Mexican Food Trivia
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This Mexican food trivia quiz has 110 free questions with answers and covers the whole table: mole poblano and its 20-odd ingredients, pozole and tamales that predate the Aztecs, chiles en nogada in the colours of the flag, cochinita pibil from the south, carnitas from Michoacán, and desserts like tres leches, flan and pan de muerto. Drinks get their due too, with tequila, mezcal, pulque, horchata, aguas frescas and the michelada. It is built for anyone who loves eating Mexican food and wants to know where it comes from: the Nahuatl words behind guacamole and tortilla, why corn is soaked in limewater, which chile becomes a chipotle, and how nachos and the Caesar salad were both invented on Mexican soil. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a handful of questions that will test a serious food nerd. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and primary references before publishing, and each question carries a source citation, so you can settle arguments as well as start them.
30 of 110 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which year did UNESCO inscribe traditional Mexican cuisine on its Intangible Cultural Heritage list?
2010
UNESCO inscribed traditional Mexican cuisine in 2010, at the same session that listed the French gastronomic meal and the Mediterranean diet, making it one of the first national cuisines honoured.
Q 02Roughly how many ingredients does an average mole poblano contain?
20
Mole poblano typically calls for around 20 ingredients, among them several dried chiles, chocolate, nuts, seeds, bread and spices; some Oaxacan moles run to 30 or more.
Q 03Pozole is a hearty Mexican soup built around which key ingredient?
Hominy
Hominy, maize kernels nixtamalized until they swell and split, is the base of pozole; the name comes from Nahuatl pozolli, and the soup is a New Year's Eve fixture in Mexico and New Mexico.
Q 04Menudo, the red-chile soup eaten as a weekend hangover cure, is built around which cut?
Tripe
Tripe, the lining of the cow's stomach, is simmered for hours in a red chile broth to make menudo, a weekend staple and famous hangover remedy across northern Mexico.
Q 05In tropical parts of Mexico such as Oaxaca, tamales are commonly wrapped in what instead of corn husks?
Banana leaves
Banana leaves replace corn husks across Oaxaca and Mexico's tropical south, wrapping the large, flat tamales oaxaqueños and lending the dough a moist texture and a faint grassy flavour.
Q 06The green chile, white sauce and red pomegranate of chiles en nogada are meant to represent what?
The Mexican flag
The colours echo the Mexican flag: green poblano chile, white nogada sauce and red pomegranate seeds, which is why the dish is a fixture of September's Independence Day season.
Q 07The creamy nogada sauce on chiles en nogada is made from which nut?
Walnuts
Walnuts give nogada its name, from nogal, the Spanish for walnut tree; the fresh late-summer crop is peeled and blended with milk or cream into the pale sauce.
Q 08Legend says chiles en nogada were first prepared in 1821 to entertain which future emperor of Mexico?
Agustín de Iturbide
Agustín de Iturbide, crowned emperor the following year, was fêted in Puebla after signing the Treaty of Córdoba; tradition credits the nuns of the Santa Mónica convent with the dish.
Q 09The word guacamole comes from Classical Nahuatl and literally translates to what?
Avocado sauce
Guacamole is Nahuatl āhuacamōlli, literally 'avocado sauce': āhuacatl (avocado) plus mōlli (sauce), the same mōlli behind the word mole.
Q 10Guacamole is traditionally mashed with salt in which stone tool?
A molcajete
The molcajete is a volcanic-rock mortar; the pestle that goes with it is the tejolote.
Q 11In the early 1900s, avocados in the United States often went by what name?
Alligator pear
Alligator pear was the common US name, after the fruit's rough green skin; California growers pushed the name 'avocado', from Nahuatl āhuacatl, from the 1910s onward.
Q 12In nixtamalization, corn is soaked and cooked in what kind of solution before grinding?
Limewater
Limewater, a solution of slaked lime (calcium hydroxide), provides the alkaline bath that loosens the hulls, improves the flavour and makes the grain's nutrients far more available.
Q 13Nixtamalizing corn makes tryptophan available and helps prevent which deficiency disease?
Pellagra
Pellagra, the niacin-deficiency disease, struck populations that adopted maize without the process, from southern Europe to the US South, where it persisted into the 20th century; the alkaline bath frees the grain's bound niacin.
Q 21What does the word carnitas literally mean?
