50 Fun Facts About Unusual Foods

Rocky Mountain oysters, deep-fried at ranch festivals in the American West, are which part of a bull?

The testicles are the whole dish: peeled, sliced, breaded and fried, and known in Spain, Argentina and much of Mexico as criadillas.

Century eggs, preserved in a paste of clay, ash, salt and quicklime, actually cure for roughly how long?

Weeks to months is all it takes, and the best batches develop pine-branch patterns in the white, earning the name 'pine flower eggs' and a reputation for better quality.

Haggis, Scotland's pudding of sheep offal and oatmeal, is the butt of a running joke that claims it is what?

A small wild animal with legs longer on one side, the joke goes, so it can run round steep Highland hills without falling over, while real haggis is sheep's heart, liver and lungs minced with oatmeal and suet.

Huitlacoche, the swollen corn galls that Mexican cooks prize and fold into quesadillas, is caused by what?

A fungus, the corn smut Ustilago maydis, swells the kernels into galls that one promotional dinner tried to rebrand as the 'Mexican truffle' to win over American diners.

Sardinia's casu martzu, a pecorino eaten with its live cheese-fly larvae, is notorious because the maggots can do what?

Leap up to 15 cm is what the larvae manage when disturbed, so diners hold a hand over the bread; Guinness World Records named casu martzu the world's 'most dangerous cheese' in 2009.

Balut, the Philippine street snack eaten from the shell with salt, is incubated for about how long?

Two to three weeks, 14 to 21 days depending on local taste, lets the embryo develop, and the longer it goes the more recognisable the bird's features become.

Which person in Japan is said never to have eaten fugu pufferfish, thanks to a centuries-old ban?

The Emperor is kept from fugu by a ban one Tokyo fugu chef could only call 'centuries old'; the Tokugawa shogunate outlawed the fish in Edo, and Meiji-era Japan banned it again in many areas.

Durian, the pungent fruit banned on Singapore's transport, is named after a Malay word for what?

Thorn, 'duri' in Malay, describes the spiky rind, and of the many Durio species only one, Durio zibethinus, is sold on the international market.

Sannakji, a Korean raw dish whose freshly cut pieces keep wriggling, is made from which animal?

Octopus arms keep moving because their neurons work after cutting, and the suction cups can grip the throat, which makes the dish a genuine choking hazard.

Witchetty grubs, an Aboriginal Australian bush food said to taste of almonds when raw, are the larvae of what?

A moth, the cossid Endoxyla leucomochla, lays the grub that feeds on witchetty-bush roots; cooked, its skin crisps like roast chicken and the inside turns egg-yellow.

Escamoles, eaten in Mexico since Aztec times and nicknamed 'insect caviar', are the larvae and pupae of what?

Ants of the genus Liometopum supply the egg-like larvae, and the Nahuatl name azcamolli joins azcatl, 'ant', with molli, 'puree'.

Nattō, Japan's sticky fermented-soybean breakfast, was traditionally made by wrapping the boiled beans in what?

Straw bags were the original starter: Taishō-era researchers only later isolated a culture that made straw unnecessary, and legend has Prince Shotoku wrapping leftover soybeans in straw for his horse.

Kopi luwak, coffee brewed from beans an animal has excreted, began on colonial plantations in which country?

Indonesia's coffee plantations on central Java, established under colonial rule, are where farmers first brewed coffee from excreted beans in the 19th century.

Fresh from its caustic soak, lutefisk is saturated and inedible at roughly what pH until days of rinsing?

11–12 is the pH of lye-saturated lutefisk, so the cod must sit in cold water for days before it is safe to cook into its gelatinous final state.

Stinky tofu, Taiwan's night-market favourite, traditionally gets its smell from months in a brine of what?

Vegetables and meat ferment together in the brine for several months in the traditional method, whereas factory versions soak for just a day or two.

A 1984 eviction case was won by opening a can of surströmming in the courtroom of which German city?

Cologne's regional court ruled the eviction justified once the can was opened in front of it; the tenant had spread surströmming brine in the stairwell at Christmas 1981.

Hákarl, Iceland's fermented shark, is cured and hung for months because the fresh meat is loaded with what?

