50 free Indian Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Indian food trivia questions with answers. Indian food is really dozens of cuisines, and this quiz eats its way across all of them. It covers the Delhi restaurant that gave the world butter chicken and tandoori chicken, biryani's Persian ancestry, the Goan pork dish that became vindaloo, Kashmiri rogan josh, dosa and idli from the south, samosas with a Persian name, naan and chapati, paneer, ghee, garam masala, masala chai, dal, papadums, thalis, pani puri, vada pav, dhokla, rasgulla and its Bengal-Odisha feud, gulab jamun, jalebi, kulfi, chaat, the spices in the tin, the ghost pepper, Mumbai's dabbawalas, and chicken tikka masala, balti and the other curries Britain invented. Easy questions ask what naan is baked in and what paneer is made from; the hard ones want the Middle Persian word behind samosa, the Sanskrit roots of basmati and the year the ghost pepper was crowned. Written for foodies, curry-house regulars, home cooks and pub-quiz teams. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the dishes, spices and their histories, and each question carries the sentence that backs it up.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Delhi restaurant, run by Punjabi refugees from Peshawar, is credited with inventing butter chicken?
Moti Mahal
Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi mixed leftover tandoori chicken into a buttery tomato sauce. The same kitchen popularised tandoori chicken.
Q 02According to the story, how was butter chicken created 'by chance'?
Mixing leftover tandoori into a buttery tomato sauce
Makhan means butter, which is why the dish is also called murgh makhani.
Q 03How hot can a tandoor oven get?
About 480°C
That is around 900°F. The vase-shaped clay oven is heated by charcoal or wood and kept lit for long stretches.
Q 04Tandoori chicken is marinated in spices and what before it goes into the oven?
Yogurt
Moti Mahal in Delhi popularised it in the late 1940s. The red colour traditionally comes from Kashmiri chilli or food colouring.
Q 05Biryani is thought to descend from a rice dish from which cuisine?
Persian
Either pilau or birinj biryan. It was likely perfected in the Mughal court kitchens, though some say it reached South India earlier.
Q 06Vindaloo takes its name from a dish brought to Goa by which European colonisers?
The Portuguese
Carne de vinha d'alhos is pork with wine-vinegar and garlic. The 'aloo' has nothing to do with potatoes.
Q 07Rogan josh is a signature dish of which Indian region's cuisine?
Kashmir
It is a mainstay of the wazwan feast and gets its red colour from Kashmiri chillies and alkanet. The name is Persian for oil and stew.
Q 08Which cooking technique defines a korma?
Braising with yogurt, stock and spices
Mughlai in origin, it was later softened for Anglo-Indian and then British tastes into the mild, creamy dish on takeaway menus.
Q 09A dosa is a South Indian crepe made from a fermented batter of rice and what?
Lentils
Idli uses a similar batter of hulled black lentils and rice, but is steamed into cakes instead.
Q 10An idli recipe appears in the Manasollasa, a 1130 CE encyclopedia compiled by a king of which region?
Karnataka
Someshwara III of the Western Chalukyas wrote it. The idli of that era may not even have contained rice.
Q 11The word samosa comes from an old word, sambosag, meaning what?
Triangular pastry
Sambosag. The snack travelled from Central Asia and the Middle East and can be a triangle, a cone or a crescent.
Q 12What is the main difference between the two flatbreads, naan and chapati?
The first is leavened, the second is not
Naan uses yeast and is baked in a tandoor or on a tawa; chapati is unleavened whole-wheat atta cooked on a griddle.
Q 13Chapatis are made from atta, which is milled from what?
Whole wheat
Just atta and water, rolled thin and cooked dry on a tawa until it puffs.
Q 21By what other names is the street snack pani puri known?
Golgappa and phuchka
A hollow fried puri is filled and dipped in spicy coriander water or sweet tamarind water.
Q 22Vada pav, a fried potato dumpling in a bread bun, is the most famous street snack of which city?
Mumbai
It began as cheap street food and is claimed as part of Mumbaikar culture.
Q 23Which two Indian states have both won geographical indication status for their versions of the rasgulla?
West Bengal and Odisha
West Bengal got 'Banglar rosogolla' in 2017 and Odisha 'Odisha rasagola' in 2019, after a long feud over who invented the syrupy cheese ball.
Q 14Traditional papadums are made from the flour of which bean?
Black gram
They are deep-fried or held over an open flame until crunchy. Lentil, chickpea, rice and potato versions exist too.
Q 15How is paneer made?
By curdling milk with an acid like lemon juice
It is a fresh, non-aged, non-melting cheese, which is why it holds its shape in a curry or on a skewer.
Q 16What is ghee?
Clarified butter
The Sanskrit root means 'to sprinkle' and is a distant cousin of the Greek word behind 'Christ', meaning anointed.
Q 17What does 'garam masala' literally mean?
Hot or warm spices
Garam refers to the warming effect in Ayurveda rather than chilli heat. Blends vary by region and household.
Q 18Masala chai is made by brewing which kind of tea in milk and water with spices?
Black tea
Usually crush-tear-curl leaves. Tea drinking itself was popularised in India by the British.
Q 19What are dals?
Dried, split pulses
Lentils, peas and beans that need no soaking. Lentils are among the oldest cultivated foods, found in Bronze Age settlements.
Q 20What does the Hindi word 'thali' literally mean?
A plate or tray
It came to mean the whole meal of small dishes served on the round platter.
Q 24Dhokla, a steamed savoury sponge, is native to which state?
Gujarat
It is made from a fermented batter and is popular all over India as a snack.
Q 25Gulab jamun is made mainly from khoya. What is khoya?
Milk reduced to a soft dough
The balls are fried at low heat and soaked in syrup flavoured with cardamom and rose water. Gulab means rose.
Q 26How is jalebi batter formed before it is fried and soaked in syrup?
Piped in pretzel-like spirals
The word comes from the Arabic zulabiya. Some claim the American funnel cake is a distant relative.
Q 27Kulfi originated in which century, in Mughal-era Delhi?
16th
It is denser and creamier than ice cream because it is not churned.
Q 28The word chaat comes from a Hindi verb meaning what?
To lick
As in licking your fingers. The snack family originated in Uttar Pradesh.
Q 29Kheer, or payasam, is what kind of dish?
A rice pudding
Milk, sugar or jaggery and rice, boiled slowly. The name comes from the Sanskrit for milk.
Q 30In the ancient Sushruta Samhita, laddus of jaggery, peanuts and sesame were used for what purpose?
As antiseptic and to deliver medicine
The name means 'small ball' in Sanskrit. Today the motichoor and besan varieties are festival staples.