Little meats
Little meats is the literal sense of carnitas, carne plus a diminutive ending; the pork is braised in lard over low heat until tender inside and crisp at the edges.
Q 22Carnitas are most closely associated with which Mexican state?
Michoacán
Michoacán is carnitas country: the town of Quiroga bills itself as the carnitas capital, and the marbled shoulder cuts are simmered in lard in a wide copper pot called a cazo.
Q 23A churrera pipes churro dough into hot oil through a nozzle of what shape?
Star
Star nozzles give churros their ridges, which help the dough cook through and crisp evenly; in Mexico churros are often filled with cajeta or chocolate.
Q 14What is the name of the dough formed from nixtamalized cornmeal that becomes tortillas and tamales?
Masa
The word nixtamalization itself is Nahuatl: nextli (ash) plus tamalli (cooked corn dough).
Q 15The Aztecs and other Nahuatl speakers called tortillas by what name?
Tlaxcalli
Tlaxcalli was the Nahuatl name for the flatbread, and the state of Tlaxcala shares the root; the Spanish later applied their own word tortilla to it.
Q 16The Spanish word tortilla, from torta plus a diminutive ending, literally means what?
Little cake
Little cake is the literal sense: Spanish torta (cake) plus the diminutive ending -illa. Spaniards applied the word to the corn flatbread they met in Mexico in the 16th century.
Q 17Elote, Mexican street corn on the cob, is classically dusted with which crumbly grated cheese?
Cotija
Cotija, a salty, crumbly aged cows' milk cheese named after the town of Cotija, is grated over the mayonnaise-slathered cob with chile powder and a squeeze of lime.
Q 18Chilaquiles, fried tortilla pieces simmered in salsa, are usually eaten at which meal?
Breakfast
Breakfast is the hour for chilaquiles: the dish is a classic way to use up the previous day's tortillas and salsa, typically topped with onion, crumbled cheese and a fried egg.
Q 19Which seed gives the Mexican pork dish cochinita pibil its burnt-orange colour?
Annatto
Annatto, the seed of the achiote tree, is ground into a paste with bitter orange juice for the marinade; the pork is then roasted in a píib, a pit oven dug into the ground.
Q 20The word barbacoa, the root of the English word barbecue, comes from which language?
Taíno
Taíno, the Arawakan language of the Caribbean, gave Spanish barbacoa, a framework of sticks for cooking over fire; in Mexico the word came to mean meat slow-cooked in a pit lined with maguey leaves.
Q 24Cajeta, the caramel famously made in Celaya, is a dulce de leche made from which animal's milk?
Goat
Goat's milk sets cajeta apart from cow's-milk dulce de leche; Celaya, in Guanajuato, has made it since colonial times and traditionally packed it in small wooden boxes, the cajetes that gave it its name.
Q 25Flan napolitano, made in parts of Mexico, adds which ingredient to caramel custard for a denser texture?
Cream cheese
Cream cheese, beaten into the egg, condensed-milk and evaporated-milk base, gives flan napolitano its dense, cheesecake-like texture; the base dish is what the French call crème caramel.
Q 26Mexican horchata is typically made from which grain?
Rice
Rice, soaked, ground and strained with cinnamon and sugar, makes Mexican horchata; the Spanish original, Valencia's horchata de chufa, is made from tiger nuts instead.
Q 27Agua de jamaica, one of the most common aguas frescas, is brewed from which flower?
Hibiscus
Hibiscus calyces, the dried flor de jamaica, are steeped to give the deep-red, tart infusion; the same drink is known as sorrel in the Caribbean and bissap in West Africa.
Q 28Tequila must be distilled from which specific plant?
Blue agave
Blue agave (Agave tequilana Weber var. azul) is the only plant permitted; jimadores strip its leaves with a coa to reach the piña, the core that is cooked and crushed for its juice.
Q 29In which year was the Agave Landscape around the town of Tequila declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site?
2006
The Agave Landscape and Ancient Industrial Facilities of Tequila joined the World Heritage List in 2006; the site covers the agave fields, historic distilleries and the towns of Tequila, El Arenal and Amatitán.
Q 30The gusano sometimes added to bottles of mezcal is actually the larva of what?
A moth
The practice only began in the 1940s or 1950s, and about 90 percent of Mexican mezcal comes from Oaxaca.