This cheese trivia quiz has 70 free questions with answers, and every one is checked against a real source. It covers the famous names (cheddar, brie, feta, gouda, halloumi) and the strange corners of the cheese world: the Sardinian cheese sold with live maggots inside, the Serbian one that costs $1,300 a kilo, the French wheel that a university lab crowned the smelliest on Earth, and the English cheese that cannot legally be made in the village it is named after. It also gets into how cheese is made and eaten: what rennet actually does, why Emmental has holes, which president stank out the White House with a 1,400 lb block, why the moon was ever 'green cheese', and where archaeologists found 5,500-year-old milk-fat residue. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few that will stump a cheesemonger. It suits pub quiz rounds, foodie nights, wine-and-cheese parties, or just settling an argument about who knows their Roquefort from their Gorgonzola.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which cheese, the UK's most popular, is named for a Somerset village with a cave-filled gorge?
Cheddar
The village had a natural advantage: its caves kept a steady temperature and humidity, and tradition once required the cheese to be made within 30 miles of Wells Cathedral.
Q 02Which sheep's-milk blue cheese received France's first Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée in 1925?
Roquefort
Every wheel is made from the milk of Lacaune sheep, and about 4.5 litres of milk go into each kilogram of finished cheese.
Q 03Which English cheese cannot legally be made in the village it is named after?
Stilton
Only cheese made in Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire qualifies; the village of Stilton, where it was originally sold at a coaching inn, is in Cambridgeshire.
Q 04Which Sardinian sheep's-milk cheese with live insect larvae is banned across the EU?
Casu martzu
The cheese fly's larvae break down the fats until the cheese weeps a liquid locals call 'teardrop'; a ready wheel can hold thousands of them.
Q 05Pule, the world's most expensive cheese, is made in Serbia mostly from which animal's milk?
Donkey
Only about 100 jennies in the Zasavica reserve are milked for it, and it takes 25 litres of milk to make a single kilogram.
Q 06Sales of which Yorkshire cheese rose 23% after Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?
Wensleydale
Wallace names it as a favourite in the 1995 short A Close Shave, and the creamery later licensed an official Wallace & Gromit brand of the cheese.
Q 07Which cheese is chased down Cooper's Hill at the annual cheese-rolling?
Double Gloucester
The wheel gets a one-second head start and is rarely caught; the first runner across the finish line at the bottom wins it anyway.
Q 08Which grillable cheese must be made in Cyprus to carry its name in the US or the EU?
Halloumi
Its high melting point is why it can be fried or grilled without collapsing, and the UK is its largest importer.
Q 09Under EU rules, feta's sheep's milk may be mixed with up to 30% milk from which other animal?
Goat
Most cheese sold as feta in the United States is made domestically from cow's milk, which would not qualify for the name inside the EU.
Q 10The zig-zag rind on Manchego comes from pressing the curd in baskets plaited from what?
Esparto grass
Modern moulds simply have the pattern, called pleita, carved into their inner surface; the cheese must be made from Manchega sheep's milk and aged at least 60 days.
Q 11Marie Harel, a farmer from Normandy, is traditionally credited with creating which soft cheese in 1791?
Camembert
The famous round wooden box came a century later, in 1890, when an engineer named Ridel designed it so the cheese could travel further.
Q 12Which Dutch city's historic cheese market featured the hand-clapping haggling ritual called handjeklap?
Gouda
Guild porters in coloured straw hats carried the farmers' 16 kg wheels to the weigh house once a price was clapped out.
Q 13Which Dutch cheese, sold in red-wax spheres, was reputedly the world's most popular from the 14th to 18th centuries?
Edam
In Spain and its former colonies it is still known as queso de bola, and in Yucatán a hollowed-out ball is stuffed with spiced meat as queso relleno.
Q 21Havarti, renamed in 1952 after the farm where Hanne Nielsen worked, comes from which country?
Denmark
Before 1952 it was sold as 'Danish Tilsiter'; in 2019 the EU gave the name protected geographical status after four years of lobbying.
Q 22Jarlsberg, a mild holey cheese named after a manor in Vestfold, comes from which country?
Norway
The modern recipe was developed in 1956 at an agricultural university, and it tops Grandiosa, the country's best-selling frozen pizza.
Q 23Genetics suggests the animals behind mozzarella di bufala reached Italy in the 7th century from where?
India
Fresh mozzarella is usually sold as a 90-gram ball and is traditionally eaten the day after it is made.
Q 14Which semi-hard orange cheese was created in 1885 in the Midwestern town it is named after?
Colby
Accounts differ on whether Joseph Steinwand meant to do it or simply forgot to drain the batch; either way it skipped the laborious curd-stacking step used for harder cheeses.
Q 15Which mild white cheese, first made by Franciscan friars in California, is named partly for David Jacks?
Monterey Jack
Doña Juana Cota de Boronda sold it as Queso del País to support her family, and pressed the curds with a handmade jack that may also have inspired the name.
Q 16Which bright-orange Lille cheese owes its grey rind to deliberately added cheese mites?
Mimolette
It was created at the request of Louis XIV as a home-grown rival to a popular Dutch import, and looks uncannily like a cantaloupe.
Q 17Which smelly washed-rind cheese originated in the Herve area of what is now Belgium?
Limburger
In recent years a single Midwestern cooperative has been the only producer left in the United States.
Q 18Which Pas-de-Calais beer-washed cheese did Cranfield researchers rate the smelliest of 15 in 2004?
Vieux-Boulogne
A 2007 follow-up using electronic-nose sensors confirmed the title; the cheese itself only dates from 1982.
Q 19Charles Martell's Stinking Bishop cheese takes its name not from a clergyman but from what?
A variety of pear
The rind is washed every four weeks in perry made from that pear, and only around 1,000 wheels are made a year.
Q 20Which Italian blue cheese, named after a town near Milan, is said to have been created around AD 879?
Gorgonzola
It comes in two styles, the buttery dolce and the crumbly piccante, and the town throws a festival for it every September.
Q 24Burrata, stretched curd filled with cream and cheese scraps, comes from which Italian region?
Puglia
Records point to Lorenzo Bianchino of Andria as its inventor, and burrata di Andria gained protected geographical status in 2016.
Q 25Paneer differs from most cheeses because the milk is curdled with what, rather than rennet?
An acid such as lemon juice
Because it is acid-set and never aged, it holds its shape when heated, which is why cubes of it survive a curry intact.
Q 26Ricotta, meaning 'recooked', is traditionally made from what cheesemaking leftover?
Whey
Heating the acidified liquid to near boiling makes the remaining albumin and globulin proteins clump into a fine, slightly sweet curd.
Q 27Which soft Italian dairy product is not technically a cheese, since it is set with acid and heat, not rennet?
Mascarpone
One traditional recipe used the tartaric acid scraped from the sides of wine barrels to set the cream.
Q 28Philadelphia Cream Cheese was first mass-produced in the town of Chester, in which state?
New York
Dairyman William A. Lawrence made it around 1873; distributor Alvah Reynolds slapped the Philadelphia name on it in 1880 purely as marketing.
Q 29The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in 1815 in which country?
Switzerland
Large-scale production only truly took off decades later in the US, when Jesse Williams began assembly-line cheesemaking in 1851.
Q 30Which processed cheese brand, sold to Kraft in 1927, first won the American Medical Association's seal in the 1930s?
Velveeta
Emil Frey developed it in 1918 from broken bits of cheese that would otherwise have been thrown away; the name was meant to suggest 'velvety'.