Martinique is the classic source; an aged version is rhum vieux.

In which islands is conch especially popular cooked into fritters?

Queen conch was listed as threatened in 2024 and may not be harvested in Florida.

What is conch called in Haiti and the Dominican Republic?

In Puerto Rico it becomes ensalada de carrucho, a lime-marinated ceviche.

Guyanese pepperpot is preserved by which dark syrup?

It is traditionally eaten at Christmas and reheated over several days.

Which native Guyanese pepper is traditional in pepperpot?

Scotch bonnet or habanero stand in abroad.

Jamaican escovitch fish descends from which Spanish dish?

Spanish and Portuguese Jews also introduced saltfish fritters and gizzada.

Trinidad's pelau starts by caramelising what before the meat goes in?

Rice, pigeon peas and coconut milk are then simmered in the same pot.

Who created the roti wrap in southern Trinidad in the mid-1940s?

She later founded the Hummingbird Roti Shop in San Fernando.