Peruvian Food
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47 free Peruvian Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Peruvian food is having a very long moment. Coast, Andes and Amazon each bring their own pantry, the Spanish added rice and wheat, Africans gave tacu-tacu, the Chinese invented lomo saltado, and chefs like Gastón Acurio turned it all into the cuisine critics now call the world's great fusion. Peru grows more kinds of potato than anywhere on earth, and it has a national day for ceviche. These 47 questions cover the coast first: ceviche and its tiger's milk, the Moche and their tumbo marinade, anticuchos, causa, ají de gallina, pollo a la brasa's Swiss-patented rotisserie. Then the highlands: pachamanca, cuy, charqui and the word jerky, olluco, rocoto relleno, tocosh. The Amazon's paiche, camu camu and juane. The sweets: alfajores, picarones, mazamorra morada, suspiro a la limeña and lúcuma ice cream. And the drinks: pisco sour, chicha de jora, chicha morada, Cusqueña and the lemon-verbena soda that outsells Coca-Cola. Every answer is cited to a page we checked and comes with a short explanation, so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a food-and-drink quiz round.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do Andean farmers use to turn potatoes into chuño, which keeps for years?
Night frosts
Night frosts freeze the potatoes, the morning sun thaws them and farmers squeeze out the water; what is left is light, keeps for years and once fed Inca armies on the march.
Q 02Which Lima chef founded the La Mar cebichería chain?
Gastón Acurio
Gastón Acurio trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris before opening Astrid & Gastón in Lima; with Ferran Adrià he made a documentary on cooking as social change that had its US premiere at the United Nations.
Q 03Which Peruvian dish of thin-sliced raw fish in a spicy sauce is ceviche's lighter cousin?
Tiradito
Tiradito is sliced thin like sashimi rather than cubed, sauced only at the last moment and usually made without raw onion, so it tastes milder than ceviche.
Q 04What is lomo saltado?
A beef stir-fry with fries
A beef stir-fry with fries is the legacy of Peru's Chinese cooks: strips of beef are tossed over fierce heat with onion and tomato, then served with fries and rice.
Q 05Tacu-tacu, introduced by enslaved Africans, is a fried mix of what?
Rice and beans
Rice and beans left over from earlier meals are fried and pressed into a cake, then served with breaded steak, a fried egg and salsa criolla.
Q 06Which pre-Columbian culture is thought to have marinated seafood in fermented banana passionfruit juice?
The Moche
The Moche, who flourished on Peru's north coast almost 2,000 years ago, are said to have used the juice of the tumbo fruit; limes and onions came only with the Spanish.
Q 07What is the Peruvian name for the marinade left over from ceviche?
Leche de tigre
Leche de tigre, 'tiger's milk', is the juice left in the bowl once the fish is eaten; cevicherías serve it by the glass, and Peruvians swear by it the morning after a heavy night.
Q 08Which ingredient, used in Mexican and Ecuadorian ceviche, is left out of the classic Peruvian version?
Tomatoes
Tomatoes are diced into Mexican ceviche and go into the sauce of Ecuador's; Peru leaves them out and balances the lime's sharpness with slices of sweet potato on the side.
Q 09Chupe de camarones is a thick soup made from what?
Freshwater shrimp
Freshwater shrimp from the rivers, not the sea, go into the pot: the soup's home city lies far inland, and cooks there prize the river catch for its size.
Q 10What is the Peruvian term for Chinese-Peruvian fusion food?
Chifa
Chifa is traced to a Cantonese call to the table meaning 'eat rice', which Limeños are said to have picked up in the Chinese-run eating houses of the 1930s.
Q 11What is arroz chaufa?
Peruvian fried rice
Peruvian fried rice grew out of Lima's Chinese restaurants: cold cooked rice is tossed in a hot wok with egg, spring onion and whatever meat or seafood is to hand.
Q 12Anticuchos are grilled skewers traditionally made from what?
Beef heart
Beef heart has been the classic cut since colonial times; women known as anticucheras grill the skewers on the street in clouds of smoke and serve them with boiled potatoes.
Q 13Papa a la huancaína takes its name from which city?