Urea, the same waste compound found in urine, plus trimethylamine oxide make the fresh flesh poisonous, and the cured strips are served at Iceland's midwinter Þorrablót feasts.

Kiviak, a Greenlandic winter dish, packs up to 500 whole seabirds, feathers and all, into what to ferment?

A seal skin, sealed with seal fat to keep flies out and buried under stones for about three months, holds the little auks until they are eaten at winter birthdays and weddings.

Smalahove, western Norway's dish of half a sheep's head per diner, is traditionally eaten starting with what?

The ear and eye go first because they are the fattiest parts and best while warm; since 1998 EU rules allow smalahove only from lambs, over scrapie fears.

Traditional chicha, the Andean corn beer, is started in some cultures by the brewer doing what to the grain?

Chewing it moistens the ground corn with saliva, whose ptyalin enzyme breaks the starch down into maltose; the balls are then flattened and dried before brewing.

Edible bird's nests, harvested from cave walls for Chinese soup, have fetched up to roughly what per kilogram?

$9,500 a kilo, about $4,300 a pound, puts the nests among the priciest animal products people eat, graded on shape, colour and the bird species that built them.

Hasma, a Chinese dessert ingredient that swells up to 15 times when soaked, is dried tissue from which animal?

Frogs, specifically the Asiatic grass frog, supply the tissue near the fallopian tubes that is dried into 'snow frog fat', once a dish of Chinese imperial cuisine.

Shirako, a creamy Japanese delicacy taken from cod, anglerfish and even fugu, is which part of the male fish?

The milt, literally 'white children' in Japanese, is the fish's sperm, and salmon and squid milt are eaten as well as cod's.

Jellied eels, sold with pie and mash since the 1700s, are a working-class classic of which part of London?

The East End's eel, pie and mash houses numbered about 100 at the end of the Second World War, and the oldest survivor, M. Manze, has traded since 1902.

Czernina, a Polish soup whose name comes from the word for 'black', is made from poultry broth and what?

Duck blood gives the colour, and the soup is balanced sweet-and-sharp with sugar and vinegar, plus dried pears, plums or cherries.

Scrapple, a fried slice of pork scraps bound with cornmeal, is a signature of which American community?

Pennsylvania Dutch cooks call it Pannhaas, a mush of pork trimmings, cornmeal and often buckwheat flour, spiced and fried in slices.

Deep-fried tarantulas are a roadside speciality and tourist stop in the town of Skuon in which country?

Cambodia's taste for the spiders may date from the food shortages of the Khmer Rouge years, and Skuon now sells them as a snack to passing travellers.

Chapulines, toasted with garlic, lime and chilli and sold as snacks at Oaxaca's sports events, are which insect?

Grasshoppers of the genus Sphenarium, named from the Nahuatl chapolin, are eaten across Mexico and Central America and are enjoying a revival among foodies.

Beondegi, a Korean street snack served in paper cups and literally meaning 'pupa', is made from which insect?

Silkworms are boiled or steamed at the pupa stage and handed over with toothpick skewers, a street food that is also sold canned.

Milbenkäse, a German 'mite cheese', ripens for at least three months in a wooden box filled with what?

Rye flour feeds the Tyrophagus casei mites, whose digestive juices seep into balls of caraway-flavoured quark; the craft was nearly lost by 1970 before its revival in the village of Würchwitz.

Stargazy pie, baked in Mousehole, Cornwall, for Tom Bawcock's Eve, has what poking through its crust?

Fish heads, and sometimes tails, poke out as if gazing at the stars, commemorating Tom Bawcock's heroic catch during a very stormy winter.

Lampredotto, Florence's street sandwich of slow-cooked offal with salsa verde, is made from which part of a cow?

Its fourth stomach, the abomasum, is slow-cooked in vegetable broth with herbs, chopped and piled into a bread roll, often with a spicy or green sauce.

Hongeo-hoe, fermented skate from Korea's Jeolla province, has an outhouse-like smell of which chemical?

Ammonia is the smell, famously described as 'reminiscent of an outhouse', yet Jeolla natives insist hongeo-hoe should be eaten plain.

