Dairy
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50 free Dairy trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Dairy is one of the oldest food businesses on Earth and one of the strangest. A single raw ingredient becomes hundreds of different foods, some fresh, some aged for years, some crumbly, some stretchy, and a few that only the brave will try. This quiz covers the whole story from pasture to plate: the cattle breeds and farm terms you would hear at a county show, what happens to milk between the cow and the carton, the cheeses and cultured foods of different countries, and the people and events that shaped the industry. It is written for curious eaters, families and classrooms, farm kids getting ready for a dairy bowl, and anyone planning a themed game for Dairy Month. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you can play straight through or print the set for a group.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Wheels of which hard Italian cheese are accepted as loan collateral by the bank Credito Emiliano?
Parmesan
Parmesan is aged for at least 12 months before it can be sold, so each wheel is a slow but valuable asset. An industry consortium inspects every wheel at that point.
Q 02Despite its name, Philadelphia cream cheese was first made by dairyman William Lawrence in which US state?
New York
New York dairyman William Lawrence made it in the village of Chester. A distributor added the Philadelphia name in 1880 because that city was known for fine dairy.
Q 03Which gas, given off by bacteria as the cheese ripens, forms the famous holes in Swiss Emmental?
Carbon dioxide
Carbon dioxide bubbles get trapped in the firm cheese and leave the holes, which cheesemakers call eyes. For centuries the eyes were treated as a flaw to avoid.
Q 04Which US state, whose football fans wear foam cheese wedges as hats, makes about a quarter of America's cheese?
Wisconsin
Wisconsin leads the nation in cheese production, and its people answer to the nickname Cheeseheads. The foam hats caught on with Packers fans in the 1990s.
Q 05Which French scientist's 1860s experiments on spoiled wine led to the heat treatment that makes milk safe to drink?
Louis Pasteur
Louis Pasteur found in 1864 that briefly heating young wine killed the microbes that soured it. The method, later named after him, was not used on milk for many years.
Q 06Which black-and-white cattle breed from the Netherlands is the breed of choice for most of the world's dairy farmers?
Holstein
Holstein cows are the biggest of all dairy breeds, and an average one in the United States gives about 22,000 pounds of milk a year.
Q 07Which substance makes up about 87 percent of ordinary cow's milk, far more than anything else in the glass?
Water
Water accounts for about 87.7 percent of typical American cow's milk. Sugar, fat, protein and minerals together make up only around an eighth.
Q 08Which food did chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès invent in 1869 to meet Napoleon III's call to feed the army cheaply?
Margarine
Margarine began as a butter substitute made from beef tallow, which its inventor patented under the name oleomargarine. It brought him little commercial success.
Q 09Which natural sugar in cow's milk are around 65 percent of the world's adults unable to digest fully?
Lactose
Lactose takes its name from lac, the Latin word for milk. Most mammals stop making the enzyme that breaks it down once they are weaned.
Q 10Which famously smelly cheese is ripened with the same bacterium that helps cause foot odour on human skin?
Limburger
Limburger gets its notorious smell from Brevibacterium linens, a bacterium that also lives on people. The odour only develops once the cheese is about three months old.
Q 11Which Channel Island, the largest of the group, gives its name to a small dairy cow famed for milk rich in butterfat?
Jersey
Jersey cows were bred on the island, and their milk has a yellowish tinge. Before 1789, cows were handed over as dowries when islanders married into neighbouring Guernsey.
Q 12Which word for a young female cow that has not yet calved also names a charity that gives livestock to poor families?
Heifer
Heifer is the term until a cow has her first calf. The charity Heifer International took the name after starting out in 1944 with a shipment of 17 young cows to Puerto Rico.
Q 13What do cows bring back up from the stomach to chew a second time, grinding tough grass into small particles?
Cud
Q 21Which mineral, the most abundant metal in the human body, is milk best known for supplying to growing bones?
Calcium
Calcium is also plentiful in yogurt and cheese, but dairy has no monopoly on it. Salmon, kale and soy products are rich in it too.
