Essential Oils
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40 free Essential Oils trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Essential oils sit in bathroom cabinets, kitchen cupboards and perfume bottles, and nearly every one has a story. Some were prized by ancient embalmers and royalty, some flavor drinks and sweets you already know, and a few are far more dangerous than their pleasant smell suggests. This quiz covers where the best-known oils come from, how distillers and perfumers get them out of leaves, petals, peel, wood and resin, and what they are used for today. Expect questions on famous scents, household products, safety around the home, the chemistry behind the smells and the odd history of the trade. It is written for aromatherapy fans, soap and candle makers, gardeners and anyone who enjoys a good quiz-night fact. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
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Q 01Which soft drink lost its traditional flavoring when the FDA banned safrole, a key compound in sassafras oil, in 1960?
Root beer
Root beer was traditionally flavored with sassafras root bark, until safrole was banned as a carcinogen. Most brands now use artificial sassafras flavoring or a safrole-free extract.
Q 02Which flower's oil did chemist René-Maurice Gattefossé use on his burned hands after a 1910 laboratory explosion?
Lavender
Lavender essence stopped the gas gangrene spreading across his hands after a single rinse, by his own account. In 1937 he published the book that first put the word aromatherapy in print.
Q 03Which household pets are especially vulnerable to essential oils because they lack a key liver enzyme?
Cats
Cats lack a liver enzyme that helps clear these compounds, and the oils are absorbed quickly through skin and mouth. Warning signs include drooling, vomiting, tremors and wobbliness.
Q 04Which solvent, long used by artists to thin oil paints, is a volatile oil distilled from the resin of pine trees?
Turpentine
Turpentine was once tapped from living pines, but most of it is now a by-product of paper pulping. Cheaper petroleum-based white spirit has largely replaced it in paint cupboards.
Q 05Which sour fruit, grown along the coast of Calabria in southern Italy, gives the peel oil that flavors Earl Grey tea?
Bergamot
Bergamot oil is pressed from the fruit's aromatic rind, and it also scents Lady Grey tea and Turkish delight. On bare skin it can make sunlight burn faster, thanks to a compound called bergapten.
Q 06Which notorious poison forms alongside the essential oil of bitter almonds and must be removed before the oil is used?
Cyanide
Cyanide is released when crushed bitter almonds meet water, in the same reaction that frees the oil. The almond flavor itself comes from benzaldehyde, which makes up nearly all of the purified oil.
Q 07Which aromatic resin, tapped from Boswellia trees in Oman and Somalia, was one of the three gifts of the Magi?
Frankincense
Frankincense harvesters tap each tree two or three times a year, and the final cuts yield the most fragrant tears. Oman's ancient trade sites for it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2000.
Q 08Which Australian tree, whose leaves make up most of the koala's diet, yields a sharp-scented oil used in cough remedies?
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus oil is highly flammable, and in intense heat it speeds the spread of wildfires. The same leaves are toxic to most other mammals, which leaves koalas with little competition.
Q 09Which conifer's berry-like cones hold an essential oil used in massage blends and give gin the flavor that defines it?
Juniper
Juniper berries are not berries at all but small cones with fleshy, fused scales. Gin even takes its name from the plant, by way of the Dutch word jenever.
Q 10Which German city gave its name to the citrus-oil fragrance that perfumer Johann Maria Farina created there in 1709?
Cologne
Cologne was Farina's adopted hometown, and he named his airy blend of citrus oils in its honor. It caught on across Europe as a fresh alternative to the heavier French perfumes of the day.
Q 11Which mouthwash, named after a pioneer of antiseptic surgery, counts menthol and thymol among its active ingredients?
Listerine
Listerine began in 1879 as a surgical antiseptic and was later sold as a floor cleaner and a cure for gonorrhea. It only took off in the 1920s, when ads recast bad breath as a medical condition.
Q 12Which spirit, nicknamed the green fairy, gets its flavor from the aromatic oils of wormwood, anise and fennel?
Absinthe
Absinthe was banned in the United States and much of Europe by 1915, with a wormwood compound called thujone taking the blame. It was never shown to be more dangerous than ordinary spirits.
Q 13Which fruit's peel oil, collected as a by-product of juice making, is registered in the US for killing termites?
Orange
Q 21Which lemon-scented grass oil has been registered in the United States as a plant-based insect repellent since 1948?
Citronella
Citronella candles, for all their popularity, proved ineffective against the mosquito species that spreads dengue and Zika. Canada banned the oil as a repellent in 2012, then lifted the ban in 2015.
