100 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 come from young bulls castrated at spring branding, and ranch hands fried them up rather than waste the meat, which is how a by-product of cattle work became festival food.

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 for the paste to raise the egg's pH, which turns the white a translucent dark brown and the yolk creamy and grey-green.

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, names the spiky rind; the pungent smell can cling for days, which is why some hotels as well as trains and buses in Southeast Asia turn the fruit away.

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 nest among the roots of maguey plants, and their larvae can be dug out only in a short season early in the year, which makes escamoles one of Mexico's costliest ingredients.

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

Straw bags were the original starter, because the natto bacterium lives on rice straw; legend says the samurai Minamoto no Yoshiie's troops packed hot soybeans in straw during an attack and opened them days later.

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

Indonesia's colonial plantation owners barred Javanese workers from picking coffee for themselves, so in the 19th century the workers brewed the beans that wild civets had eaten and passed instead.

Lutefisk, the Nordic dried cod that turns to jelly before cooking, is cured by soaking it in what?

Lye soaks into the dried fish until it is caustic and inedible, so it then needs days in cold water, changed daily, before it is safe to cook into its jelly-like final form.

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 German landlord won a 1984 eviction case by opening a can of which fermented fish in the courtroom?

Surströmming brine had been spread in the building's stairwell by the tenant at Christmas 1981, and Cologne's regional court upheld the eviction once the landlord's side opened a can in front of it.

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 mixes in ptyalin, an enzyme from the brewer's mouth that breaks the corn's starch down into maltose; the chewed balls are then flattened and dried before brewing.

Edible bird's nests, harvested from cave walls for a prized Chinese soup, are built by swiftlets out of what?

Saliva is what the swiftlet builds with, gluing strand after strand to the rock for about a month until it sets into a small cup; the red nests are the rarest and fetch the highest prices.

Hasma, a Chinese dessert ingredient that swells greatly when soaked, is dried tissue from which animal?

Frogs, usually the Asiatic grass frog, supply the fatty tissue near the fallopian tubes; once kept for the imperial court, it is now double-boiled with rock sugar and served in Chinese communities as far off as North America.

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

The milt, the male fish's sperm sacs, goes by a name meaning 'white children'; the costliest comes from fugu, whose liver and ovaries can kill but whose milt is grilled and served as a winter luxury.

Jellied eels, sold with pie and mash since the 1700s, are a traditional speciality of which part of London?

The East End's poor made eels a staple because they were cheap and among the few fish that could survive the polluted Thames; London's oldest surviving eel and pie house, M. Manze, has served them 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 until the 19th century the soup carried a message: a suitor who was served czernina knew his proposal had been turned down, a custom recalled in the Polish epic Pan Tadeusz.

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

Pennsylvania Dutch farmers made it on butchering day so that nothing went to waste: head meat, liver and trimmings too odd for sausage were boiled, thickened with cornmeal and buckwheat, then 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 crossed into American sport in 2017, when the Seattle Mariners put the Oaxacan snack on their ballpark menu and the stand sold out at the home opener.

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

Silkworms leave the pupae behind once the silk is reeled off their cocoons, and Koreans took to eating this by-product widely only after the Korean War, when cheap protein was scarce.

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; the pie honours the legend of Tom Bawcock, a fisherman said to have braved a winter storm and landed enough fish to save Mousehole from starving.

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 named for a fish: Florentine cooks thought the dark, frilled tripe looked like a lamprey, lampreda in Italian, and gave it the eel's name.

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

Ammonia builds up as the skate's flesh breaks down, and it keeps the fish from spoiling: in the usual origin story, skate was the one catch that survived the long boat trip from Heuksando island to the mainland.

Rakfisk, a speciality of Norway's inland valleys that is salted and left to break down for months, comes from which fish?

Trout or char is salted and left for two to three months, or up to a year, while its own enzymes soften the flesh; it is then eaten just as it is, with no cooking at all.

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

Dormouse farming gave the edible dormouse its name: Romans shut the animals in dark, lidded clay jars, which made them drowsy, fed them walnuts, chestnuts and acorns, and served them once fat.

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 on its own once the toxin hypoglycin A has fallen to safe levels in the flesh; fruit forced open early can cause violent vomiting and even coma, and cooking does not make it safe.

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

Cyanide left in poorly processed bitter cassava can cause konzo, a permanent paralysis of the legs that breaks out in droughts and wars, when hungry families live on the root for weeks.

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

Sour foods switch the protein on: miraculin clings to the tongue's sweet receptors and fires them only when acid arrives, so a lemon tastes like lemonade until the effect wears off.

