Cheese Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
This cheese trivia quiz has 117 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 117 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
Cheddar takes its name from the Somerset village beside Cheddar Gorge, whose caves kept a steady temperature and humidity for ageing; tradition once required the cheese to be made within 30 miles of Wells Cathedral.
Q 02Which blue cheese became the first French cheese granted an appellation d'origine, in 1925?
Roquefort
Roquefort, a sheep's-milk blue ripened in the caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, was the first French cheese given a protected appellation, by a law of 1925; every wheel uses only Lacaune ewes' milk.
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
Casu martzu, Sardinia's 'rotten cheese', is a pecorino in which cheese-fly larvae break down the fats until it weeps a liquid called lagrima (teardrop); EU food-hygiene rules bar its sale.
Q 05Pule, a rare Serbian cheese from the Zasavica reserve, is made mostly from which animal's milk?
Donkey
Pule is made mostly from donkey milk: only about 100 jennies at Serbia's Zasavica reserve are milked for it, and roughly 25 litres of milk go into a single kilogram.
Q 06Sales of which English cheese rose 23% after the 2005 film Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit?
Wensleydale
Wensleydale is the cheese Wallace names as a favourite in the 1995 short A Close Shave, and the creamery later licensed an official Wallace & Gromit brand.
Q 07Which cheese is chased down Cooper's Hill at the annual cheese-rolling?
Double Gloucester
A wheel of Double Gloucester is rolled down Cooper's Hill near Brockworth, Gloucestershire; it gets a one-second head start and is rarely caught, and the first runner to reach the bottom wins the cheese.
Q 08Which grillable cheese must be made in Cyprus to carry its name in the US or the EU?
Halloumi
Halloumi's 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
Feta's PDO allows the sheep's milk to be blended with up to 30% goat's milk from the same Greek regions; most feta sold in the United States is made from cow's milk and would not qualify.
Q 10The zig-zag rind on Manchego comes from pressing the curd in baskets plaited from what?
Esparto grass
The zig-zag pattern came from esparto grass baskets (pleitas) that pressed the curd; modern moulds carve the pleita pattern into their inner surface, and Manchego must be made from Manchega sheep's milk.
Q 11Marie Harel, a farmer from Normandy, is traditionally credited with creating which soft cheese in 1791?
Camembert
Legend credits Marie Harel of Camembert village with the first Camembert in 1791; the round wooden box arrived a century later, in 1890, when an engineer named Ridel designed it so the cheese could travel further.
Q 12Which Dutch city's cheese market is held in front of a weigh house built in 1668?
Gouda
Gouda's cheese market takes place before the Waag, built in 1668; prices were traditionally settled by handjeklap, the hand-clapping haggle in which farmer and trader slap palms with each bid until they agree.
Q 13Which Dutch cheese, sold in red-wax spheres, was reputedly the world's most popular from the 14th to 18th centuries?
Edam
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 estate, comes from which Nordic country?
Norway
Norway's modern Jarlsberg recipe was developed in 1956 at an agricultural university, and it tops Grandiosa, the country's best-selling frozen pizza.
Q 23Mozzarella takes its name from the Italian verb mozzare, which means what?
To cut off
Mozzarella comes from mozzare, 'to cut off', because the cheesemaker pinches portions off the hot, stretched pasta filata curd by hand to shape each ball.
Edam, the red-waxed ball from North Holland, was reputedly the world's most popular cheese from the 14th to the 18th century; in Spanish-speaking countries it is queso de bola, and Yucatán's queso relleno stuffs a hollowed ball with spiced meat.
Q 14Which semi-hard orange cheese was created in 1885 in the Midwestern town it is named after?
Colby
Colby was first made in 1885 by Joseph Steinwand in Colby, Wisconsin; instead of stacking and turning the curd as for cheddar, the curd is washed with cold water, giving a softer, moister cheese.
Q 15Which mild white cheese was first made by Franciscan friars in California?
Monterey Jack
Monterey Jack descends from the queso del país made by Franciscan friars at the Monterey missions; businessman David Jacks marketed it in the 1880s as 'Jacks' cheese', which became Monterey Jack.
Q 16Which bright-orange Lille cheese owes its grey rind to deliberately added cheese mites?
Mimolette
Mimolette, made around Lille, is coloured with annatto, and its pitted grey rind is the work of cheese mites introduced on purpose; legend says Louis XIV ordered it as a French rival to Dutch Edam.
Q 17Which smelly washed-rind cheese originated in the Herve area of what is now Belgium?
Limburger
Limburger originated around Herve, in the old Duchy of Limburg, now in Belgium; Brevibacterium linens, the same bacterium found on human skin, is smeared on the rind and produces the smell.
Q 18Which beer-washed French cheese did Cranfield University researchers rate the smelliest of 15 in 2004?
Vieux-Boulogne
Vieux-Boulogne, a beer-washed cheese first made near Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1982, topped Cranfield University's 2004 ranking of 15 smelly cheeses, and a 2007 electronic-nose study confirmed the result.
Q 19Charles Martell's Stinking Bishop cheese takes its name not from a clergyman but from what?
A variety of pear
Stinking Bishop is named for a variety of pear, the Stinking Bishop, itself named after Gloucestershire farmer Frederick Bishop; the rind is washed in perry made from that pear, which gives the cheese its pungent smell.
Q 20Which Italian blue cheese, named after a town near Milan, is said to have been created around AD 879?
Gorgonzola
Gorgonzola is named for the town east of Milan where legend says it was first made around AD 879; it comes in buttery dolce and crumbly piccante styles, and its PDO zone spans Piedmont and Lombardy.
Q 24Burrata, stretched curd filled with cream and cheese scraps, comes from which Italian region?
Puglia
Burrata comes from Puglia: Lorenzo Bianchino of Andria is usually credited with inventing it in the early 20th century, and Burrata di Andria was granted EU protected geographical status (PGI) in 2016.
Q 25Ricotta, whose name means 'recooked', is traditionally made from which leftover of cheesemaking?
Whey
Whey left over from other cheeses is heated again to near boiling, so its albumin and globulin proteins clump into a fine, slightly sweet curd.
Q 26Which soft Italian dairy product is not technically a cheese, since it is set with acid and heat, not rennet?
Mascarpone
Mascarpone is cream thickened with acid and heat rather than rennet, so it is not strictly a cheese; one traditional Lombard recipe used tartaric acid scraped from the sides of wine barrels to set it.
Q 27Philadelphia Cream Cheese was first mass-produced in the town of Chester, in which state?
New York
Chester is in Orange County, New York: dairyman William A. Lawrence began making the cheese there around 1873, and distributor Alvah Reynolds attached the Philadelphia name in 1880 purely as marketing.
Q 28The first factory for the industrial production of cheese opened in 1815 in which country?
Switzerland
The first cheese factory opened in Switzerland in 1815; large-scale production only truly took off in 1851, when Jesse Williams began assembly-line cheesemaking in Rome, New York.
Q 29Which processed cheese brand, sold to Kraft in 1927, first won the American Medical Association's seal in the 1930s?
Velveeta
Velveeta was developed in 1918 by Emil Frey of the Monroe Cheese Company in New York from broken bits of cheese that would otherwise be thrown away; the name was meant to suggest 'velvety', and Kraft bought it in 1927.
Q 30Cheez Whiz was originally developed by Kraft in the early 1950s as a ready-made sauce for which dish?
Welsh rarebit
Cheez Whiz was developed by a Kraft team under food scientist Edwin Traisman as a quick sauce for Welsh rarebit; it went on sale in 1952 and later became a fixture on Philadelphia cheesesteaks.