Q 22Which Balkan country's Kazanlak valley has grown roses for centuries and is one of the world's main sources of rose oil?
Bulgaria
Bulgaria's Rose Valley celebrates the crop with festivals every year. Rose pickers traditionally work by hand before sunrise, and the petals go into the still the same day.
Q 23Which waxy, strong-smelling compound from an East Asian laurel tree is an active ingredient of Tiger Balm?
Camphor
Orange oil is spun out of the peels by centrifuge during juicing instead of being distilled. By one estimate it is the most produced essential oil in the world.
Q 14Which brewing ingredient gets its pungent aroma from essential oils that brewers protect by adding it late in the boil?
Hops
Hops are the cone-shaped flowers of a plant in the cannabis family. Boil them too long and the fragrant oils evaporate, leaving mostly bitterness behind.
Q 15Which country, whose flag shows the tree, gave its name to the cedar that supplied ancient Egyptian embalmers with oil?
Lebanon
Lebanon's cedar forests were felled over the centuries until almost none remain, and no commercial oil comes from the species today. In embalming, the oil also helped keep insects off the body.
Q 16Which term names a mild vegetable oil, such as sweet almond or grape seed, used to dilute essential oils for massage?
Carrier oil
A carrier oil is so named because it carries the potent plant essence onto the skin at a safe concentration. The same idea is used to dilute medicines and food flavorings.
Q 17Which hybrid of watermint and spearmint is grown for an oil used mainly to flavor chewing gum and toothpaste?
Peppermint
Peppermint is usually sterile, so it sets no seed and spreads only by creeping runners. Its cooling kick comes from the menthol that makes up much of the oil.
Q 18Which Australian shrub yields the pungent oil sold as a remedy for acne, dandruff and head lice?
Tea tree
Tea tree got its name on the 1770 Endeavour voyage, the story goes, when sailors used the leaves in place of real tea. The oil itself is poisonous if swallowed.
Q 19Which spice's oil, rich in the compound eugenol, has long been dabbed on aching teeth as a folk remedy?
Clove
Clove oil is also commonly used to anesthetize or humanely put down pet and laboratory fish. Madagascar and Indonesia are the main producers.
Q 20Which disease were the legendary 'four thieves' said to dodge by dousing themselves in herb-steeped vinegar?
Plague
Plague victims were being robbed by the thieves, the usual story goes, and when caught the gang traded their recipe for leniency. The tale is usually set in Marseille or Toulouse.
Camphor was once consumed in immense quantities by the early plastics industry, which used it to turn nitrocellulose into celluloid.
Q 24Which daisy-like herb, popular as a herbal tea, yields an essential oil that turns deep blue during steam distillation?
Chamomile
Chamomile oil gets its inky color from chamazulene, a compound that is absent from the fresh flower and forms only in the heat of the still.
Q 25Which kitchen herb, whose Latin name means dew of the sea, was the main ingredient of the early perfume Hungary water?
Rosemary
Rosemary gave Hungary water, one of Europe's first alcohol-based perfumes, its scent. Legend says the blend was made at the command of a queen of Hungary.
Q 26Which minty-smelling oil is about 98 percent methyl salicylate, the compound that warms muscle rubs such as Bengay?
Wintergreen
Wintergreen leaves contain none of the compound until they are steeped in warm water, when an enzyme creates it. The same chemical flavors chewing gum and mints.
Q 27Which earthy oil from a bushy herb of the mint family became the signature scent of the 1960s hippie movement?
Patchouli
Patchouli is said to take its name from Tamil words meaning green leaf. Indonesia grows the bulk of the world's supply.
Q 28Which French Riviera hill town, once a center of leather tanning, is known as the world's perfume capital?
Grasse
Grasse perfumers got their start scenting leather gloves during the Renaissance, and in 1614 the king recognized a guild of glover-perfumers. Its mild microclimate suited flower farming.
Q 29Which compound, named after the lemon, makes up most of the oil in citrus peels and doubles as a food flavoring?
Limonene
Limonene has a mirror-image twin that smells of pine instead of citrus. Makers of cleaning products prize the common form as a renewable solvent.
Q 30Which name is given to the fragrant water left over when plants are steam-distilled, sold as rose water or witch hazel?
Hydrosol
Hydrosols were long treated as a mere by-product of making oils but are now valued in their own right. Made hot and slightly acidic, they resist bacteria better than fungi.