60 free French Fry trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
52 free French Fry trivia questions with answers. French fries are the most-eaten side dish on Earth, and almost everything about them is contested: Belgium and France both claim to have invented them, the oldest written record of fried potatoes actually comes from Chile, and the United States once had Congress rename them. This quiz covers all of it — the origin dispute, the two-bath frying method, why McDonald's fries tasted different after 1990, the handshake deal that put frozen fries in every fast-food kitchen, and the global family of fry dishes from poutine and patatje oorlog to slap-chips and salchipapas. Easy questions ask what the British call fries and which Canadian province gave us poutine; harder ones dig into which potato cultivar dominates the industry, the year Arby's launched curly fries, and the Utah restaurant chain that popularised fry sauce. It works as a food-trivia round for a pub quiz, a bar-night warm-up, or a solo test for anyone who thinks they know their frites. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on French fries, poutine, freedom fries and the companies and dishes involved, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In Britain and Ireland, what are American-style potato chips called?
Crisps
Fried potato batons are the "chips" there, and thin fast-food fries are sometimes called "skinny fries" to set them apart from thick-cut chips.
Q 02Poutine, the dish of fries topped with cheese curds and gravy, comes from which Canadian province?
Quebec
It emerged in the Centre-du-Québec region in the late 1950s, and the word was only added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary in 2014.
Q 03Which two countries have a long-running dispute over who invented fries?
Belgium and France
Belgian historian Pierre Leclercq has concluded that fries are of French origin, becoming an emblematic Parisian dish in the 19th century, while Belgian tradition blames 'French gastronomic hegemony' for the name.
Q 04In March 2003, US House cafeterias replaced the word "French" on their fries and toast with what word?
Freedom
Representatives Bob Ney and Walter B. Jones ordered the change in March 2003 over France's opposition to the Iraq War; the menus quietly reverted in August 2006.
Q 05Which fast-food chain introduced its spiral-shaped Curly-Q Fries in 1988?
Arby's
Curly fries are far older than that chain: an Oklahoma City restaurant was serving them as 'Suzi-Q potatoes' in 1938.
Q 06Until 1990, McDonald's cooked its fries in a blend that was 93% what?
Beef tallow
The other 7% was cottonseed oil; after the switch to vegetable oil the chain added beef flavouring to keep the taste.
Q 07Which US president served 'potatoes served in the French manner' at the White House in 1802?
Thomas Jefferson
A manuscript in his own hand describes 'pommes de terre frites à cru, en petites tranches', a recipe almost certainly from his French chef Honoré Julien.
Q 08The oldest known written mention of fried potatoes, from 1629, comes from which country?
Chile
Francisco Núñez de Pineda's account of captivity among the Mapuche mentions eating 'papas fritas', probably wide slices or cubes fried in lamb or guanaco tallow.
Q 09The curator of Belgium's Frietmuseum has suggested which Spanish saint cooked the first fries?
Teresa of Ávila
Professor Paul Ilegems points to Spain as the first European country to receive the potato and to the Mediterranean tradition of frying as evidence.
Q 10In which Belgian city is the Frietmuseum, the self-styled first museum of potato fries?
Bruges
Founder Eddy Van Belle opened it in 2008 inside the Gothic Saaihalle, a former wool hall dating to 1399, after his chocolate museum proved popular.
Q 11A Belgian journalist claimed potatoes were fried in the Meuse valley before 1680 as a substitute for what?
Frying fish when rivers froze
Jo Gérard never produced the manuscript, and historians note the potato did not even reach the region until around 1735.
Q 12In Belgium, fries are traditionally served in what kind of container?
A paper cone
The cornet de frites is a white cardboard cone wrapped in paper, usually finished with a spoonful of mayonnaise on top.
Q 13In the classic two-bath method, roughly what temperature is the second, crisping fry?
190 °C
Q 21The Dutch street food 'patatje oorlog' translates literally as what?
War fries
It is fries dressed with mayonnaise, peanut satay sauce and diced raw onion, a messy combination that earned the name.
