50 free Caribbean Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Caribbean cooking is what a dozen cultures made of the same islands: Taino barbacoa and cassava, West African okra and one-pot rice, Spanish sofrito, British saltfish, Indian curry and roti, Chinese woks, all seasoned with the Scotch bonnet. Every island has a national dish it will argue about, from Jamaica's ackee and saltfish to Barbados's cou-cou and flying fish and Grenada's oil down. These 50 questions cover the signature dishes and their stories: jerk's Taino and Maroon origins, the ackee that Captain Bligh carried to Kew and the breadfruit he brought back, doubles invented in Princes Town in 1936, mofongo in its wooden pilon, callaloo's Kimbundu name, Guyanese pepperpot preserved by cassareep, bake and shark on Maracas beach and the roti wrap from San Fernando. There are questions on rum's plantation birth, the pina colada's rival bartenders, the Cuban sandwich rivalry between Tampa and Miami, Jamaican patties and coco bread, rice and peas, conch fritters and the goat stew that Montserrat made its national dish. Easy questions cover ingredients and islands; the hardest ask about names and dates. Every answer is cited to the page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which staple crop did Indigenous Caribbean peoples cultivate before European colonisation?
Cassava
Corn, sweet potatoes, peppers, avocados and guavas were also native staples.
Q 02What is the green herb-and-oil marinade that seasons much Caribbean cooking called?
Sofrito
Garlic, onions, Scotch bonnets, cilantro and thyme are typical ingredients.
Q 03Goat stew is the official national dish of which island?
Montserrat
It is also a signature dish of St Kitts and Nevis.
Q 04Which rice dish is known in the Anglophone Caribbean as 'cook-up'?
Pelau
In Trinidad it starts by caramelising sugar and browning meat before adding rice and pigeon peas.
Q 05Black cake, served on special occasions, derives from which English dessert?
Christmas pudding
Fruit is often soaked in wine or rum for months beforehand.
Q 06What were the plots where enslaved people grew their own food called?
Provision grounds
In Jamaica they grew eddoes, Guinea yams, dasheen and plantains and sold the surplus.
Q 07Jerk cooking originated with which indigenous Jamaican peoples?
The Arawak and Taino
Descendants of 17th-century Maroons adopted the technique.
Q 08Which two ingredients are the main components of jerk seasoning?
Allspice and Scotch bonnet
Cloves, cinnamon, scallions, thyme and brown sugar are common additions.
Q 09The word 'jerk' is said to derive from which Quechua-origin Spanish term?
Charqui
The same word became 'jerky' in English.
Q 10Which Taino word for a 'framework of sticks' gave English the word barbecue?
Barbacoa
Spanish historian Oviedo described Taino meat-curing on one in 1516.
Q 11What wood is traditionally used to smoke jerked meat?
Pimento
Pimento is the allspice tree; its berries flavour the rub and its wood the smoke.
Q 12What is Jamaica's national dish?
Ackee and saltfish
It is usually eaten at breakfast with breadfruit, dumplings or bammy.
Q 13From which African country was ackee brought to Jamaica?
Ghana
The name comes from the Akan people's word for it; in West Africa it is mostly used for medicine and soap.
Q 14Whose name does the ackee's scientific name, Blighia sapida, honour?
Q 21Trinidadian doubles consist of curried chickpeas on what?
Two fried flatbreads
It is a breakfast and hangover food of Indo-Trinidadian origin.
Q 22Where were doubles created in 1936?
Princes Town
Customers asked Emamool Deen to double the bara, and the name stuck.
Q 23Mofongo is a Puerto Rican dish built around which ingredient?
Plantains
They are fried, then mashed with garlic, pork and broth in a wooden pilon.
Q 24What is the wooden mortar and pestle used to make mofongo called?
Captain William Bligh
He carried the fruit from Jamaica to Kew in 1793.
Q 15Why are there restrictions on importing ackee into the United States?
Parts of the fruit are toxic
The arils are poisonous before the husk opens on ripening.
Q 16What is a Jamaican patty traditionally tucked into to make a full meal?
Coco bread
Bite-sized versions are called cocktail patties.
Q 17Which British pastry influenced the Jamaican patty?
The Cornish pasty
Spanish empanadas were the other model.
Q 18Which community ran most of Jamaica's bakeries and commercialised the patty in the 1960s?
Chinese Jamaicans
Tastee (1966) and Juici Patties (1978) grew out of that trade.
Q 19In Trinidad and the Windward Islands, callaloo is made from the leaves of which plant?
Taro (dasheen)
Jamaicans use the name for a local amaranth instead.
Q 20The word callaloo most likely comes from which African language's word for okra?
Kimbundu
The rival theory traces it to Tupi caaruru, 'thick leaf'.
Pilon
The goal is a tight ball that soaks up broth and hides cracklings inside.
Q 25Cou-cou is made mainly from cornmeal and which vegetable?
Okra
A flat wooden 'cou-cou stick' shaped like a mini cricket bat is used to stir it.
Q 26Cou-cou and what make up the national dish of Barbados?
Flying fish
Barbados calls itself 'the land of the flying fish'.
Q 27Which French anti-ship missile is named after the Exocoetidae fish family?
Exocet
The Exocoetidae family name means 'sleeping outside' in Greek.
Q 28The Scotch bonnet pepper is named for its resemblance to what?
A Scottish tam o' shanter
It is a cultivar of Capsicum chinense from the Amazon basin.
Q 29The pina colada originated in which territory?
Puerto Rico
It proclaimed the cocktail its official drink in 1978.
Q 30What does pina colada literally mean?
Strained pineapple
The 1924 National Geographic described a 'pina fria', cold pineapple, instead.