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, is a tunicate, the group now ranked as the closest living relatives of animals with backbones, so this knobbly orange lump is nearer kin to its diners than to the shellfish beside it.

Percebes, prised by hand from wave-battered Atlantic rocks and sold as a luxury in Spain, are what?

Goose barnacles cling to rocks pounded by Atlantic surf, so Galicia's percebeiros dash in between waves to scrape them off, a risk that helps make percebes one of Spain's costliest seafoods.

Poi, the Hawaiian staple pounded on a wooden board and eaten fresh or fermented, is made from what?

Taro is cooked, pounded to a paste and thinned with water; fresh poi is mild and faintly sweet, and two or three days at room temperature turn it sharp and tangy.

Eggs with ambergris, a waxy lump from a whale's gut, was reportedly the favourite dish of which 17th-century English king?

Charles II's sudden death in 1685 even stirred rumours that the dish had hidden poison; fresh ambergris smells foul, but it ages into the sweet-scented wax perfumers prized for making a fragrance last.

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

Vitamin C is plentiful in the raw skin, making muktuk one of the foods that kept the Inuit free of the scurvy that plagued European expeditions to the Arctic.

Igunaq, an Inuit dish of meat left to ferment for months, is most closely associated with which animal?

Walrus is the classic igunaq, and the risk is real: a batch that ferments badly can carry botulism, which is why health officials in Nunavik have told eaters to burn any meat they suspect.

Cuy, roasted whole in the Andes and eaten by the million in Peru each year, is which animal?

Guinea pig was bred for meat in the Andes long before Europeans made it a pet, and a Last Supper painted for Cusco's cathedral even shows Christ and the apostles sharing one.

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

Newfoundland's cod tongues are not tongues at all: the cut is a small piece of flesh from under the fish's jaw and throat, lightly coated and pan-fried until golden.

Which animals eat and pass the beans for a Thai coffee that has sold for $50 a cup?

Elephants at a rescue sanctuary in northern Thailand eat the cherries for Black Ivory Coffee, and about 33 kg of fruit yields a single kilo of finished coffee, which goes a long way to explain the price.

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.

Castoreum, a secretion once used in vanilla and raspberry flavourings, comes from sacs near the tail of which animal?

Beavers use it to scent-mark their territory, and American regulators still list the extract as a safe food additive, though the industry now uses only about 220 pounds a year.

Traditional Scottish haggis is illegal to import into the United States because it contains which organ?

Lungs make up 10–15% of a traditional haggis, and American rules have barred any food containing them since 1971, so haggis sold there is made to a different recipe.

Escargots, served in France in their shells with garlic and parsley butter, are which animals?

Snails have been eaten since prehistoric times, and French cooks remove them, cook them and then tuck them back into the shells with the butter.

Farmers in Japan grow which fruit inside boxes so that it takes the shape of a cube?

Watermelon cubes were meant to fit neatly in a fridge and not roll when cut, but they must be picked before they ripen, so most are sold as costly ornaments.

A hotel in Dawson City, Yukon, is notorious for a cocktail that contains which preserved human body part?

A toe sits in every glass, and drinkers join the club only when it touches their lips; swallowing it brings a $2,500 fine.

Most 'wasabi' served outside Japan is really a dyed green paste made mainly from which pungent root?

Horseradish, blended with mustard, starch and green colouring, stands in because the true wasabi plant is too hard to grow on a large scale.

Foie gras, the French luxury made by force-feeding geese, is which organ of the bird?

The liver swells to as much as ten times its usual volume, and French law protects foie gras as part of the country's cultural and gastronomic heritage.

Which chocolate bar, battered and deep-fried, became a notorious novelty at a chip shop in Stonehaven, Scotland?

Mars bars went into the fryer at the Haven Chip Bar in 1992, by one man's claim, and by 2012 about 70% of them were being sold to curious visitors.

Toad in the hole, a British dinner that contains no amphibians, is Yorkshire pudding batter baked around what?

Sausages peeping through the batter may explain the name: toads lie in wait for their prey half-hidden in burrows.

Which common baking spice contains myristicin and can cause hallucinations when eaten in large doses?

Nutmeg does nothing unusual in a pinch, but a large dose can bring on hallucinations along with convulsions, palpitations and nausea.

Traditional caviar, the salt-cured roe prized from the Caspian Sea, comes from which family of fish?

Sturgeon are the only source the United Nations food agency accepts: roe from salmon, lumpfish or any other family counts merely as a substitute.