Q 22In Cape Town, soft, soggy fries doused in white vinegar are known by what name?
Slap-chips
Fried at a lower temperature for longer than usual, they are an essential filling of the Gatsby, the giant Cape Town sandwich.
Q 23In Australia, what seasoning is a popular addition to hot chips?
Chicken salt
Peter Brinkworth created it in the 1970s in Gawler, South Australia to season rotisserie chicken; most supermarket versions today contain no chicken at all.
The first bath at around 160 °C cooks the potato through and can be done in advance; for 2–3 mm strips the second bath takes only seconds.
Q 14In 1967, Ray Kroc of McDonald's sealed a handshake deal for frozen fries with which Idaho potato baron?
J. R. Simplot
Fresh russets were unavailable for three months every summer, so frozen fries solved a quality problem; by 1972 all of the chain's fries were frozen.
Q 15Which potato cultivar, a mutation selected in 1873, dominates North American fry production?
Russet Burbank
It made up only 4% of US potatoes in 1930, but Idaho irrigation, frozen fries and fast food pushed it to over 40% of the US growing area by the 2010s.
Q 16McCain Foods, the world's largest maker of frozen fries, was founded in 1957 in which Canadian province?
New Brunswick
Brothers Harrison and Wallace McCain started in Florenceville, which now calls itself 'the French fry capital of the world' and hosts a museum called Potato World.
Q 17According to McCain, roughly what share of the world's fries are McCain fries?
1 in 4
The company sells in 160 countries, and its main rivals are the two other Pacific Northwest giants, Simplot and Lamb Weston.
Q 18Ore-Ida invented Tater Tots in 1953 from what?
Leftover slivers from fry production
The Grigg brothers formed the seasoned scraps into little logs, and an employee contest produced the name; the brand name itself fuses Oregon and Idaho.
Q 19In which US state was fry sauce, the pink ketchup-and-mayonnaise blend, popularised?
Utah
Don Carlos Edwards served it at his barbecue restaurant in the early 1940s and then at the first Arctic Circle in Salt Lake City, and the chain still serves it today.
Q 20In 2018 Heinz launched a mayonnaise-and-ketchup blend under what name after a Twitter poll?
Mayochup
More than 500,000 users voted yes, and plenty replied that the Mountain West had been calling the same mixture fry sauce for decades.
Q 24In June 2004, the US Department of Agriculture classified batter-coated French fries as what?
A vegetable
The so-called 'French fry rule' under the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act was for trade reasons and was upheld by the Fifth Circuit in Fleming Companies v. USDA.
Q 25Which author's 1856 cookbook first printed the term 'French Fried Potatoes' in English?
Eliza Warren
Her Cookery for Maids of All Work described thin slices shallow-fried golden, so the term predates the familiar deep-fried batons.
Q 26In French, thick-cut fries of about 10 mm are named after which Paris landmark?
Pont Neuf
Thinner cuts are pommes allumettes (matchsticks, about 7 mm) and pommes paille (straws, about 4 mm), while pommes gaufrettes are waffle fries.
Q 27In northern France and Belgium, what fat was traditionally standard for frying fries?
Horse fat
Some chefs recommend it over vegetable oil, while older recipes elsewhere favoured beef suet, with vegetable shortening as the alternative.
Q 28Fernand Lachance supposedly coined 'poutine' in 1957 by saying curds in fries would make what?
A damn mess
His shout of 'ça va faire une maudite poutine!' at Le Café Idéal in Warwick is one of several competing origin stories from Centre-du-Québec.
Q 29Which chef's foie gras poutine at Montreal's Au Pied de Cochon helped push the dish onto upscale menus?
Martin Picard
Its success inspired lobster and braised-beef poutines in Toronto and a poutinerie boom across Canada in the early 2010s.
Q 30In a 2017 Maclean's survey of Canadians' favourite iconic food, poutine finished first ahead of what?
Maple syrup
Poutine took 21% of the vote to maple syrup's 14%, and by 2011 media were reporting 11 April as National Poutine Day.