Bengali Food
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40 free Bengali Food trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Bengali cooking is built on rivers and paddy fields. Fish, lentils and vegetables arrive in a set order of courses, and a famous sweet tooth has produced some of the best-loved desserts in South Asia. The cuisine spans West Bengal in India and the whole of Bangladesh, so it carries the marks of nawabs, colonial traders and migrant cooks. This quiz on Bengali food covers the fish and curries of the home table, the street snacks of Kolkata and Dhaka, spice blends and cooking terms, festival dishes, and the stories behind the sweets. Some questions are easy wins for anyone who has eaten at a Bengali table; others dig into regional specialities and food history. It suits home cooks, travellers planning a trip to Kolkata or Dhaka, and anyone who wants a ready-made round for a quiz night. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which silvery fish, a herring relative prized in Bengali kitchens, is the national fish of Bangladesh?
Hilsa
Hilsa is caught in such numbers that Bangladesh is the world's top producer, and its festival-season shipments to India were nicknamed Hilsa Diplomacy.
Q 02Which spongy Bengali sweet of chhena balls in syrup won West Bengal a geographical indication tag?
Rasgulla
Rasgulla as Bengal knows it is credited to Kolkata confectioner Nobin Chandra Das, whose son later vacuum-packed it in cans and carried its fame far beyond the city.
Q 03Which Kolkata street food, said to have begun at Nizam restaurant, is named after bamboo kebab skewers?
Kathi roll
Kathi roll takes its name from kati, the Bengali word for stick, which caught on after Nizam swapped its heavy iron skewers for bamboo ones in 1964.
Q 04Which vegetable sets Kolkata biryani apart, in a recipe credited to the exiled nawab Wajid Ali Shah?
Potato
Potato goes into the pot with the meat and rice, a twist dated to the 1850s, when Kolkata became a refuge for exiled nawabs.
Q 05Which crisp, hollow snack, dunked in sour tamarind water, do Bengali speakers in Kolkata call phuchka?
Panipuri
Panipuri goes by phuchka in Bengal, a name that imitates the sound of eating one, and Kolkata vendors traditionally hand over a dry one free at the end of a round.
Q 06Which fruit, cooked green in curries as a stand-in for meat, is the national fruit of Bangladesh?
Jackfruit
Jackfruit can weigh up to 50 kg and stretch 90 cm long, and Sri Lanka claims it as a national fruit too.
Q 07Which Anglo-Indian breakfast dish is thought to derive from khichuri, the Bengali dish of rice and lentils?
Kedgeree
Kedgeree reached Victorian breakfast tables with returning colonials, who made it with flaked smoked haddock and hard-boiled eggs.
Q 08Which Bengali dessert is made by fermenting sweetened, thickened milk overnight in an earthenware pot?
Mishti doi
Mishti doi thickens in its clay pot because water slowly evaporates through the porous walls, which also keep the culture at the right temperature.
Q 09Bengali chingri malai curry simmers prawns in which creamy liquid, a possible echo of old trade with Southeast Asia?
Coconut milk
Coconut milk, not dairy cream, is the malai in this dish, which is made with tiger or king prawns and gentle spices.
Q 10Sailors from which region of Bangladesh settled in Britain and went on to run most of its Indian restaurants?
Sylhet
Sylhet was home to the lascar sailors who settled in Britain in the early 20th century, and about 95% of the Bangladeshis who own its curry houses trace their roots there.
Q 11The Bengali fried sweet ledikeni is named after the wife of which Governor-General of India?
Lord Canning
Lord Canning governed India from 1856 to 1862, and the sweet made for his wife, by legend the work of Bhim Chandra Nag, saw her title wear down in Bengali speech to ledikeni.
Q 12Which dish of cooked rice soaked overnight in water do Bengalis eat to welcome their New Year, Pohela Boishakh?
Panta bhat
Panta bhat ferments as it soaks and is usually eaten in the morning with salt, onion and chilli, though high-end restaurants in Bangladesh serve it too.
Q 13Which Bengali blend mixes equal parts of whole seeds, among them fenugreek, nigella and fennel?
Panch phoron
Q 21Which deep-fried Bengali flatbread is made with refined maida, unlike its North Indian cousin puri?