Rakfisk, a Norwegian dish salted and left to break down for two or three months, comes from which fish?

Trout or char are autolysed, their own enzymes softening the flesh, for two to three months or even up to a year, as the salt draws out a brine.

Which small rodent was fattened in terracotta jars called gliraria and eaten as a snack in ancient Rome?

Dormouse farming gave the European edible dormouse its name: the Romans caught them in autumn when fattest and raised them in pits or clay gliraria like hamster cages.

Ackee, the toxic-when-unripe fruit in Jamaica's national dish, is safe to pick only after what has happened?

The pod has split open naturally once the fruit turns from green through red to yellow-orange, revealing three shiny black seeds and the creamy aril that is the edible part.

Cassava, the tropical root that half a billion people depend on, must be carefully prepared to remove what?

Cyanide in improperly prepared cassava can cause poisoning, yet the root is the tropics' third-largest source of food carbohydrate after rice and maize.

The West African 'miracle berry' contains miraculin, a protein that makes which taste register as sweet?

Sour foods such as lemons and limes taste sweet after the berry is eaten, and in its Yoruba homeland the fruit is called àgbáyun.

Noni, the lumpy Pacific 'starvation fruit' now processed into health juices, smells like what when ripe?

Blue cheese is the comparison for its pungent ripe odour, and islanders who ate it raw or cooked only in famines gave it the 'starvation fruit' name.

The 'sea pineapple', eaten raw in Korea as meongge and in Japan as hoya, is actually what kind of animal?

A sea squirt, or ascidian, it is sliced vertically, gutted and served with vinegared soy sauce in Japan or with vinegared gochujang in Korea.

Percebes, gathered by hand from Atlantic rocks and sold in Spain for up to €90 a kilo, are what?

Goose barnacles, Pollicipes pollicipes, have been picked from the same shores for over 10,000 years by archaeological evidence, and the species is now thought to be in decline.

Poi, the Hawaiian staple pounded on a board and left to ferment until it smells of yogurt, is made from what?

Taro is cooked and mashed with a basalt, coral or wooden pestle on a wooden board, and fresh poi is sweet before days of fermentation turn it tangy.

Eggs with ambergris, the waxy lump from a sperm whale's gut, was reportedly which English king's favourite dish?

Charles II's taste for it aside, ambergris is better known as a perfume fixative, a flammable grey-black wax that forms in the whale's digestive system.

Muktuk, the whale skin and blubber of Inuit tradition, is a surprisingly rich source of which nutrient?

Vitamin C, up to 38 mg per 100 grams in the skin layer, makes the dish, shared by Inuit and other circumpolar peoples, a rare Arctic source of the vitamin fruit usually supplies.

Igunaq, meat the Inuit bury in summer to ferment through autumn, is most closely associated with which animal?

Walrus and other marine mammals, caribou and birds are left as raw carcasses or steaks near the shoreline, ready the next year, and improper curing risks botulism.

Roughly how many guinea pigs, known locally as cuy, are estimated to be eaten in Peru each year?

65 million a year is the estimate, and the animal was first domesticated for food in the Andes as early as 5000 BC, millennia before it became a pet elsewhere.

Cod tongues, fried as a delicacy off the Grand Banks fishery, are a traditional dish of which Canadian province?

Newfoundland shares the taste with the Basque Country, Iceland, Portugal and northern Norway, where children traditionally collect the tongues during the fishing season.

Black Ivory Coffee, which has sold for $50 a cup, is brewed from beans eaten and passed by which Thai animals?

Elephants at a sanctuary in Chiang Saen produced the first batches, after Canadian founder Blake Dinkin had first considered making kopi luwak from civet droppings.

Airag, Mongolia's mildly alcoholic drink also known as kumis, is fermented from which animal's milk?

Mares' milk carries more sugar than cow's or goat's, so its ferment ends up stronger than kefir, traditionally made in a leather container.

Chitterlings, or chitlins, scrubbed rigorously before being boiled and fried crisp, are which part of a pig?

The intestines, with the large intestine known as bung, double as sausage casings and need stringent cleaning to remove bacteria such as E. coli and Salmonella.