100 free French Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
French cooking has rules, legends and lawsuits, and this quiz covers all three. The 100 questions run from the bakery (why the croissant is really Austrian, what a baguette may legally contain) through the great regional dishes (bouillabaisse in Marseille, cassoulet in Castelnaudary, coq au vin in Burgundy, ratatouille in Nice) to cheese, wine and spirits: Roquefort's caves, Camembert's wooden box, Comté's fruitières, the grapes of Champagne, the 1855 Bordeaux classification and how long Cognac must sit in oak. You will also meet the people who shaped the table: Carême and Escoffier, Brillat-Savarin, Julia Child, Paul Bocuse and the Michelin brothers who gave away a guide to sell tyres. Some questions any Francophile will get; others, like which mayor of Nice banned boiled potatoes from his salad or which year beef bourguignon was first written down, are there to settle arguments. It suits a dinner party, a Bastille Day quiz, a French class or a food-and-drink round at the pub. Every answer has been checked against a source, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you answer.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In what year did UNESCO list the 'gastronomic meal of the French' as intangible heritage?
2010
A traditional French meal runs starter, main, then cheese or dessert, sometimes with a salad before the cheese.
Q 02Which chef divided the professional kitchen into stations with the 'brigade system'?
Auguste Escoffier
The French press called him 'king of chefs and chef of kings'; his 1903 book Le Guide Culinaire is still a reference.
Q 03Escoffier created the dessert Peach Melba in 1893 in honour of an Australian who was what?
An opera singer
Nellie Melba also gave her name to Melba toast; Escoffier worked with hotelier César Ritz at the Savoy and Carlton in London.
Q 04The croissant descends from the kipferl, a crescent-shaped pastry from which country?
Austria
August Zang, an Austrian artillery officer, opened a Viennese bakery on the rue de Richelieu in Paris in 1838 or 1839.
Q 05Which four ingredients may a French 'baguette de tradition' contain?
Flour, water, yeast, salt
A 1993 decree requires traditional bread to be kneaded, shaped and baked where it is sold; UNESCO listed baguette culture in 2022.
Q 06About how long is a standard baguette?
75 cm
It is only 5 to 6 cm across, though some are baked up to a metre long.
Q 07Bouillabaisse, the saffron fish stew, originated in which port city?
Marseille
Fishermen made it from bony rockfish they could not sell; the broth is served first with bread and rouille, then the fish on a platter.
Q 08What is rouille, the sauce served with bouillabaisse?
A garlic and saffron mayonnaise
It is spread on grilled bread and floated in the broth; the name means 'rust', for its colour.
Q 09Cassoulet takes its name from the cassole, which is what?
An earthenware cooking pot
The three main versions, from three Languedoc towns, differ in their meats: pork, mutton and partridge, or Toulouse sausage and duck.
Q 10Which town in the Aude department is regarded as the birthplace of cassoulet?
Castelnaudary
Its Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet was founded in 1970 and has run an annual festival since 2000.
Q 11Coq au vin is traditionally made with red wine from which region?
Burgundy
Alsace makes it with Riesling and the Jura with vin jaune; Julia Child cooked it twice on The French Chef.
Q 12Ratatouille is a traditional dish of which French region?
Provence
The name comes from the Occitan ratatolha and the verb touiller, to stir; Pixar's 2007 film made it famous worldwide.
Q 13Which snail species, known as the Roman snail or escargot de Bourgogne, is the one most eaten in France?
Helix pomatia
In fine dining you grip the shell with a pince à escargot and pull the snail out with a special two-pronged fork.
Q 21Which cheese received France's very first Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, in 1925?
Roquefort
It is nicknamed the 'king of cheeses' and gets its blue veins from Penicillium roqueforti.
Q 22Camembert comes from which French region?
Normandy
Legend credits farmer Marie Harel in 1791; the round wooden box that let it travel to America was invented in 1890.
Q 23Which French PDO cheese has the largest annual production, about 65,000 tonnes?
Comté
It is made in cooperative dairies called fruitières from Montbéliarde cow milk, in wheels weighing up to 55 kg.
Q 14A macaron shell is made from egg whites, sugar and which ground ingredient?
Almonds
The sandwich version with ganache or jam only appeared in the 1930s; Carmelite nuns in Nancy sold plain ones in the 1790s.
Q 15Which Paris pâtisserie is often credited with inventing the double-decker macaron?
Ladurée
Pierre Desfontaines of Ladurée usually gets the credit, though a baker named Claude Gerbet also claimed the invention.
Q 16Add a fried or poached egg on top of a croque monsieur and it becomes a croque what?
Madame
'Croque' means crunch and 'monsieur' mister; an 1891 recipe already lists toast, butter, Gruyère, ham and cayenne.
Q 17A traditional quiche Lorraine contains cream, eggs and bacon but NOT which ingredient often added today?
Gruyère cheese
The word may come from the German Kuchen, cake; a 1982 book called Real Men Don't Eat Quiche was, one writer said, its 'final humiliation'.
Q 18Tarte Tatin, the upside-down caramelised apple tart, is named after two sisters who ran what?
A hotel
Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin's hotel was in Lamotte-Beuvron; the name was applied later by the food writer Curnonsky and Maxim's.
Q 19The earliest known recipe for crème brûlée appears in a cookbook by François Massialot from which year?
1691
Cambridge's Trinity College served a version as 'Trinity cream' from 1879; the name simply means burnt cream.
Q 20The blue cheese aged in the Combalou caves of southern France is made from the milk of which animal?
Sheep
Only cheese aged in those caves may use the name, and the milk comes exclusively from Lacaune ewes.
Q 24Which three grapes make up nearly all Champagne?
Pinot noir, Pinot meunier, Chardonnay
The bubbles come from a second fermentation in the bottle, and Dom Pérignon, despite the legend, did not invent them.
Q 25What is the muselet on a bottle of Champagne?
The wire cage over the cork
Invented in 1844, it holds back roughly 5 to 6 atmospheres of pressure.
Q 26The Michelin Guide was first published in 1900 by a company that made what?
Tyres
The brothers gave away nearly 35,000 copies to French motorists; restaurant stars only arrived in 1926.
Q 27In the Michelin Guide, three stars officially mean a restaurant is what?
Worth a special journey
The zero-to-three star hierarchy dates from 1931; the Bib Gourmand for good value arrived in 1997.
Q 28Julia Child co-wrote Mastering the Art of French Cooking with Simone Beck and which other Frenchwoman?
Louisette Bertholle
Volume 1 held 524 recipes over 726 pages; the film Julie & Julia sent it back onto the bestseller list 48 years after publication.
Q 29Which of these is one of the five French mother sauces?
Velouté
The usual list is béchamel, espagnole, tomato, velouté and hollandaise; Carême's 1833 list had allemande instead of the last two.
Q 30Béchamel sauce is made by thickening which liquid with a white roux?
Milk
It is usually flavoured with onion, nutmeg or thyme and is the base of a croque monsieur's topping.