Cuban Food
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48 free Cuban Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cuban food is Spanish cooking that went to the Caribbean and picked up black beans, plantains, bitter orange and a lot of pork. A national dish called "old clothes" arrived from the Canary Islands, the rice and beans are named after Moors and Christians, and the most famous sandwich in the cuisine may have been perfected not in Havana but in the cigar towns of Florida. These 48 questions cover the plates and the glasses. On the table: ropa vieja, Moros y Cristianos and congrí, picadillo with olives and raisins, tostones pounded flat in a tostonera, yuca with mojo, vaca frita, ajiaco and the frita burger that Cuba forgot. From the bakery: Cuban bread scored with a palmetto frond and the medianoche on sweet egg bread. At the bar: the mojito's yerba buena, the daiquiri invented by a mining engineer, the Cuba libre that needed Coca-Cola to exist, Hatuey beer, Bacardi's charcoal filtration and the Havana Club trademark war. And café cubano, from espumita to colada. Easy questions stick to what is in a mojito and a Cuban sandwich; the hard tier asks which bakery first sold Cuban bread in 1896 and who notarised the birth of the Cuba libre. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something either way.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Cuban sofrito, the sautéed base of most of the island's beans and stews, combines onion, garlic and what?
Bell pepper
Bell pepper completes the base: cooks soften it with onion, stir in mashed garlic, and build ropa vieja, picadillo or a pot of black beans on top.
Q 02Which fruit do Cubans call fruta bomba, steering clear of its usual Spanish name?
Papaya
Papaya: its usual Spanish name doubles as a vulgarity in Cuban slang, and the fruit goes by fruta bomba instead, even in a milkshake.
Q 03What distinguishes Moros y Cristianos from plain arroz con frijoles?
Beans and rice cooked in one pot
Beans and rice cooked in one pot make Moros y Cristianos; plain arroz con frijoles cooks the rice on its own and ladles the finished beans on top.
Q 04Moros y Cristianos uses black beans; which beans make eastern Cuba's congrí?
Red beans
Red beans make congrí in eastern Cuba, though the two names are swapped so often that recipe writers warn cooks against confusing the dishes.
Q 05What does "ropa vieja" literally mean?
Old clothes
Old clothes: the name is said to come from the tattered look of the shredded beef, and in a folktale a poor man's stewed garments turn into the meat.
Q 06Which animal is roasted whole as the centrepiece of a Cuban Nochebuena, or Christmas Eve, dinner?
Pig
Pig: a whole one takes hours, sometimes a full day, to roast, and a popular way is the caja china, a box that cooks the animal under a tray of hot coals.
Q 07Ropa vieja's slow-cooked ancestor is often traced to which community of medieval Iberia?
Sephardic Jews
Sephardic Jews are said to have slow-cooked the stew a day ahead because cooking on the Sabbath was forbidden; the recipe later crossed the Atlantic with settlers.
Q 08Which era of shortages took ropa vieja off most Cuban tables?
The Special Period
The Special Period put beef out of reach of most Cubans, and cooks who kept ropa vieja going made it with other meats.
Q 09Havana's block-sized state ice cream park, opened in 1966, is named after which ballet?
Coppélia
Coppélia was the favourite ballet of Celia Sánchez, the Castro confidante who named the park, conceived as a place where rich and poor could share a subsidised treat.
Q 10Which ingredient divides the Tampa and Miami versions of the Cuban sandwich?
Salami
Salami goes into Tampa's version, probably thanks to the Italian immigrants who lived beside the city's Cuban cigar workers; Miami leaves it out.
Q 11What is the sandwich press used to toast a Cuban sandwich called?
Plancha
A plancha has no grooves, unlike a panini press, so it squeezes the sandwich flat as it heats, until the crust is crisp and the cheese starts to melt.
Q 12Which tropical fruit, cooked into a thick red paste, fills the classic Cuban pastelito alongside cream cheese?
Guava
Guava is boiled down with sugar until it sets into a paste firm enough to slice, then baked inside flaky puff pastry, often with a layer of cream cheese.
