Beans
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40 free Beans trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Beans are among the oldest foods people have grown, and among the strangest to read about. They have been spent as money, banned by a philosopher, flung about at festivals and blamed for the troubles of at least one fairy-tale giant. Some of the best-known beans of all, coffee and vanilla included, are not beans in the botanical sense. This quiz covers the whole family: the varieties in the kitchen cupboard, classic bean dishes from around the world, the plant science that makes beans good for the soil, and the sweets, sayings and stories that borrowed the name. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick up a fact even when you guess wrong. It is written for curious eaters, quiz hosts and families. Most of the questions are friendly enough for children to play along, with a few tougher ones saved for the gardeners and food historians in the room.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Jack and the Beanstalk, which family animal does Jack trade away for a handful of magic beans?
A cow
A cow is the price, much to the dismay of Jack's widowed mother. The telling most often reprinted today is Joseph Jacobs's, from his 1890 collection English Fairy Tales.
Q 02Which US president, a jelly bean fan since quitting smoking, sent some into space on the shuttle Challenger?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan gave jars of Jelly Belly beans to visiting dignitaries. In 1983 he made them the first jelly beans in space, a surprise for the astronauts aboard Challenger.
Q 03Which US city is home to Cloud Gate, the mirror-polished steel sculpture nicknamed The Bean?
Chicago
Chicago unveiled the sculpture in Millennium Park in 2004. Artist Anish Kapoor took his idea from liquid mercury, and its 168 welded plates show no visible seams.
Q 04Coffee beans are really seeds, usually found in pairs inside a small fruit that growers call a coffee what?
Cherry
Cherry is the growers' word for the fruit, which usually holds two seeds lying flat side to flat side. The occasional fruit with a single seed is known as a peaberry.
Q 05Vanilla beans, source of the world's second-priciest spice, are the seed pods of which family of flowers?
Orchids
Orchids of the genus Vanilla grow the pods. In 1841 a 12-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion, Edmond Albius, discovered how to pollinate them by hand, which let the crop spread worldwide.
Q 06Mexican jumping beans twitch because which creature is living inside each hollowed-out seed pod?
A moth larva
A moth larva curls and uncurls inside, hitting the wall of the pod so that it appears to jump. The pods come from a Mexican shrub that is no relation of true beans.
Q 07Which ancient Greek thinker, famed for a theorem about triangles, forbade his followers to eat fava beans?
Pythagoras
Pythagoras banned fava beans for reasons argued over since antiquity. One legend says he was caught and killed because he refused to escape through a bean field.
Q 08Which bean was used as money across Mesoamerica before the Spanish conquest, buying items such as tamales?
Cocoa
Cocoa beans changed hands like coins, buying anything from tamales to a rabbit dinner. The Aztec emperor Moctezuma II was said to drink nothing but chocolate, from a golden goblet.
Q 09Which US state, once famous for its "chili queens" and their chili joints, made chili con carne its official dish?
Texas
Texas made chili its state dish in 1977; the chili queens sold theirs in San Antonio. Some purists insist the word applies only to the basic stew, with no beans or tomatoes at all.
Q 10Which so-called nut is really a relative of beans, with pods that ripen underground?
Peanut
The peanut is a legume, in the same plant family as beans and peas. Linnaeus named the species hypogaea, from the Greek for 'under the earth', after its odd habit of fruiting below ground.
Q 11Which New England city is nicknamed Beantown after its baked beans sweetened with molasses?
Boston
Boston owes the nickname to its beans, baked with molasses and salt pork. The city was a rum exporter in the 18th century, and molasses is what rum is distilled from.
Q 12Which American company's baked beans first went on sale in Britain at London's Fortnum & Mason?
Heinz
Heinz sold its first British tins to the London store, which bought every sample case on offer. The raw beans are sealed in the can with tomato sauce, then cooked inside it in large pressure cookers.
Q 13Lima beans are named after the capital of which country, once stamped on crates of them sent abroad?
Peru
Peru exported the beans under Spanish rule in boxes labelled with their place of origin, 'Lima, Peru', and the name stuck. In the Carolinas the large pale kind is called the butter bean.
Q 21Which chili con carne bean is so rich in a natural toxin that it must be boiled hard before eating?