Q 22Which nutrient did American dairies start adding to milk in the early 1930s to wipe out the bone disease rickets?
Vitamin D
Vitamin D had only been discovered in 1922, by researchers hunting for what was missing from the diets of children with rickets. Fortified milk sharply cut the disease.
Q 23Which process forces milk fat into tiny, evenly spread globules so that cream no longer floats to the top?
Homogenization
Cud comes back up a mouthful at a time and is ground down by the molars. It is then swallowed again so that micro-organisms in the stomach can digest it further.
Q 14Which is the largest of the four compartments of a cow's stomach, where microbes ferment tough plant fibre?
Rumen
Rumen microbes break down fibre-rich roughage that mammals cannot digest on their own. The organ is also known as the paunch.
Q 15Which sour-smelling winter feed is made by fermenting chopped green crops packed tightly to keep out the air?
Silage
Silage keeps because fermentation sours the crop once air is shut out. Bulk loads usually go to dairy cattle, while wrapped bales tend to feed beef cattle and sheep.
Q 16Like every other mammal, a dairy cow only begins to produce milk after which event in her life?
Giving birth
Giving birth starts each cycle of milk, so farms breed their cows again and again to keep it flowing. A cow is rested for about 60 days before her next calf arrives.
Q 17World Dairy Expo crowns a Supreme Champion cow each October in which Midwestern state capital?
Madison
Madison hosts what is considered the largest and most important dairy cattle show in North America. The winner is chosen from the grand champions of each breed.
Q 18Which state's fair has shown a life-size cow sculpted from butter since 1911, carved for decades by Norma 'Duffy' Lyon?
Iowa
Iowa knew her as the Butter Cow Lady. Between 1960 and 2006 she also sculpted Elvis Presley, John Wayne and a butter version of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper.
Q 19Which month has been promoted as National Dairy Month in the US since it began in 1937 as National Milk Month?
June
June was chosen to steady demand at a time when farms were producing a surplus of milk. The name changed after the National Dairy Council joined the campaign.
Q 20Which inflammation of the udder, usually triggered by bacteria, is the most common and costly disease of dairy cows?
Mastitis
Mastitis sets in when white blood cells flood the mammary gland, usually because bacteria have entered through the teat canal. It can be fatal.
Homogenization works by forcing milk at high pressure through very small holes. Without it, the fat slowly separates and collects at the top of the bottle.
Q 24Which protein, about 80 percent of the protein in cow's milk, clumps together to form the curds in cheesemaking?
Casein
Casein comes from caseus, the Latin word for cheese. It has also been mixed into a fast-drying paint that artists have used since ancient Egyptian times.
Q 25Which thin liquid is left behind when milk is curdled and strained, the stuff eaten by Little Miss Muffet?
Whey
Whey was once treated as waste and pumped into American rivers and streams. Its protein is now marketed as a popular dietary supplement.
Q 26Which set of enzymes, traditionally taken from the stomach lining of young calves, is added to milk to make cheese?
Rennet
Rennet from calves now goes into less than 5 percent of American cheese. Most makers use a copy of its key enzyme produced by engineered microbes instead.
Q 27Which canned dairy product did Gail Borden pioneer in the 1850s, later a bulk field ration for Union soldiers?
Condensed milk
Condensed milk grew out of tragedy: Borden set to work after seeing children die from bad milk on an 1851 sea voyage. His first two factories failed.
Q 28Which US president signed the proclamation that made July National Ice Cream Month in the United States?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan's proclamation named only July 1984, but ice cream makers have kept the celebration going every summer since.
Q 29Which process, once done by hand in a wooden tub with a plunger called a dasher, turns cream into butter?
Churning
Churning in the European tradition was mainly women's work, one of the essential household chores. Later designs swapped the plunger for a crank that spun a paddle.
Q 30Which orange pigment, picked up from the pasture grass that cows eat, gives butter its natural yellow colour?
Carotene
Carotene, mainly beta-carotene, passes from pasture into cow's milk and tints the butter. Makers sometimes deepen the colour with annatto, a natural dye.