50 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 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The English word 'curry' most likely comes from a word in which language family?
Dravidian
The Tamil kaṟi meant a spiced mixture eaten with rice; it reached English via Portuguese caril or Dutch carrijl.
Q 02Whose 1747 Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy had the first anglicised 'currey' recipe?
Hannah Glasse
Her recipe for 'currey the India way' shows how Anglo-Indian cooking was already reaching British kitchens in the 18th century.
Q 03Which key curry ingredient did NOT exist in India before the Columbian exchange?
Chili peppers
Portuguese traders brought chilies, tomatoes and potatoes to Goa after 1510; medieval proto-curries got their heat from black pepper alone.
Q 04Which foul-smelling gum from the genus Ferula was a key spice in medieval Indian proto-curries?
Asafoetida
Despite the smell, hīng adds a meaty flavour once fried in oil, and it is still used in dal today.
Q 05Archaeologists at Mohenjo-daro found people grinding spices with mortar and pestle as early as when?
2600 BCE
Starch-grain analysis of skeletons and pottery found turmeric and ginger, the residue of what have been called 'proto-curries'.
Q 06Where was the first commercially available curry powder advertised in England, in 1784?
A perfumery on Piccadilly
Sorlie's Perfumery Warehouse sold it decades before Crosse & Blackwell and Sharwood's built brands on it.
Q 07Western curry powder is a commercial adaptation of which traditional Indian spice blend?
Garam masala
The name means 'hot or warm spices' and there is no single authentic recipe; every region and household has its own.
Q 08Which spice gives curry powder its deep orange-yellow colour?
Turmeric
The rhizome is boiled, dried and ground; despite Ayurvedic tradition there is no good clinical evidence its curcumin treats disease.
Q 09The curry tree, whose leaves flavour many South Indian dishes, belongs to which plant family?
Citrus
Bergera koenigii was described by Linnaeus in 1767; the word 'curry' does not actually come from the tree.
Q 10Which Indian dish was reputedly invented in Glasgow, possibly by chef Ali Ahmed Aslam?
Chicken tikka masala
The story goes that he improvised a sauce from a tin of condensed tomato soup for a customer who found his chicken tikka too dry.
Q 11Which British Foreign Secretary called a Glasgow-born curry 'a true British national dish' in 2001?
Robin Cook
He used it as a symbol of multicultural Britain; the dish has been called inauthentic by Britons and South Asians alike.
Q 12The name vindaloo derives from a Portuguese Goan dish of pork cooked with what?
Wine vinegar and garlic
Carne de vinha d'alhos became 'Portuguese curry' for the British; the potato in British vindaloo is a later folk etymology.
Q 13Fat Les's 1998 football anthem 'Vindaloo' celebrated which British ritual?
Ordering the hottest curry after the pub
Q 21Phanaeng (panang) curry is distinguished from other Thai curries by what?
A thick, creamy, mildly sweet sauce
It is cooked in coconut cream until the oil separates; the modern nutty note often comes from ground peanuts.
Q 22Curry was introduced to Japan by whom, first appearing in Japanese cookbooks in 1872?
The British Royal Navy
The navy thickened it with flour so it would not spill at sea, and it is now one of the most popular dishes in Japan.
Q 23On which day of the week do Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force ships traditionally serve curry?
Friday
The drunken post-closing-time clientele proved their machismo by ordering the fieriest thing on the menu.
Q 14Rogan josh, coloured with alkanet and Kashmiri chillies, is a centrepiece of which multi-course feast?
The wazwan
One etymology gives 'stewed in ghee' from Persian; another gives Kashmiri roghan, 'red'.
Q 15The word korma comes from a Hindi-Urdu term meaning what?
Braising
It ultimately traces to the Turkic qawirma, 'a fried thing', though korma and modern Turkish kavurma are quite different dishes.
Q 16Massaman curry is a Thai fusion dish; its spices came from Persia, India and which other region?
The Malay Archipelago
Cardamom, cinnamon, cloves and star anise meet lemongrass, galangal and shrimp paste; the dish's Muslim roots mean pork is rarely used.
Q 17Massaman curry is usually built on chicken, potatoes, onions and which nut?
Peanuts
The richness comes from coconut milk and cream, as in many central Thai curries.
Q 18The 'sweet' in the Thai name for green curry, kaeng khiao wan, refers to what?
The colour, not the taste
It is generally more pungent than the milder red curries and evolved between 1908 and 1926.
Q 19Thai curries mainly differ from Indian ones in relying on what instead of dried spice mixes?
Fresh rhizomes, herbs and leaves
The 1873 Thai dictionary defined kaeng as a watery dish with shrimp paste, shallots, chillies and garlic; coconut milk was not even required.
Q 20In Thai, the name of the yellow dish kaeng kari literally means what?
Curry curry
It is milder than other Thai curries and uses cumin, coriander, turmeric and fenugreek, an Indian-style spice profile.
Every ship's galley unofficially competes for the best recipe; Yokosuka sells 'navy curry' to promote its naval heritage.
Q 24What are the three basic vegetables in Japanese curry?
Onions, carrots and potatoes
It is served over rice, over udon, or stuffed in deep-fried curry bread, and beef, pork and chicken are the usual meats.
Q 25In Japan, katsu curry refers exclusively to curry served with what?
A breaded, deep-fried cutlet
In the UK the name has drifted to mean any Japanese-style curry, sometimes called 'katsu sauce'.
Q 26Japanese karē pan, reportedly created in 1927, was originally sold under what name?
Western food bread
Nakata Toyoharu is usually credited; the dough is breadcrumbed and deep-fried like a savoury doughnut.
Q 27Japan's biggest curry-rice chain, CoCo Ichi, is run by which company based in Ichinomiya, Aichi?
Ichibanya
It has more than 1,300 branches in Japan and outlets in a dozen other countries, including India.
Q 28The Madras curry of British menus takes its name from a city now called what?
Chennai
The dish and the name were invented in Anglo-Indian cooking; the term is unknown in India itself.
Q 29The balti was developed in the 1970s in which English city, home to the 'Balti Triangle'?
Birmingham
It is cooked fast in oil rather than ghee in a thin pressed-steel wok, and a bid for EU protected status failed.
Q 30Jalfrezi was created in Bengal during the Raj for what purpose?
To use up leftover meat by stir-frying
The stir-fry technique came with Chinese labourers on Assam tea plantations; a 2011 survey rated it Britain's most popular curry-house dish.