Moroccan Food
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50 free Moroccan Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Moroccan food is Berber, Arab and Andalusi cooking layered over a coastline that has been making olive oil and fish sauce since the Phoenicians. It is the cuisine of the tagine and its cone lid, of couscous steamed on Fridays, of mint tea poured from a height until it foams, and of a spice blend whose name means 'head of the shop' because it holds the best of everything the merchant sells. These 50 questions cover the kitchen and the street: what a tagine actually is, where its cone-lidded pot came from, how mint tea is brewed and served, what goes into ras el hanout, harira and bissara, why pastilla is made with warqa, what preserved lemon and argan oil do, who gets served rfissa and why, how méchoui is roasted and how long it takes, and what the snail sellers and sandwich stalls of Jemaa el-Fnaa are selling. Easy questions cover couscous, tagine and tea; the expert tier asks about Tafraout, Taliouine, Igiliz, the hammam ashes of tanjia, the Roman garum factories and the Paris restaurant of Fatéma Hal. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation. Play it solo or print it for a food night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which dish did Morocco and three of its North African neighbours jointly add to UNESCO's cultural heritage list in 2020?
Couscous
Couscous: the listing covers the whole ritual, from rolling the grains by hand to steaming them, and in Morocco the dish is the traditional family meal after Friday midday prayers.
Q 02In Morocco, a tagine is a stew and also what?
The clay pot it is cooked in
The clay pot it is cooked in: its tall cone-shaped lid catches the steam and sends it back down as it condenses, so a tagine can braise for hours in very little water.
Q 03At a traditional Moroccan table, what usually does the job of a fork?
A piece of bread
A piece of bread: diners eat with their hands, tearing off bits of crusty khobz to scoop up cooked salads and pinch morsels of meat out of the shared dish.
Q 04Moroccan mint tea is brewed from which type of tea?
Gunpowder green
Gunpowder green: the Chinese leaves come rolled into tight little pellets, and in the pot they unfurl among fresh spearmint, never peppermint, and a generous amount of sugar.
Q 05Why is Moroccan tea poured from high above the glass?
To produce bubbles
To produce bubbles: Moroccans like their tea crowned with foam, and the higher the pour, the more froth lands on each glass.
Q 06A Maghrebi saying likens the three glasses of mint tea poured for a guest to life, love and what?
Death
Death: the pot goes on steeping between pourings, so each glass tastes different, and the saying, worded a little differently from place to place, runs from life in the first glass to death in the last.
Q 07In a traditional Moroccan home, who prepares the mint tea offered to guests?
The head man of the family
The head man of the family traditionally makes it himself, in front of the guests, because preparing the pot with care is the host's way of honouring them.
Q 08What does the name of the spice blend ras el hanout mean?
Head of the shop
Head of the shop: the name promises the best the spice merchant has to offer, which is why every stall and family guards its own blend of a dozen or more spices.
Q 09Old ras el hanout recipes sometimes included Spanish fly, a toxic dried beetle prized as what?
An aphrodisiac
An aphrodisiac: the beetle added nothing to the flavour and is poisonous, and at least one old spice house in Fes says it has dropped it from the blend.
Q 10Which fruit is traditionally served with Morocco's harira soup to break the Ramadan fast?
Dates
Dates: they are among the first things eaten when the fast ends at sunset, alongside the bowl of harira and, in Morocco, a plate of sticky honeyed chebakia.
Q 11Bissara, Morocco's thick winter soup or dip, is made from which legume?
Broad beans
Broad beans: dried, peeled favas are simmered with garlic, cumin and olive oil until they collapse into a purée, cheap street fare that is loved above all in the north of the country.
Q 12Pastilla, Morocco's sweet-savoury pie, is wrapped in which paper-thin pastry?
Warqa
Warqa is never rolled out: the cook dabs a ball of wet dough onto a hot pan again and again until a tissue-thin sheet is left behind, then peels it off.
Q 13What gives Morocco's meat-filled pastilla its famous sweet finish?
Sugar and cinnamon
Sugar and cinnamon are dusted over the crisp top and worked into a crunchy nut layer inside, so a wedding pie of spiced meat tastes half like a dessert.
Q 21Marrakesh's tanjia, meat sealed in a clay urn, traditionally cooks overnight in the ashes of the furnace that heats what?
