Kale
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40 free Kale trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Kale spent centuries as a plain winter staple before it turned into a modern obsession, and the story in between is stranger than most people expect. This leafy cabbage relative has fed farm families through lean months, decorated buffet counters, inspired folk customs and even ended up in a trademark dispute. The quiz covers the plant itself (its varieties, its wild ancestor and what cold weather does to the leaves), the nutrients that made it famous, and the traditional dishes built around it from Ireland to East Africa. A few questions follow kale into literature, pop music and spaceflight. It is pitched for curious cooks, growers and anyone who likes a surprising food fact. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave with stories worth repeating over dinner.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Lacinato kale's bumpy, dark blue-green leaves earned the Italian variety a nickname borrowed from which creature?
Dinosaur
Dinosaur kale got its nickname because the bumpy leaves are said to resemble dinosaur skin. Italians know the same plant as cavolo nero and have grown it for centuries.
Q 02Before kale became a health-food star, which restaurant chain bought tons of it purely to dress salad bars?
Pizza Hut
Pizza Hut bought about 14,000 pounds of kale in 2012 just to decorate its salad bars. For most of the 20th century, Americans grew kale mainly for show rather than for eating.
Q 03The towering stalks of Jersey kale, which can top ten feet, were traditionally varnished and sold as what?
Walking sticks
Walking sticks cut from Jersey kale stalks were selling at 30,000 a year by the early 20th century, many for export. Islanders stripped the lower leaves so the stems grew bare and straight.
Q 04A Vermont T-shirt artist's three-word kale slogan drew a trademark objection from which fast-food chain?
Chick-fil-A
Chick-fil-A said the shirts infringed its own slogan, but the publicity sent sales soaring. The artist, Bo Muller-Moore, won federal trademark protection in 2014.
Q 05In which country is aojiru, a famously unpleasant kale juice, a common punishment on TV game shows?
Japan
Japan's aojiru was devised in 1943 by an army doctor trying to stretch his family's meagre wartime diet. He later judged kale the best leaf for the job.
Q 06Growers often delay picking kale because its leaves turn sweeter after which kind of weather?
A heavy frost
A heavy frost makes kale taste sweeter, and the plant is tough enough to survive temperatures as low as −15 °C. That hardiness made it a winter staple across northern Europe.
Q 07Which pop star danced on a hotel balcony in a sweatshirt reading Kale in the 2014 video for "7/11"?
Beyoncé
Beyoncé shot the clip like a home video in a Los Angeles hotel suite, and it went on to win Video of the Year at the 2015 BET Awards.
Q 08Kalettes, the frilly mini greens that reached British shops in 2010, are a hybrid of kale and which vegetable?
Brussels sprouts
Brussels sprouts were bred with kale by England's Tozer Seeds, and the result first went on sale under the name Flower Sprouts.
Q 09In Scottish folklore noted by Robert Burns, pulling a kale stalk with eyes shut on which night foretold a spouse?
Halloween
Halloween sent young Scots out hand in hand to pull the first stalk they touched; its size and shape were said to predict a husband or wife, and any soil on the root meant a fortune.
Q 10A 100-gram serving of raw kale supplies more than three times the daily value of which nutrient?
Vitamin K
Vitamin K runs at 3.7 times the daily value in 100 grams of raw kale. Plants make it for photosynthesis, which is why dark leafy greens are so rich in it.
Q 11Caldo verde, a green broth of potato and finely shredded kale, is a national favourite of which country?
Portugal
Portugal named caldo verde one of its Seven Wonders of Gastronomy after a public vote in 2011. The soup comes from the northern Minho region and turns up at weddings and birthdays.
Q 12Which Irish dish of mashed potatoes, butter and milk is traditionally mixed with kale or cabbage?
Colcannon
Colcannon probably takes its first syllable from cál, the Irish word for kale. The cheap, year-round dish is a favourite on Saint Patrick's Day.
Q 13Boerenkool stamppot, curly kale mashed with potatoes, is a traditional winter dish of which country?
Netherlands
The Netherlands serves the mash with rookworst, and diners often press a little hollow into the top to hold a pool of gravy.