Kidney
Kidney beans eaten raw or undercooked can cause poisoning, thanks to a lectin called phytohaemagglutinin. A slow cooker may not get hot enough to destroy it, so boil them first.
Q 22In the Three Sisters planting method of Native American farmers, beans climb the stalks of which crop?
Corn
Corn gives the beans a living trellis, and the beans steady its stalks in high winds. The third sister, squash, shades the ground with its wide leaves and keeps weeds down.
Q 23Bean plants enrich the soil because bacteria in their root nodules capture which gas from the air?
Nitrogen
Nitrogen gas is turned into ammonia inside the nodules by bacteria called rhizobia, and the plant builds proteins from it. That is why bean crops need less fertiliser than most.
Q 14Feijoada, a slow-cooked stew of black beans and pork, is the national dish of which country?
Brazil
Brazil's feijoada is probably an adaptation of Portuguese bean stews. It is traditionally a long, leisurely Saturday lunch, served with rice, greens and slices of orange.
Q 15Cassoulet, a rich stew of beans, sausage, pork and preserved goose, comes from the south of which country?
France
France's town of Castelnaudary claims the dish. Tradition says cassoulet was invented there in 1355, while the town was under siege by the English in the Hundred Years' War.
Q 16Which speckled bean is the usual choice for refried beans in Tex-Mex and northern Mexican cooking?
Pinto
Pinto, Spanish for 'painted', is the favourite for refried beans in the United States and northern Mexico. The dish's English name is a mistranslation: refritos means well fried, not fried twice.
Q 17Which soft white food, also called bean curd, is made by pressing the curds of soy milk into blocks?
Tofu
Tofu is thought to date back some 2,000 years to China's Han dynasty. Legend credits its invention to a Han prince, Liu An.
Q 18Which legume is cooked, mashed and blended with tahini, lemon juice and garlic to make hummus?
Chickpea
Chickpea is exactly what the Arabic word hummus means. The dip's full name, hummus bi tahini, simply lists its two main ingredients.
Q 19Which book series features Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, sweets that come in flavours such as earwax?
Harry Potter
Harry Potter's fictional sweets were later made for real by Jelly Belly, which kept the gruesome flavours, among them vomit, skunk spray and rotten egg.
Q 20In an idiom first recorded in the United States, someone who 'spills the beans' has done what?
Revealed a secret
Revealed a secret is the meaning. One theory traces it to ancient Greek votes cast with coloured beans, where a spilled jar gave the result away, though that may be folk etymology.
Q 24In which US city is red beans and rice a Monday tradition, dating from the days when Monday was washday?
New Orleans
New Orleans cooks made the dish on washday Mondays from red beans and the pork bones left over from Sunday dinner. Many neighbourhood restaurants still serve it as a Monday special.
Q 25Which Washington institution's dining room serves bean soup every day, a tradition dating from the early 1900s?
The US Senate
The US Senate has several stories about how the rule began, none of them proven. In 1943 wartime rationing left its kitchen short of beans, but more were found by the next day.
Q 26Which small white bean, known in Britain as the haricot, is the usual bean in a can of baked beans?
Navy
Navy beans got their American name because the US fleet has served them to its sailors as a staple since the mid-1800s. The town of Kingaroy is known as the Baked Bean Capital of Australia.
Q 27At ancient Rome's Lemuria festival, householders threw black beans behind them at midnight to ward off what?
Ghosts
Ghosts of the restless dead, the lemures, were thought to gather up the beans unseen. The poet Ovid, the only detailed source, has the householder walk barefoot through the house to do it.
Q 28Black-eyed peas, really a kind of bean, are eaten in the American South for luck on which holiday?
New Year's Day
New Year's Day calls for Hoppin' John, a dish of the peas with rice and pork. The peas stand for pennies or coins, and some cooks drop a real coin into the pot.
Q 29What do botanists call the scar where a bean was attached to its pod, the 'eye' of a black-eyed pea?
Hilum
Hilum is the botanical name for the mark, left on the seed coat where the seed was once attached. On some beans and peas it stands out so boldly that it is simply called the eye.
Q 30Moros y Cristianos, black beans and white rice named after medieval Spain's wars, is a dish of which country?
Cuba
Cuba's dish has a name meaning Moors and Christians: the black beans stand for the Moors and the white rice for the Christians who fought over medieval Iberia.