Luchi
Luchi dough also works ghee into the maida, and a classic stuffed version, radhabollobi, hides a dal filling inside.
Q 22The Bengali street food Mughlai paratha is believed to have been created for the court of which emperor?
Jahangir
Jahangir ruled when, by tradition, the keema-and-egg stuffed flatbread first appeared in Bengal, as an offshoot of the Turkish gözleme.
Q 23Which thick, biscuit-like flatbread of Old Dhaka is named in legend after a general and the dancer he loved?
Bakarkhani
Bakarkhani is said to honour Agha Baqer and the dancer Khani Begum, and the first shop in Dhaka to sell it opened close to Lalbagh Fort.
Panch phoron literally means five spices, and Bengali cooks sometimes swap one of the seeds for radhuni, or wild celery seed.
Q 14Bengali pantua, deep-fried chhena balls soaked in syrup, is the regional cousin of which North Indian sweet?
Gulab jamun
Gulab jamun is made from khoa and scented with rose, while pantua starts from chhena and is flavoured mainly with cardamom.
Q 15Which Bengali sweet, made by tossing chhena with sugar over low heat, is moulded into conch shells and fish?
Sandesh
Sandesh in medieval texts was most likely a sweet of solidified kheer, and by the second half of the 19th century the name had settled on the chhena version.
Q 16Nolen gur, the winter jaggery that flavours Bengali sweets such as Jaynagarer moa, comes from which tree?
Date palm
Date palm juice is collected only in winter, so sweets made with nolen gur, like the moa of Jaynagar, are sold only from about November to January.
Q 17Bengali beguni is a crisp fritter made by dipping slices of which vegetable in besan batter?
Eggplant
Eggplant is begun in Bengali, which gives the fritter its name, and the slices are usually cut lengthwise before frying.
Q 18Jhalmuri, the spicy Kolkata street snack that a British chef took to London, is built on which ingredient?
Puffed rice
Puffed rice is tossed with spices, chopped vegetables and chanachur, and chef Angus Denoon began selling it on London streets after trying it in Kolkata.
Q 19Bengali kasundi is a sharp relish made by fermenting the ground seeds of which plant?
Mustard
Mustard for kasundi was pickled after the winter harvest, and in many Bengali homes the seeds were ceremonially washed on the day of Akshaya Tritiya.
Q 20Shukto, the mixed-vegetable dish that traditionally opens a Bengali meal, is known for which taste?
Bitter
Bitter foods at the start of a meal were thought to be medicinal, a habit promoted by Ayurvedic authors, and a version made with milk softens the edge.
Q 24Mezban, the great feast of Chittagong in Bangladesh, is traditionally built around white rice and which meat?
Beef
Beef in every cut, down to bone marrow soup, fills the mezban table, and the feast's name comes from a Persian word meaning host.
Q 25Which sour yogurt drink, spiced with mint and green chilli, do Bangladeshis sip after biryani to aid digestion?
Borhani
Borhani is a wedding and iftar fixture in Dhaka, made from sour curd with black salt and coriander, and some count it as a kind of lassi.
Q 26What is unusual about the tea Romesh Ram Gour says he devised at his shop in Srimongol, Bangladesh?
It has seven layers
It has seven layers because teas of different density settle into separate bands, each with its own colour and taste, from syrupy sweet to spicy clove.
Q 27Which group of Bengali Hindu women, barred from eating fish and meat, pioneered inventive vegetable cooking?
Widows
Widows were also denied shallot and garlic, so they built a whole set of dishes from vegetables and cheap spices, with ginger still allowed.
Q 28Cooks from which neighbouring region ran the kitchens of affluent Kolkata families in the 19th century?
Odisha
Odisha sent so many cooks to the city that some Kolkata classics are thought to have begun as Odia dishes, later refined in Bengali kitchens.
Q 29Which tannery district on Kolkata's eastern edge became the home of the city's Chinese community and its cooking?
Tangra
Tangra is where the community finally settled after first living in a village south of the city, and Chinese food spread to almost every Kolkata street corner.
Q 30In Bengali home cooking, a bhorta is a spiced vegetable dish that has been prepared in which way?
Mashed
Mashed vegetables, first roasted, boiled or fried, make a bhorta, and the same dish goes by chokha elsewhere in South Asia.