Q 21Kale's high level of a clotting nutrient can interfere with which widely prescribed blood thinner?
Warfarin
Warfarin works by blocking the body's recycling of that nutrient, so patients are advised to keep their intake of leafy greens as steady as possible.
Q 22Kale is a cruciferous vegetable, a label that refers to which shape formed by its four flower petals?
A cross
A cross is what the four petals resemble, and the old family name Cruciferae is Neo-Latin for cross-bearing. The flowers of wild cabbage, kale's ancestor, are yellow.
Q 23In Scots dialect, where kail became a byword for food itself, being off one's kail means feeling what?
Too ill to eat
Q 14The cabbage king crowned at a North German Grünkohlessen kale dinner must take on which duty?
Organising next year's feast
Organising next year's feast falls to the king, who may be the guest who ate the most portions or put on the most weight during the meal.
Q 15Kohlfahrt, a North German winter custom, pairs a kale-and-sausage meal at an inn with which activity beforehand?
A country walk
A country walk comes first, often with outdoor games and with drinks handed out from a handcart along the way.
Q 16Which future US president listed lacinato kale among the plants in his Virginia garden in 1777?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson also grew sea kale, a different coastal plant, at Monticello between 1820 and 1825.
Q 17Ribollita, the Tuscan bread soup made with cavolo nero kale, has a name meaning what in Italian?
Reboiled
Reboiled describes how cooks reheated the previous day's leftover vegetable soup with stale bread. The dish was first documented in a 1910 Italian cookbook.
Q 18Which American restaurant chain's zuppa toscana pairs kale with Italian sausage, bacon, potatoes and cream?
Olive Garden
Olive Garden's version is a long way from the Tuscan original, a bean soup said to have begun as a thrifty way to use up stale bread.
Q 19East Africa's kale-like sukuma wiki greens take their Swahili name from which thrifty phrase?
Push the week
Push the week is the literal meaning: the greens are affordable and available all year, so they help a household's food last. They are usually eaten with ugali, a maize-flour staple.
Q 20Kale, broccoli, radishes and wasabi belong to a plant family commonly named after which condiment crop?
Mustard
Mustard gives the family its everyday name, the mustards, though botanists call it Brassicaceae. Turnips, arugula and bok choy are members too.
Too ill to eat is the sense, because kale was such a mainstay of the traditional Scottish diet that the word came to stand for a meal.
Q 24Which country's traders carried a flat-leaved red kale to Canada in the 19th century, lending the variety its name?
Russia
Russia's traders took the hardy kale to Canada, and it reached the United States later in the same century.
Q 25Selecting kale-like plants for ever wider stems produced which bulbous vegetable?
Kohlrabi
Kohlrabi is the same species as kale, bred for a swollen stem instead of leaves. Its German name means cabbage turnip, though the true turnip is a different species.
Q 26Which slim-stalked vegetable, sold since the 1990s, is a hybrid of broccoli and Chinese kale, also called gai lan?
Broccolini
Broccolini took the Sakata Seed Company eight years to develop by conventional breeding. The aim was a milder vegetable that could grow in hotter climates.
Q 27Which leafy staple of the American South shares kale's cultivar group and is eaten on New Year's Day for luck?
Collard greens
Collard greens sit with kale in the Acephala group, and Southerners eat them with black-eyed peas and cornbread in the hope of wealth to come.
Q 28Kale is rich in lutein, a yellow pigment that the human body concentrates in which part of itself?
The retina
The retina holds lutein in the macula, the small central patch responsible for colour vision. Animals cannot make the pigment and get it only by eating plants.
Q 29Variants of the TAS2R38 taste-receptor gene help explain why some people find kale and broccoli especially what?
Bitter
Bitter is the taste the receptor picks up from compounds called glucosinolates, so people with a sensitive version of the gene may come to avoid such vegetables.
Q 30Which cooking method lowers kale's glucosinolate content, while the other three cause no significant loss?
Boiling
Boiling lowers the glucosinolates and diminishes most of kale's other nutrients too, though plenty of its manganese survives the pot.