Vegemite, the dark salty spread Australians put on toast, was created to use up which leftover from beer making?

Yeast was being dumped by breweries when chemist Cyril Callister was asked in 1919 to turn it into a spread, after the First World War disrupted imports of British Marmite.

Which part of the rhubarb plant is poisonous, thanks to high levels of oxalic acid, and never cooked?

The leaves carry enough oxalic acid to damage the kidneys, which is why only the stalks ever reach the kitchen.

Which fruit, the largest borne by any tree at up to 50 kg, is canned and sold as a meat alternative?

Jackfruit can grow to 90 cm long, and the canned fruit, which keeps for up to a year, is seasoned with spices as a stand-in for meat.

Bunny chow, a Durban street food that contains no rabbit, is curry served inside a hollowed-out what?

A cheap loaf of bread stood in for fragile roti among Durban's Indian community, since it was sold everywhere and sturdy enough to hold the curry.

Which small fish is an ingredient of Worcestershire sauce, a fact that catches out many vegetarians?

Anchovies sit in the Lea & Perrins recipe alongside vinegar, molasses, tamarind and cloves, so international food standards recommend a label warning.

Cochineal, a scale insect dried and crushed for the food dye labelled E120, gives sweets and yoghurts which colour?

Red carmine comes from carminic acid, which the insect makes to deter predators and which accounts for roughly a fifth of its dried weight.

Dragon fruit, the pink-skinned fruit also sold as pitaya, grows on which kind of plant?

A cactus native to southern Mexico and Central America bears the fruit on long triangular stems, and a broken piece of stem can take root as a new plant.

Chuño, a staple of Bolivia and Peru, is made by leaving which crop out to freeze on cold Altiplano nights?

Potatoes are frozen by night and dried in fierce daytime sun over five days, and the Quechua name simply means frozen potato.

The 'spots' in spotted dick, a steamed British suet pudding served with custard, are what?

Currants or raisins dot the pudding, which first appears in an 1849 cookbook by the chef Alexis Soyer under the name Plum Bolster.

Which seabird, netted on Faroe Islands cliffs with a long pole, was traditionally eaten fresh, salted or smoked?

Puffin is still counted a delicacy in the Faroes, where the traditional tool is a net on a 3.6-metre pole, handled rather like a very long lacrosse stick.

Butter tea, the everyday drink of Tibet, is traditionally churned with salt and the butter of which animal?

Yak butter is shaken with brewed tea and salt in a tall cylinder, though cheaper butter from cow's milk is increasingly taking its place.

Laverbread, fried with bacon and cockles for a traditional Welsh breakfast, is a soft purée of what?

Seaweed gathered from the west coast of Britain is washed repeatedly and boiled into a dark green pulp, then often rolled in oatmeal before frying.

Pule, a Serbian cheese reported to be the world's most expensive, is made mostly from which animal's milk?

Donkey milk is scarce: a small herd of Balkan jennies supplies all of it, and it takes 25 litres to make a single kilogram of pule.

King Henry I of England is said to have died after eating a surfeit of which fish against his doctor's advice?

Lampreys were blamed by the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon, but the king's illness dragged on for days and historians think the meal an improbable cause of death.

French diners traditionally hide their faces under a napkin to eat which tiny songbird whole?

Ortolan buntings are fattened until they double in bulk, drowned in Armagnac and eaten in one go, with some diners crunching through the bones.

Mock turtle soup, an English imitation made with calf's head instead of turtle, inspired a character in which book?

Alice in Wonderland has a Mock Turtle named after the soup, and John Tenniel drew him with a turtle's shell and the head and feet of a calf.

Sweetbreads, an offal dish with a misleading name, are usually which gland from a young animal's throat?

The thymus turns to fibrous tissue as an animal ages, which is why throat sweetbreads come only from the young; the pancreas is sold under the same name.

Uni, a delicacy served raw in Japan as sashimi or sushi with soy sauce, is which part of a sea urchin?

The gonads, five to each urchin, are the only meaty, edible part of the animal, and menus sometimes pass them off politely as roe.

Mett, the raw minced pork Germans spread on rolls, is moulded for party buffets into the shape of which animal?

Hedgehog-shaped mett, bristling with raw onion pieces for spines, has been a buffet centrepiece in Germany since the 1950s.

Tavukgöğsü, a milk pudding once served to Ottoman sultans and still popular in Turkey, is made with shreds of what?

Chicken breast, the literal meaning of the Turkish name, went into the pudding at Topkapı Palace, and the traditional recipe still calls for the white meat.