Huancayo
Huancayo, high in the central Andes, gave the dish its name, yet it is eaten all over Peru: boiled yellow potatoes under a spicy, creamy cheese sauce with egg and black olives.
Q 21Pachamanca is cooked how?
Underground on heated stones
Underground on heated stones is just what the name says: in Quechua pacha is earth and manka is pot, so the covered pit is the cooking vessel for the meat, tubers and vegetables.
Q 22What animal is cuy?
Guinea pig
Guinea pig was first tamed in the Andes for its meat, and it runs so deep in Peruvian life that colonial paintings of the Last Supper in Cusco show one on the table.
Q 23The English word "jerky" derives from which Andean word for cured meat?
Charqui
Charqui, from the Quechua ch'arki, is meat salted and dried in the mountain air; Spanish speakers carried the word north, where American English had turned it into jerky by 1850.
Q 14Pollo a la brasa and its rotisserie were devised in the 1950s by two immigrants of what nationality?
Swiss
Swiss immigrant Roger Schuler, faced with a large catering order, asked his countryman Franz Ulrich to build an oven that could turn many chickens over the coals at once.
Q 15Causa is a cold dish built on what base?
Mashed yellow potato
Mashed yellow potato is seasoned with lime and chilli and layered cold with tuna, chicken or avocado; the name is most often traced to kawsay, a Quechua word for sustenance.
Q 16Which dish is a stew of pork, chicken, dried potatoes, peanuts and red chillies?
Carapulcra
Carapulcra goes back to the Andes before the Spanish: its name comes from an Aymara phrase for a stew cooked with hot stones, and its base is potatoes dried to keep.
Q 17Ají de gallina is chicken in a creamy sauce coloured by which chilli?
Ají amarillo
Ají amarillo is thought to have turned a sweet Spanish dish savoury: historians trace the stew to a cousin of blancmange, a thick cream of chicken breast, rice, almonds and sugar.
Q 18Cau cau is a stew based on what?
Tripe
Tripe is cut small and stewed with diced potatoes, onion, garlic and chilli; cooks often simmer it first with a little milk to tame its strong taste.
Q 19Seco de cabrito, a kid goat stew, is flavoured above all with which herb?
Cilantro
Cilantro is its main flavour: the kid goat is steeped in chicha, then stewed with the herb and garlic, and cooks make the same seco with lamb, chicken or beef.
Q 20Cebiche de conchas negras from Piura and Tumbes uses which shellfish?
Black clams
Black clams are plentiful along the border with Ecuador, and northerners prize them as much for their reputation as an aphrodisiac as for their taste.
Q 24Which Andean tuber is shredded and stewed with dried meat in a classic highland dish?
Olluco
Olluco gives its name to the stew, olluquito: the tubers are cut into fine strips and simmered with the meat, staying firm rather than turning floury.
Q 25Rocoto relleno is a stuffed-chilli speciality of which city?
Arequipa
Arequipa's cooks seed the fiery rocotos and boil them to tame the heat, then stuff them with chopped meat, cheese and onion and bake them under a slice of cheese.
Q 26Tocosh is a traditional Quechua food made from what?
Fermented potato pulp
Fermented potato pulp comes from potatoes buried in a straw-lined pit with stream water running over them for a month or more; Peruvians call the result the penicillin of the Andes.
Q 27Paiche, a staple of Amazonian cooking, is what?
One of the largest freshwater fish
One of the largest freshwater fish on Earth, the paiche grows to three metres and has to surface to breathe air, which is how Amazon fishermen have long harpooned it.
Q 28Which herb gives the sauce in ocopa its vivid green colour?
Huacatay
Huacatay is no ordinary kitchen herb but a tall, strongly scented Andean marigold; its leaves are blended with chilli and toasted peanuts and poured over potatoes and boiled eggs.
Q 29NASA studied quinoa in the 1990s as a space crop for its balance of what?
Amino acids
Amino acids come in a balance rare among grains, with the lysine most cereals lack, and quinoa is high in protein too; NASA's researchers weighed it as a crop for long space missions.
Q 30Tarwi, the Andean lupin, is often likened to which crop for its protein-rich beans?
Soy
Soy is the usual comparison: tarwi seeds are rich in both protein and oil, but they must first be soaked to wash out the bitterness that kept them little known outside the Andes.