49 free Fried Chicken trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Fried chicken has a longer and stranger history than the bucket suggests, and this quiz covers all of it: the 1747 cookbook with the first recorded recipe, the enslaved cooks who made it a Southern staple, the roadside filling station where a 50-year-old Harland Sanders perfected his method, the accident of spite that supposedly created Nashville hot chicken, the Buffalo bar that turned throwaway wings into a Super Bowl ritual, and the 2019 sandwich war that sold Popeyes out of chicken. Easy questions ask how many herbs and spices are in the Original Recipe and why one big chain shuts every Sunday; harder ones get into chain founders, Japanese holiday traditions, Korean yangnyeom and the Cornell professor who invented the nugget. It works for a food-themed pub quiz round, a National Fried Chicken Day party or anyone who has strong opinions about brining. The questions run from casual eater to serious food historian. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the dish, the chains and the people behind them, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which people were the first recorded to deep-fry chicken with breadcrumbs and seasonings, in a 1747 cookbook?
The Scottish
Hannah Glasse's cookbook has the recipe, and a 1773 diary describes fried chicken being eaten on the Isle of Skye.
Q 02Southern fried chicken traces its origins to European deep-frying and the palm-oil-fried chicken of which region?
West Africa
West African cooks battered and fried chicken in palm oil with their own seasonings, techniques enslaved people brought to the American South.
Q 03In which decade was the expression "fried chicken" first recorded?
The 1830s
It became a regular feature of American cookbooks in the 1860s and 1870s.
Q 04Which fat is traditionally used to fry Southern fried chicken?
Lard
Corn, peanut, canola and soybean oils are common substitutes today, and buttermilk is often used first to tenderise the meat.
Q 05Which cut of a fried chicken contains the most fat per 100 grams?
The wings
Wings carry almost 40 grams of fat per 100 grams, though a whole fried chicken averages only about 12 percent fat.
Q 06Which Virginia town bills itself as the "Fried Chicken Capital of the World"?
Gordonsville
Its rail junction made it a hub where fried chicken was sold to passing train passengers in the 19th century.
Q 07Which Ohio town gives its name to a style of fried chicken created by Serbian immigrants?
Barberton
Barberton chicken is served with hot sauce, vinegar slaw and fries in the same restaurants that have made it since the 1930s.
Q 08How many herbs and spices are in KFC's Original Recipe, according to its marketing?
11
Sanders said the ingredients included salt and pepper and that the rest stand on everybody's shelf; the recipe remains a trade secret.
Q 09In which state is North Corbin, where Sanders first sold fried chicken from a filling station?
Kentucky
Shell gave him the North Corbin station rent-free in 1930, and he first served travellers at his own dining table.
Q 10In which state was Colonel Sanders actually born?
Indiana
He was born near Henryville in 1890 and was cooking for his siblings by the age of seven after his father died.
Q 11What cooking method did Sanders patent for his chicken, which cooked it faster than a skillet?
Pressure frying
He finalised the method in July 1940 at age 50; the Broaster Company later marketed the same idea as broasting.
Q 12Sanders received his honorary colonel's commission in 1935 from which governor?
Ruby Laffoon
He was recommissioned in 1950 by Governor Wetherby and only then began dressing the part with the goatee, string tie and white suit.
Q 13Where did the first franchise of Sanders' chicken recipe open in 1952?
South Salt Lake, Utah
The franchisee ran one of the city's biggest restaurants, and his sign painter Don Anderson coined the name Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Q 21Fans of which Japanese baseball team threw a Colonel Sanders statue in a river in 1985?
The Hanshin Tigers
The Curse of the Colonel held that the Tigers would not win the Japan Series again until the statue was recovered; it was pulled from the Dotonbori canal in 2009.
Q 22Popeyes opened in 1972 in a suburb of which city?
New Orleans
Al Copeland's first attempt, called Chicken on the Run, failed within months; he reopened four days later as Popeyes Mighty Good Chicken.
Q 23Founder Al Copeland claimed Popeyes was named after which character?
Detective Popeye Doyle from The French Connection
Q 14Which franchisee introduced KFC's bucket in 1957 and trademarked "It's finger lickin' good"?
Pete Harman
The original bucket held 14 pieces of chicken, five bread rolls and a pint of gravy.
Q 15For how much did Sanders sell his chicken company to John Y. Brown Jr. and Jack Massey in 1964?
$2 million
Brown sold it on to Heublein seven years later for $285 million; Sanders kept the Canadian operations and a lifetime salary.
Q 16Sanders publicly described KFC's later gravy as "sludge" with a "wallpaper taste", prompting what?
An unsuccessful libel suit against him by the parent company
Heublein lost the 1975 case; Sanders had also been known to push disappointing food onto the floor during surprise restaurant visits.
Q 17In what year did the chain officially adopt the shorter name KFC?
1991
Its US president admitted the change was meant to distance the chain from the unhealthy connotations of the word fried.
Q 18Which company bought KFC from R. J. Reynolds in 1986 and later spun it off into Yum! Brands?
PepsiCo
PepsiCo already owned Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, and the three chains still share a parent in Yum! Brands.
Q 19KFC opened its first outlet in China in November 1987, in which city?
Beijing
China is now KFC's biggest market, and the chain has more than 30,000 restaurants in 150 countries.
Q 20In Japan, KFC is famously eaten on which holiday, thanks to a long-running 1974 advertising campaign?
Christmas
The first Japanese store manager, Takeshi Okawara, began selling party barrels as a stand-in for turkey in 1970, and Christmas sales are now about five percent of annual revenue.
The chain nonetheless leaned into the cartoon sailor for years, sponsoring a local Popeye & Pals children's show.
Q 24Which owner of Tim Hortons and a big burger chain bought Popeyes for $1.8 billion in 2017?
Restaurant Brands International
The deal valued the chain at $79 a share; Popeyes now has more than 5,000 restaurants.
Q 25Why are all Chick-fil-A restaurants closed on Sundays?
Founder Truett Cathy's belief in honouring the Sabbath
Cathy, a devout Southern Baptist, said closing on Sunday was a way of honouring God; the stores also shut on two other holidays each year.
Q 26Where did the first dedicated Chick-fil-A restaurant open in 1967?
A shopping mall food court in Atlanta
Before that the sandwich had been licensed to more than 50 outlets, including Waffle House and the Astrodome's concession stands.
Q 27Which animals hold the misspelled "Eat Mor Chikin" signs in Chick-fil-A's advertising?
Holstein cows
The Richards Group created the campaign in 1995, and it was paused briefly in 2004 during a mad cow disease scare.
Q 28Nashville hot chicken is traditionally served on top of what?
Slices of white bread with pickle chips
Three parts pepper to one part lard is typical, and it is served on white bread with pickle chips.
Q 29According to legend, hot chicken was invented when Thornton Prince's girlfriend did what?
Cooked him a fiery breakfast as revenge for a late night
Prince liked it so much he and his brothers opened the Bar-B-Que Chicken Shack in the 1930s; his great-niece still runs Prince's today.
Q 30Which conflict's aftermath introduced deep-fried chicken to South Korea via the US military?
The Korean War
Modern Korean fried chicken took off in the 1970s once cooking oil was widely available, and chimaek pairs it with beer.