Chili Trivia
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50 free Chili trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
42 free Chili trivia questions with answers. Chili trivia in both senses of the word. Half the questions are about the dish - the San Antonio chili queens, the 1893 World's Fair stand, William Gebhardt's chili powder, Texas making it the state dish, the beans argument, Terlingua's cook-offs, Cincinnati's five-way over spaghetti and Skyline's bank-vault recipe, Frito pie. The other half is about the peppers - where they came from, why Columbus called them peppers, Wilbur Scoville's tasting panel, why birds don't feel the burn and milk beats water, jalapenos in space, Tabasco's little red stick, Hatch and 'Red or green?', ghost peppers, Carolina Reapers and Pepper X. Easy questions any chili-night guest can answer come first; the later ones will test the person who brings their own hot sauce. Perfect for a cook-off round or a Super Bowl party. Every answer has been checked against a reference page and carries its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does 'con carne' literally mean in Spanish?
With meat
Which is why Texas purists say the meat is not optional and the beans are not welcome.
Q 02Which US state made chili con carne its official state dish in 1977?
Texas
House Concurrent Resolution 18 of the 65th Legislature did the honours; New Mexico's official state question is 'Red or green?'
Q 03The 'chili queens' who sold bowls of chili from open-air stands were famous in which Texas city?
San Antonio
Their plaza stands were the city's tourist attraction until health regulations shut them down in the 1930s and 40s.
Q 04A famous chili stand from the Alamo city gave many Americans their first taste at which 1893 event?
Chicago's Columbian Exposition
The same fair introduced the Ferris wheel; chili went national soon after.
Q 05Who created the first commercial chili powder in 1894 by grinding ancho peppers through a meat grinder?
William Gebhardt
He ran a saloon in New Braunfels, Texas, where fresh chilies were only available part of the year; D. C. Pendery is the other claimant.
Q 06Besides ground chilies, which spices typically go into an American 'chili seasoning' blend?
Cumin, garlic and onion
Cincinnati's very different chili is the one that reaches for cinnamon and allspice.
Q 07The long-running argument among chili cooks is over which ingredient?
Beans
Texas 'bowl o' red' has none; most of the rest of the country disagrees, loudly.
Q 08Which car maker was among the founders of the first Terlingua, Texas chili cook-off in 1967?
Carroll Shelby
He owned a 220,000-acre ranch nearby; two rival championships still convene 10,000 'chiliheads' there on the first Saturday of November.
Q 09Terlingua, home of the world chili championship, is a ghost town left over from mining what?
Mercury
The Chisos Mining Company dug quicksilver there; the cook-off revived the place.
Q 10Cincinnati chili was developed in 1922 by immigrant brothers from which region?
Macedonia
Tom and John Kiradjieff named their place Empress after a burlesque theatre and first served the sauce on hot dogs.
Q 11Over what is Cincinnati chili traditionally served?
Spaghetti
A three-way adds cheese; a five-way adds beans and onions too. Cincinnatians eat about two million pounds of it a year.
Q 12What makes a Cincinnati 'five-way'?
Spaghetti, chili, beans, onions, cheese
The spice mix always includes cinnamon, allspice, cloves, cumin and nutmeg - but, contrary to legend, no parlour in the city uses chocolate.
Q 13Which spice is NOT part of the standard Cincinnati chili seasoning, despite the legend?
Chocolate
The chocolate rumour refuses to die, but the Kiradjieffs' Mediterranean spice cupboard did not include it.
Q 21The Carolina Reaper held the Guinness record from 2013 until it was dethroned in 2023. Who bred it?
Ed Currie
His PuckerButt Pepper Company crossed a Naga with a Saint Vincent habanero; Guinness logged an average of 1,641,183 SHU.
Q 22Which chili was the first certified above 1,000,000 Scoville units, in 2007?
The ghost pepper
Grown in Assam and Nagaland, it is smeared on fences to keep elephants away, and the Indian Army has used it in grenades.
Q 23The Assamese name of the superhot 'bhut jolokia' is usually mistranslated. What does it mean?
Bhutanese
'Bhut' meaning Bhutanese was mistaken for a near-homonym meaning ghost, and the spookier name stuck.
Q 14Cincinnati's biggest chili chain, founded in 1949, was named for what?
The city view from its first shop
Greek immigrant Nicholas Lambrinides opened it in Price Hill; the recipe is said to sit in a bank vault, and there are about 160 branches.
Q 15Which lunch counter is one claimed birthplace of Frito pie?
A Woolworth's in Santa Fe
Teresa Hernandez gets the 1960s Santa Fe credit; the rival story gives it to Daisy Doolin, mother of Fritos' founder.
Q 16Who devised the scale of chili heat, and its 'organoleptic test', in 1912?
Wilbur Scoville, a pharmacist
He diluted pepper extract until five tasters could no longer feel it; labs now use liquid chromatography instead.
Q 17How many trained tasters did the original Scoville test use?
Five
The dilution at which at least three of them could no longer detect heat gave the rating.
Q 18What Scoville rating does a sweet bell capsicum have?
0
Jalapenos sit around 2,500-10,000 and habaneros 100,000-350,000.
Q 19How hot is pure capsaicin on the Scoville scale?
16 million
Police pepper spray runs from 500,000 to 5 million; the hottest chilies top out below 3 million.
Q 20Which chili took the Guinness 'hottest' title in 2023, rated around 2,693,000 on the scale?
Pepper X
Both it and the Carolina Reaper were bred by Ed Currie in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
Q 24Roughly how long ago were chili peppers first cultivated, in east-central Mexico?
6,000 years
Portuguese and Spanish traders carried them to Africa and Asia in the 16th century, and today China grows about 39% of the world's green chilies.
Q 25Why did Columbus's crew call the Capsicum fruits 'peppers'?
They were pungent like black pepper
The English word 'chili' itself comes from the Nahuatl chilli.
Q 26From which language does the word 'chili' come?
Nahuatl
The Aztec chilli became Spanish chile and English chili - Spanish only supplied the spelling.
Q 27Why can birds happily eat the hottest chilies?
Their heat receptors ignore capsaicin
The TRPV1 receptor is what capsaicin binds in mammals; birds spread the seeds unharmed, which is exactly what the plant wants.
Q 28Why does milk soothe a chili burn better than water?
Its casein binds capsaicin
Capsaicin dissolves in fat and alcohol, not water; the casein acts as a kind of detergent.
Q 29Which medical product uses capsaicin?
A pain-relief skin patch
Qutenza was approved in 2009 for post-shingles nerve pain; the same compound is in police pepper spray.
Q 30What is a chipotle?
A smoke-dried ripe jalapeno
The name is Nahuatl for 'smoked chili'; they are usually sold stewed in adobo sauce.