Q 13A Cuban flan is baked in a mould coated with what, which becomes its sauce when flipped?
Caramel
Caramel, made by melting sugar in the pan itself, lines the dish under the custard and runs down as sauce once the flan is turned out; Cuban cooks steep a cinnamon stick in the milk.
Q 21What are tostones?
Twice-fried plantain slices
Twice-fried plantain slices: the green fruit is fried, smashed flat in a hinged press called a tostonera, then fried again until crisp.
Q 22Casabe, a crisp flatbread Cubans have eaten since before Columbus, is made from which root?
Yuca
Yuca, or cassava, is toxic in its bitter form until the juice is pressed out, the step that turns it into casabe; UNESCO added the bread to its heritage list in 2024.
Q 23What citrus traditionally goes into Cuban mojo sauce?
Bitter orange
Bitter orange juice and plenty of garlic make mojo; its diminutive, mojito, is also used for the sauce, which gets it confused with the cocktail.
Q 14What fat does Cuban bread contain that sets it apart from French bread?
Lard or shortening
Lard or shortening goes into the dough, and the loaf is at its best the day it is baked: by the next it has turned hard and dry.
Q 15What do traditional bakers lay on Cuban bread loaves before baking to score the crust?
A palmetto frond
A palmetto frond, laid wet along each loaf, leaves a shallow trench where a French baker would slash the dough; it is lifted off before the bread is eaten.
Q 16An immigrant from which Mediterranean island opened an early Cuban bread bakery in Tampa in 1896?
Sicily
Sicily: Francisco Ferlita's La Joven Francesca was probably the first bakery to sell Cuban bread, and his delivery boys hung each loaf on a nail beside the customer's door.
Q 17What is a medianoche sandwich made on instead of the usual long Cuban loaf?
Sweet egg bread
Sweet egg bread, soft like challah, sets the medianoche apart; its name means midnight, the hour it was eaten as a late snack, likely in Havana's nightclubs.
Q 18The Elena Ruz sandwich pairs turkey and cream cheese with what?
Strawberry jam
Strawberry jam joins the turkey and cream cheese because Havana socialite Elena Ruz talked the restaurant El Carmelo into putting her own order on its menu.
Q 19The name picadillo comes from which Spanish word?
Picar, to mince
Picar, to mince, names the dish for its method: beef chopped or ground fine, then simmered with tomato and plenty of garlic.
Q 20Which two briny ingredients are typical of Cuban picadillo?
Olives and capers
Olives and capers give Cuban picadillo its salty bite; raisins are the traditional sweet counterweight, though many cooks leave them out.
Q 24Where did mojo sauce originally come from?
The Canaries
The Canaries still serve red and green mojos, and the many islanders who emigrated to Cuba took the garlicky sauce with them.
Q 25Which Cuban dish is shredded beef crisped with onions and lime?
Vaca frita
Vaca frita is beef simmered until it shreds, then fried with onions and lime until the strands turn crisp, where ropa vieja stays in its tomato sauce.
Q 26What is a frita?
A Cuban-style hamburger
A Cuban-style hamburger: born in Cuba, it is now found mainly in South Florida, its spiced patty buried under shoestring fries.
Q 27Cuban ajiaco is a hearty stew built on what?
Root vegetables
Root vegetables, which Cubans call viandas, simmer with a mix of meats; in Camagüey neighbours each bring ingredients and cook a pot of it in the street to open the San Juan festival.
Q 28The name of the stew ajiaco comes from which word?
Aji, hot pepper
Aji, hot pepper in the island's indigenous tongue, gives ajiaco its name; the stew draws on so many peoples' ingredients that Fernando Ortiz made it his image of Cuba as a melting pot.
Q 29Which five ingredients make up a classic mojito?
White rum, sugar, lime, soda water, mint
White rum, sugar, lime, soda water and mint: the leaves are only pressed into the sugar and lime to release their oils, never shredded.
Q 30Spearmint stands in abroad, but which herb goes into a mojito in Cuba?
Yerba buena
Yerba buena is the mojito's own herb in Cuba; the name just means 'good herb', and in other countries it belongs to quite different plants of the mint family.