Curry Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
47 free Curry trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This curry trivia quiz follows the dish around the world. It starts with where the word comes from and what medieval Indian proto-curries tasted like before chili peppers arrived, then moves through the classic dishes: rogan josh, korma, vindaloo, butter chicken, dal, Massaman, green and yellow Thai curries, rendang, laksa and Japanese curry rice, katsu and curry bread. It also covers the curious British chapter — Hannah Glasse's 1747 recipe, the first curry powder sold in a Piccadilly perfumery, the Hindoostane Coffee House, Veeraswamy, the Curry Mile, the Balti Triangle, phall, jalfrezi and the Glasgow origin story of chicken tikka masala — plus curry's odder offshoots like currywurst, coronation chicken, bunny chow and Caribbean curry goat. About a third of the questions are easy; the rest will stretch even people who cook this stuff every week. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia's food articles and the sources they cite, and each explanation adds one more thing worth knowing.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The English word 'curry' most likely comes from a word in which language family?
Dravidian
Tamil kari, meaning a sauce or relish, belongs to the Dravidian language family; the word reached English through Portuguese caril in the sixteenth century.
Q 02Whose 1747 Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy had the first anglicised 'currey' recipe?
Hannah Glasse
Hannah Glasse's The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) included 'To make a currey the India way', the first curry recipe printed in an English cookbook.
Q 03Which key curry ingredient did NOT exist in India before the Columbian exchange?
Chili peppers
Chili peppers are a New World crop; Portuguese traders introduced them to Goa after 1510, and earlier Indian cooking drew its heat mainly from black pepper and long pepper.
Q 04Which gum resin from the genus Ferula was a key spice in medieval Indian proto-curries?
Asafoetida
Asafoetida, called hing in Hindi, is the dried latex of Ferula roots; its sulphurous smell mellows into a savoury, onion-like flavour when fried in oil.
Q 05Dhansak, a stew of meat with lentils and vegetables, comes from which Indian community?
Parsi
Dhansak is a Parsi dish of mutton or chicken stewed with lentils and vegetables, traditionally eaten on Sundays and at the meal that ends a family's period of mourning.
Q 06Where was the first commercially available curry powder advertised in England, in 1784?
A perfumery on Piccadilly
Sorlie's Perfumery Warehouse on Piccadilly advertised ready-made curry powder in the Morning Post in 1784, decades before grocery brands made it a pantry staple.
Q 07Kerala's mild fish curry moilee is simmered in which liquid?
Coconut milk
Meen moilee, a Keralan fish stew, is gently simmered in coconut milk with green chillies and curry leaves, giving a pale, mild curry.
Q 08Which spice gives curry powder its deep orange-yellow colour?
Turmeric
Turmeric, the dried and ground rhizome of Curcuma longa, supplies curry powder's orange-yellow colour through the pigment curcumin.
Q 09The curry tree, whose leaves flavour many South Indian dishes, belongs to which plant family?
Citrus
The curry tree, Murraya (Bergera) koenigii, belongs to the citrus family Rutaceae; Linnaeus described it in 1767, and its aromatic leaves are fried in oil to start many southern Indian dishes.
Q 10Which Indian dish was reputedly invented in Glasgow, possibly by chef Ali Ahmed Aslam?
Chicken tikka masala
Chicken tikka masala is said to have been improvised at Glasgow's Shish Mahal in the 1970s, when Ali Ahmed Aslam stirred a tin of condensed tomato soup and yoghurt into dry chicken tikka.
Q 11Which British Foreign Secretary called a Glasgow-born curry 'a true British national dish' in 2001?
Robin Cook
Robin Cook, Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2001, made the remark in an April 2001 speech on British identity, calling the dish 'a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences'.
Q 12Which country's curries use a dark roasted curry powder and pandan leaves?
Sri Lanka
Sri Lankan curries are seasoned with a dark-roasted curry powder and flavoured with pandan (rampe) leaves and curry leaves, usually in a coconut milk base.
Q 13Rogan josh, coloured with alkanet and Kashmiri chillies, is a centrepiece of which multi-course feast?
The wazwan
Q 21On which day of the week do Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force ships traditionally serve curry?
Friday
Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force serves curry every Friday, a custom said to help crews keep track of the days at sea; Yokosuka markets 'navy curry' on the tradition.
Q 22What are the three basic vegetables in Japanese curry?
Onions, carrots and potatoes
Onions, carrots and potatoes are the standard trio simmered in Japanese curry, usually with beef or chicken, the sauce thickened with a block of curry roux.
