European Food Trivia
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38 free European Food trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
Europe's food is a map of its history: a pastry that crossed a border with strike-breaking bakers, a sauce law that decides which countries may use a name, a soup that became heritage in the middle of a war, and a national dish invented by a cheese cartel with a marketing budget. These 38 questions deliberately look past the usual headline dishes of Italy, Spain and Germany and spread across more than 30 countries: the Nordics and Baltics, the Low Countries and the Alps, the Balkans, the Caucasus and the microstates. Expect dumplings and spit-baked pastries, cured fish and smoked cheeses, herbal liqueurs, royal deaths blamed on dessert, and the protected names that say exactly where a food must be made. It suits a pub quiz round, a classroom geography lesson with a food angle, or anyone who has eaten their way around a few European cities and wants to see how much stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation and a source.
30 of 38 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The pH scale for acidity was introduced in 1909 by chemist Søren Sørensen at the laboratory of which Danish brewer?
Carlsberg
Carlsberg ran the research laboratory where Sørensen devised pH, yet he never explained the p, which may stand for a word for 'power' such as German Potenz.
Q 02Danes call their flaky pastry the 'bread' of which city?
Vienna
Vienna is in the Danish name, wienerbrød, 'Viennese bread', yet German-speaking bakers turn it around and call the same pastry Kopenhagener, after Copenhagen.
Q 03Under EU rules, a wine punch may be labelled 'Sangria' only if it was made in which two countries?
Spain and Portugal
Spain and Portugal keep the plain name under EU rules, so a sangria made anywhere else has to name where it was produced, such as a 'German sangria'.
Q 04Austrian law requires that anything sold as Wiener schnitzel, a national dish, be made from which meat?
Veal
Veal is the rule, so an Austrian menu has to flag a pork version, for example as 'Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein'.
Q 05Which dish did the Swiss Cheese Union push as a national dish in the 1930s, mainly to get people eating more cheese?
Fondue
Fondue was unknown in most of Switzerland before the campaign, which even sent fondue sets to army regiments so soldiers carried the habit home.
Q 06Haribo, maker of the first gummy bears in 1922, is a syllabic abbreviation of founder Hans Riegel's name and which city?
Bonn
Bonn gave Haribo its 'bo', yet in 2018 the company moved its headquarters out of the city to Grafschaft, keeping a factory in Bonn.
Q 07Which pale, mildly bitter vegetable is grown by forcing chicory roots to sprout in darkness?
Belgian endive
Belgian endive, witloof or 'white leaf' in Dutch, stays pale because darkness stops it forming chlorophyll, and the whiter the leaf, the less bitter it tastes.
Q 08In 2022 UNESCO put the cooking culture of which Ukrainian beetroot soup on its urgent-safeguarding heritage list?
Borscht
Borscht was fast-tracked as a case of 'extreme urgency', because the war that began in February 2022 displaced many of the people who cook it.
Q 09Hagelslag, which the Dutch shake onto buttered bread at breakfast, is what?
Chocolate sprinkles
Chocolate sprinkles are a national breakfast: the name means 'hailstorm', and the Dutch also top bread with chocolate vlokken flakes and aniseed muisjes.
Q 10Which fish, dried and salted, is the bacalhau found all over Portuguese cooking?
Cod
Cod was salted and dried because Portugal's North Atlantic fishing tradition developed before refrigeration, and the catch had to keep on long voyages home.
Q 11Salmiakki, Finland's salty liquorice, owes its sharp kick to which compound rather than table salt?
Ammonium chloride
Ammonium chloride above 2% made German salty liquorice carry the warning 'Adult liquorice – not children's liquorice' under national food rules.
Q 12Which Polish dumplings have a classic potato-and-curd-cheese version called 'ruskie', after historic Ruthenia?
Pierogi
Pierogi ruskie recall Poland's former eastern borderlands, the historic region around Lviv that now lies in western Ukraine.
Q 13Haggis, sheep's heart, liver and lungs minced with oatmeal, is traditionally cooked inside which part of the animal?
The stomach
Q 21The Röstigraben, a 'ditch' named after a potato dish, divides German-speaking Swiss from speakers of which language?
French
French-speaking Romandy lies across the 'Rösti ditch', a line often invoked when Swiss referendum results split by language region.
