Pickle Trivia
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47 free Pickle trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
40 free pickle trivia questions with answers. This pickle trivia quiz brines the whole subject: how pickling works and why the pH matters, the ancient Mesopotamians who pickled cucumbers from India, what makes a dill 'kosher', the difference between a half-sour and a full-sour, why gherkin is a Dutch word and why cornichons taste of tarragon. It also covers the world's other great pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut, umeboshi, piccalilli, achar and pickled herring, and the American pickle culture of Vlasic, Mount Olive's New Year pickle drop, bread-and-butter pickles, fried pickles from Arkansas, Kool-Aid pickles, the Christmas pickle, Pickle Rick and the NFL's Pickle Juice Game. Easy questions suit family and food quizzes; the harder ones on origins and dates will test fermentation fans. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 47 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is a pickled cucumber called in Britain, Ireland, Australia and South Africa?
Gherkin
Gherkin is the everyday word there, and London's skyscraper at 30 St Mary Axe is nicknamed the Gherkin because of its shape.
Q 02Which explorer did Ralph Waldo Emerson mock as 'the pickle-dealer at Seville'?
Amerigo Vespucci
Amerigo Vespucci had supplied ships in Seville, and Emerson branded him a thief who supplanted Columbus and baptized half the earth with his own dishonest name.
Q 03Which Egyptian queen is said to have credited pickles with her health and legendary beauty?
Cleopatra
Cleopatra is said to have prized pickles as a beauty secret; more practically, pickling kept food edible for months and fed sailors on long voyages.
Q 04Which seasoning, added generously, is the signature of a 'kosher' dill made in the New York Jewish style?
Garlic
Garlic is the signature, yet a 'kosher' dill needn't be kosher under dietary law at all; it simply follows the recipe of New York's Jewish pickle makers.
Q 05In New York deli terminology, what is a 'half-sour'?
One given a shorter stay in the brine
A half-sour is one given a shorter stay in the brine, so it stays crisp and bright green, while a full-sour has fermented all the way through.
Q 06Pickles are kept at pH 4.6 or lower mainly to stop the bacterium behind which illness?
Botulism
Botulism is the risk: its bacterium can't grow at pH 4.6 or lower, which is why low-acid foods need a pressure canner instead of a boiling-water bath.
Q 07Which pale pink pickle is traditionally served alongside sushi?
Pickled ginger
Pickled ginger only turns faintly pink on its own when very young ginger is used, so many commercial makers dye it pink instead.
Q 08Which type of microbe produces the acidity in naturally fermented pickles?
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactic acid bacteria turn the cucumber's sugars into lactic acid, so a true brine-fermented pickle sours itself without any vinegar.
Q 09Cornichons are small French pickles flavoured with vinegar and which herb?
Tarragon
Tarragon flavours the classic cornichon, and the pickle's French name literally means 'little horn', after the small fruit's curved shape.
Q 10'Koolickles', dill pickles soaked in Kool-Aid, are a treat for children in which region?
The Southern United States
The Southern United States, above all the Mississippi Delta, is koolickle country, where a long soak in cherry Kool-Aid dyes the pickle's flesh pinkish red.
Q 11Fried dill pickles were popularised in 1963 by Bernell 'Fatman' Austin at a drive-in in which state?
Arkansas
Arkansas is the state: Austin never shared his recipe, so his family serves it only once a year, at the Picklefest in Atkins, where he first fried pickles.
Q 12During World War I, what patriotic name did some Americans try to give sauerkraut?
Liberty cabbage
Liberty cabbage soon flopped: as H. L. Mencken observed, the word sauerkraut had already become as American as the food itself.
Q 13Which North Carolina firm lowers a glowing 3-foot pickle down a flagpole every New Year's Eve?
Mount Olive
Mount Olive Pickle Company drops its pickle at 7 pm Eastern because that is midnight Greenwich Mean Time, so the town rings in the New Year early.
Q 21Piccalilli, the yellow British mustard pickle, was adapted from which country's pickles?