Q 23In Japan, katsu curry refers exclusively to curry served with what?
A breaded, deep-fried cutlet
The wazwan is the Kashmiri Muslim banquet of dozens of mostly meat courses cooked by waza chefs; rogan josh, along with dishes such as rista and gushtaba, is one of its staples.
Q 14The word korma comes from a Hindi-Urdu term meaning what?
Braising
Korma comes from Hindi-Urdu qorma, meaning braising: meat cooked slowly in a sealed pot with yoghurt or cream; the word ultimately traces to Turkic qavurma, 'fried meat'.
Q 15Which Cambodian curry is traditionally steamed in a banana-leaf cup?
Amok
Amok is Cambodia's signature dish: fish in a kroeung curry paste and coconut cream, steamed in a banana-leaf cup until it sets like a custard.
Q 16Massaman curry is usually built on chicken, potatoes, onions and which nut?
Peanuts
Roasted peanuts are stirred into massaman near the end, adding crunch to a curry whose richness comes from coconut milk; tamarind and palm sugar balance the sweetness.
Q 17The 'sweet' in the Thai name for green curry, kaeng khiao wan, refers to what?
The colour, not the taste
In kaeng khiao wan, 'wan' (sweet) describes the light 'sweet green' colour of the curry, not its taste; the dish evolved in the early twentieth century under Rama VI and Rama VII.
Q 18Thai curries mainly differ from Indian ones in relying on what instead of dried spice mixes?
Fresh rhizomes, herbs and leaves
Thai curry pastes are pounded from fresh rhizomes, herbs and leaves — galangal, lemongrass, kaffir lime, chillies, garlic, shallots — whereas Indian curries lean on dried ground spices.
Q 19Phanaeng (panang) curry is distinguished from other Thai curries by what?
A thick, creamy, mildly sweet sauce
Panang is a thick, creamy, mildly sweet sauce: it uses coconut cream rather than thin milk, reduced until the oil separates, with little liquid and a hint of ground nuts.
Q 20Curry was introduced to Japan by whom, first appearing in Japanese cookbooks in 1872?
The British Royal Navy
The British Royal Navy's curried stew, thickened with flour, reached Japan in the Meiji era and was adopted by the Imperial Japanese Navy; Japanese cookbooks described curry from 1872.
Katsu is short for katsuretsu (cutlet): katsu curry is curry served with a breaded, deep-fried cutlet, usually tonkatsu or chicken katsu; in Britain the name has drifted to mean the sauce.
Q 24Japanese karē pan, reportedly created in 1927, was originally sold under what name?
Western food bread
Nakata Toyoharu of Tokyo's Meikado bakery (today's Cattlea) launched the bun in 1927 as 'yoshoku pan', or Western food bread, breading and deep-frying dough around a curry filling.
Q 25Which company operates Japan's largest chain of curry restaurants?
Ichibanya
Ichibanya, founded in Aichi in 1978, operates the Curry House CoCo Ichibanya chain of more than 1,300 restaurants in Japan plus outlets abroad; House Foods became its majority owner in 2015.
Q 26The Madras curry of British menus takes its name from a city now called what?
Chennai
Madras was renamed Chennai in 1996; the 'Madras curry' of British menus, a hot, red, tomato-heavy sauce, is a British curry-house invention rather than a Tamil dish.
Q 27The balti was developed in the 1970s in which English city, home to the 'Balti Triangle'?
Birmingham
The balti emerged in Birmingham's Sparkbrook area in the 1970s, cooked fast over high heat in a thin pressed-steel bowl from which it is eaten; the Balti Triangle grew around Ladypool Road.
Q 28Jalfrezi was created in Bengal during the Raj for what purpose?
To use up leftover meat by stir-frying
Jalfrezi began in Raj-era Bengal as a way to use up leftover meat by stir-frying it with green chillies, onions and peppers; a 2011 survey of British curry houses rated it the most popular dish.
Q 29Which dish traditionally sits at the top of a British curry-house heat scale?
Phall
Phall is the hottest dish on the traditional British curry-house scale, above vindaloo: a thick tomato-based curry loaded with fresh chillies, sometimes scotch bonnets or habaneros.
Q 30Which dry coconut-milk meat curry was named the world's most delicious dish in a 2011 CNN poll?
Rendang
Rendang, the Minangkabau dish of beef slow-cooked in coconut milk and spices until dry, topped CNN's 2011 readers' poll of the world's most delicious foods.