Q 22Which Hungarian deep-fried flatbread is named for 'flame', having once been baked while the oven was still heating up?
Lángos
Lángos comes from láng, the Hungarian for flame; today it is fried in oil rather than baked and piled with sour cream, grated cheese and garlic.
Q 23Adjarian khachapuri, Georgia's boat-shaped cheese bread, is served with a knob of butter and what in the middle?
An egg yolk
The stomach made a natural pot for perishable offal, a trick the Romans used too, though modern haggis is often cooked in an artificial casing.
Q 14Chef Joe Sheridan is credited with inventing Irish coffee for flying-boat passengers at which terminal near Shannon?
Foynes
Foynes passengers were reportedly served Sheridan's drink, and after travel writer Stanton Delaplane brought word of it, San Francisco's Buena Vista Cafe began serving Irish coffee in 1952.
Q 15Which Irish potato griddle cake stars in a rhyme warning that a woman who cannot make it 'will never get a man'?
Boxty
Boxty is built on finely grated raw potato, and the verse runs in full: 'Boxty on the griddle, boxty on the pan; if you can't make boxty, you'll never get a man.'
Q 16Which cream-filled Swedish bun does popular myth blame for King Adolf Frederick's death after a huge 1771 meal?
Semla
Semla was the king's favourite dessert, and legend says he ate it after sauerkraut, turnips, caviar, smoked herring and champagne before dying of digestion problems.
Q 17Which Swedish coffee-and-pastry break is so much an institution that some employment contracts explicitly include it?
Fika
Fika is thought to be kaffi, a dialect word for coffee, with its syllables swapped, and Swedes use it as both a noun and a verb.
Q 18Which Dutch treat, two thin discs glued with syrup, was first made in the city of Gouda?
Stroopwafel
Stroopwafels are often laid on top of a cup of coffee or tea before eating, so the rising heat warms the biscuit and softens the syrup.
Q 19Dutch bitterballen, crisp-coated balls of meat ragout served in bars with toothpicks, are dipped in what?
Mustard
Mustard is the classic dip, and bitterballen aren't bitter at all: they were traditionally eaten with a 'bittertje', a glass of herbal liquor or jenever.
Q 20The Liège waffle differs from the lighter, rectangular Brussels waffle by having what caramelise inside its dough?
Pearl sugar
Pearl sugar nuggets caramelise on the iron, giving the Liège waffle a chewier, stickier bite that locals eat plain rather than under toppings.
An egg yolk goes in the middle, and Georgia has moved to protect khachapuri legally as one of its national foods.
Q 24Which Russian pancakes are the signature food of Maslenitsa, the 'butter week' before Lent?
Blini
Blini suit Maslenitsa's farewell to rich food: meat is already off the menu, and the week ends with the last day devout Orthodox Christians eat dairy before Easter.
Q 25Lithuania's national dish, oval potato dumplings stuffed with meat, is named after a pioneer of what?
Zeppelin airships
Zeppelin airships lent the dumplings their name, since their big oval shape resembles Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's rigid airships.
Q 26Riga Black Balsam, Latvia's bitter herbal liqueur, was first mixed in 1752 by Abraham Kunze, a man of which trade?
Apothecary
Apothecary Abraham Kunze first sold the balsam as medicine, advertising its healing properties, before it became a drink for general enjoyment.
Q 27Iceland's caraway schnapps brennivín earned which grim nickname?
Black Death
Black Death, svarti dauði in Icelandic, is its nickname, and the state gave the newly legal spirit a stark black label meant to put drinkers off.
Q 28Laverbread, which the actor Richard Burton called 'Welshman's caviar', is a purée of what?
Seaweed
Seaweed, laver plucked from rocks and boiled into a purée, is the whole base, so despite its name laverbread contains no bread at all.
Q 29A protected Cornish pasty must contain beef, potato, onion and which root vegetable that Cornish people call turnip?
Swede
Swede goes into a pasty that tin miners once carried as a complete meal, needing no plate or cutlery underground.
Q 30Which spit-roasted sweet pastry, sold to Prague tourists as tradition, has EU protected status tied to the town of Skalica?
Trdelník
Trdelník was a Moravian village pastry long before Prague stalls began selling it to tourists as an old tradition in the 21st century.