Egg coffee, made by whipping yolks with condensed milk when fresh milk was scarce in the 1940s, comes from which city?

Hanoi's Giang Café still serves the drink, and the founder's son says his father devised the recipe by swapping the missing milk for beaten yolk.

Pulque, a drink held sacred in pre-Columbian Mexico, is fermented from the sap of which plant?

Agave sap is simply fermented for pulque, whereas mezcal and tequila are distilled spirits made from the same family of plants.

Anticuchos, grilled skewers popular in Peru and Bolivia, are most often made from which part of a cow?

The heart, cut into thin slivers and marinated in spices, oil and vinegar, is roasted over charcoal on metal skewers and served hot with a spicy sauce.

Fiddleheads, foraged each spring in Maine and eastern Canada, are the furled young shoots of which plant?

Ferns such as the ostrich fern send up the coiled shoots, which the Maliseet, Mi'kmaq and Penobscot peoples harvested long before they introduced them to Acadian settlers.

Brunost, the brown Norwegian 'cheese' with a sweet caramelised taste, is made by boiling down what?

Whey is boiled until its milk sugars caramelise, and in 1863 Anne Hov, working on a mountain farm, made the result firmer and richer by adding cream to the pot.

The geoduck, a North American seafood whose siphon alone can reach a metre long, is what kind of animal?

A clam, and the largest burrowing one in the world, the geoduck has a shell only 15 to 20 cm long, so its siphon makes up most of its length.

Isinglass, long used by British brewers to clear cask beer, is collagen taken from which part of a fish?

The swim bladder is dried, shaped and added to the cask to speed up clarification, though many cask ales are now made without it.

Mad honey, an intoxicating honey produced mainly in Nepal and Turkey, comes from bees feeding on which shrub?

Rhododendron nectar carries grayanotoxins, giving the dark reddish honey toxic and narcotic effects; it is taken as both a folk medicine and a recreational drug.

The cashew, whose shell holds a potent irritant resin, is a botanical relative of which notorious plant?

Poison ivy's oil urushiol is a chemical cousin of the resin in cashew shells, which is why the nuts are sold only once shelled and roasted or steamed.

Salty liquorice, a Nordic confection flavoured with an astringent salt, is known by the name salmiakki in which country?

Finland's word for it comes from salmiak, the salt that gives the sweet its astringent bite and is also used to flavour ice creams, syrups and alcoholic drinks.

Herring under a fur coat, a layered New Year salad in Russia and Ukraine, gets its purple colour from what?

Beetroot, grated and mixed with mayonnaise, forms the top layer, the coat of the name, over diced salted herring, egg, carrot and onion.

The pie floater, a meat pie sitting in thick pea soup, is a heritage-listed street food of which Australian city?

Adelaide's pie carts made the dish popular after it appeared in the 1890s, and in 2003 it was recognised as a South Australian Heritage Icon.

Lardo di Colonnata, a Tuscan delicacy of cured pork fatback, is aged in basins carved from which stone?

Marble quarried around the hamlet of Colonnata, part of Carrara, forms the curing basins, and lardo has been made there since Roman times.

Huhu grubs, beetle larvae said to taste like peanut butter, are a traditional food in which country?

New Zealand's Māori have long eaten the larvae raw or cooked in a hāngī, at the stage when the insect is at its most nutritious.

Akutaq, the Alaska Native dessert also known as Alaskan ice cream, is traditionally made from berries mixed with what?

Whipped fat or tallow from caribou gives the dish its light, fluffy texture, and dried fish or meat is often blended in before it is eaten frozen or unfrozen.

In the American South, dill pickles are soaked until their flesh turns pink in a brine mixed with which powdered drink?

Kool-Aid pickles, nicknamed koolickles, are a children's favourite, with fruit punch and cherry the most popular flavours for the job.

Bottarga, a salted and cured roe pouch featured in Italian cooking, is made chiefly from which fish?

Grey mullet roe is the classic, though bluefin tuna is also used, and Taiwan makes a softer version while Korea cures its own from mullet or freshwater drum.

Fesikh, a salted and fermented fish, is eaten at the spring festival of Sham Ennessim in which country?

Egypt has marked Sham Ennessim since ancient times, and the national holiday still brings out a fish that is salted, pickled, fermented and dried.

Which pungent cheese is ripened with Brevibacterium linens, a bacterium also partly responsible for human foot odour?

Limburger turns notoriously smelly only as it ages, and the rind is sometimes rinsed or removed to weaken the odour.