India
India is the model: Hannah Glasse's 1758 'India Pickle' dried its vegetables in the sun, then steeped them in vinegar with mustard seed and turmeric.
Q 22Rollmops are pickled fillets of which fish, rolled around a pickled cucumber or onion?
Herring
Herring is the fish, and Czechs call the @ sign zavináč, their word for a rollmops, because the symbol looks like the rolled-up fillet.
Q 23Which Pennsylvania Dutch invention turns pickled eggs pink?
Adding beets
Adding beets is the Pennsylvania Dutch trick: eggs steeped in beet juice and vinegar become pink 'red beet eggs'; British pubs and chip shops sell the plain kind.
Q 14What does the first person to find the Christmas pickle ornament get?
An extra present or a lucky year
An extra present or a lucky year is the finder's reward; the custom is billed as German, yet a 2016 YouGov poll found 91% of Germans had never heard of it.
Q 15In which Shakespeare play, set mostly on an island, does a drunken jester say he's been 'in such a pickle'?
The Tempest
The Tempest has Trinculo, reeling drunk, joke that he's so pickled he 'shall not fear fly-blowing', meaning no fly will lay eggs on him.
Q 16Which pickled side dish is traditionally stored for winter in earthenware onggi jars buried in the ground?
Kimchi
Kimchi is made in huge batches each late autumn, when communities make and share it so every household has enough to last the winter.
Q 17Which explorer took sauerkraut on his Pacific voyages to prevent scurvy?
James Cook
James Cook got his wary crew to eat sauerkraut by serving it at the officers' table, and within a week he had to ration it.
Q 18In Rick and Morty's 'Pickle Rick', why does Rick turn himself into a pickle?
To avoid family therapy
To avoid family therapy was the scheme, yet after battling rats and guards, Pickle Rick still ends up in the therapist's office.
Q 19In the NFL's 2000 'Pickle Juice Game', the Eagles beat which team 41-14 in 109 °F heat?
Dallas Cowboys
The Dallas Cowboys lost 41-14 at Texas Stadium on 3 September 2000, the Eagles having drunk pickle juice beforehand to ward off cramps in the heat.
Q 20Umeboshi, the salty pickled 'plums' of Japan, are actually more closely related to which fruit?
Apricot
Apricot is the closer relative: ume, Prunus mume, sits nearer the apricot than true plums; one umeboshi on white rice makes the flag-like 'Hinomaru' bento.
Q 24Japanese tsukemono are often pickled in a bed of what?
Rice bran
Rice bran is the bed: nukazuke vegetables are buried in a fermenting mash of rice bran and salt called a nukadoko, which is stirred by hand every day.
Q 25Pliny says Roman gardeners kept Emperor Tiberius in cucumbers year-round by growing them in what?
Beds on wheels
Beds on wheels let gardeners roll the plants into the sun, and in winter they sheltered them under frames glazed with mirror-stone.
Q 26Botanically speaking, what type of fruit is a cucumber?
A berry
A berry is the botanist's answer, but when the US Supreme Court ruled tomatoes vegetables for import duties in 1893, it said cucumbers are vegetables in common speech too.
Q 27Which calcium-based soak do some home canners use to make cucumbers extra crisp?
Pickling lime
Pickling lime crisps cucumbers with its calcium, but the excess must be rinsed away before pickling, or the pickles aren't safe to keep.
Q 28Takuan, the crunchy yellow Japanese pickle, is made from which vegetable?
Daikon radish
Daikon radish turns yellow as takuan ages, but that natural colour fades under fluorescent light, so many commercial makers dye it with turmeric or gardenia.
Q 29What do Hungarians add to a jar of cucumbers in salted water to start their summer ferment?
Slices of bread
Slices of bread go into the jar, and a few warm summer days let them get the ferment going, so these Hungarian pickles sour without any vinegar.
Q 30Which annual pickle-themed festival is held in Pittsburgh?
Picklesburgh
Picklesburgh outgrew its riverfront bridge sites, so in 2023 organizers moved it onto three blocks of the Boulevard of the Allies.