A hammam
A hammam: workmen clubbed together for the meat, sealed the urn with paper and left it with the fernatchi, the stoker of the bathhouse furnace, to bury in the embers until lunch next day.
Q 22Méchoui, the centrepiece of a Moroccan feast, is what?
Slow-roasted lamb
Slow-roasted lamb, often a whole animal turned beside the embers or sealed in a clay pit oven, cooked until guests can pull the meat apart with their fingers and dip it in cumin and salt.
Q 23Which festival sees Moroccan families buy a live sheep and cook almost every part of it over the following days?
Eid al-Adha
Q 14Which bird is the traditional filling of Morocco's pastilla?
Pigeon
Pigeon: young squab is the original filling, though chicken is more usual today, and another version is filled with seafood.
Q 15Which part of a Moroccan preserved lemon do cooks prize most?
The peel
The peel: weeks packed in salt and their own juice turn the rind soft and mellow, so cooks rinse the lemon and slice the skin into tagines and salads, often leaving the pulp behind.
Q 16Argan oil comes from a tree native to Morocco and which neighbouring country?
Algeria
Algeria: the argan tree's home is south-west Morocco, and it also grows wild across the border in parts of Algeria's Tindouf province; much of the oil is made by rural women's cooperatives.
Q 17Amlou, a Moroccan breakfast spread, combines argan oil and honey with which toasted nut?
Almonds
Almonds are toasted, then ground with argan oil until the paste runs like peanut butter, and honey is stirred in at the end; it comes from the argan country of the south-west.
Q 18Chermoula is a North African marinade traditionally used on what?
Fish and seafood
Fish and seafood: the paste of coriander, garlic, cumin, lemon and oil is rubbed over the catch before it is fried, stuffed or layered into a tagine, though cooks now put it on vegetables and meat as well.
Q 19Rfissa, a Moroccan chicken dish, is traditionally served to which people because of its fenugreek?
New mothers
New mothers: fenugreek is believed to help a nursing woman recover her strength, so relatives traditionally cook rfissa for her on the third day after the birth.
Q 20Rfissa's chicken, lentils and fragrant broth are traditionally ladled over a bed of what?
Shredded flatbread
Shredded flatbread, usually flaky msemmen or paper-thin trid, soaks up the broth, a habit inherited from tharid, the old Arab dish of stew ladled over torn loaves.
Eid al-Adha, the feast of the sacrifice: the first bites are usually boulfaf, skewers of liver wrapped in caul fat grilled that same morning, and the head and trotters follow later in the week.
Q 24Khlea, Morocco's sun-dried meat preserved in fat, keeps at room temperature for up to how long?
Two years
Two years: strips of meat are spiced and sun-dried, then simmered for hours in suet and olive oil; as it cools, the fat sets solid around the meat and seals it.
Q 25Zaalouk is a Moroccan cooked salad of tomatoes and which other vegetable?
Eggplant
Eggplant: it is cooked down with tomatoes, garlic, cumin and paprika into a soft, smoky mash that is served as a dip more often than as a salad.
Q 26Taktouka is a Moroccan cooked salad of tomatoes and which roasted vegetable?
Green peppers
Green peppers: they are roasted first, then chopped and simmered with skinned tomatoes, garlic and paprika until the salad is thick enough to scoop.
Q 27The Moroccan salad bakoula, or khoubiza, is traditionally made from the leaves of which plant?
Mallow
Mallow: the leaves are steamed until tender, then sautéed with garlic, herbs, olive oil and lemon juice, and the salad is finished with preserved lemon and olives.
Q 28The Moroccan crescent pastry kaab el ghzal has a name that translates as what?
Gazelle ankles
Gazelle ankles is the literal Arabic, though the French name, cornes de gazelle, turned them into horns; the paper-thin crescent hides a filling scented with orange-flower water.
Q 29Chebakia, Morocco's Ramadan pastry, is fried dough coated in honey and shaped like what?
A rose
A rose: a strip of sesame dough is slashed, threaded through itself and opened out into a flower, fried, then dunked in hot honey scented with orange-flower water.
Q 30Sellou, also called sfouf, is a Moroccan Ramadan sweet built on a base of what?
Roasted flour
Roasted flour: it is browned in the oven, then worked with ground nuts, toasted sesame and honey into a rich, crumbly sweet that Moroccans also serve to celebrate a birth.