Polish Food Trivia
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48 free Polish Food trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Polish food is built for long winters and longer tables: dumplings by the dozen, sour soups, smoked sausage, cakes that appear only at Easter or Christmas Eve, and a milk-bar culture that still serves dinner for pocket change. Behind almost every dish is a story, from a queen's Italian cooks to a 1394 royal receipt for bread rings. These 48 questions cover the dishes and what goes into them, the Wigilia and Easter table, Fat Thursday bakes, protected regional specialities from the Tatras to Greater Poland, vodka, mead and beer, the cookbooks that shaped the cuisine, and where Polish food went when Poles emigrated. It suits anyone who has eaten their way through Kraków, anyone with a Polish grandmother, and quiz hosts who want a food round with a few surprises. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave knowing more than you arrived with.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Prince Polo, the Polish wafer bar made in Cieszyn since 1955, was for decades the top-selling chocolate bar of which country?
Iceland
Iceland has bought more Prince Polo than any other chocolate bar for decades, Nielsen data shows, and for years it was one of the few bars sold there at all. Icelanders call it Prins Póló.
Q 02Which MLB team stages a race of mascots in giant pierogi costumes between innings, copying Milwaukee's racing sausages?
Pittsburgh Pirates
The Pittsburgh Pirates run the Great Pierogi Race between the fifth and sixth innings, and once a year the pierogi travel to Milwaukee to take on the Brewers' racing sausages that inspired them.
Q 03Włoszczyzna, the Polish name for the soup-vegetable bundle of carrot, parsley and leek, literally credits which country?
Italy
Italy, Włochy in Polish, gives włoszczyzna its name, literally 'Italian stuff'. Tradition credits the Italian-born Queen Bona Sforza, who married King Sigismund I in 1518, with bringing the vegetables to Poland.
Q 04Ptasie Mleczko, the chocolate-coated marshmallow bars E. Wedel has sold since 1936, translates from Polish as what?
Bird's milk
Bird's milk is an ancient figure of speech for an impossible luxury: Aristophanes used 'the milk of the birds' as a proverbial rarity. Jan Wedel is credited with choosing the name in 1936.
Q 05The Maxwell Street Polish, a grilled sausage under fried onions and yellow mustard, is a street food of which US city?
Chicago
Chicago counts the Maxwell Street Polish among its classic street foods, yet the sandwich is widely credited to Jimmy Stefanovic, a Macedonian immigrant who took over his aunt and uncle's stand on Maxwell Street in 1939.
Q 06Mizeria, the cucumber and sour cream salad beside a Polish breaded cutlet, takes its name from a word for what?
Poverty
Poverty, or misery, is the sense of the Latin miseria behind mizeria; the name is thought to reflect how Polish nobles looked down on a peasant dish. It is one of Poland's most popular salads all the same.
Q 07Grochówka wojskowa, the 'military' pea soup of Polish field kitchens, is said to be thick enough to hold what upright?
A spoon
A spoon should stand straight up in a proper grochówka wojskowa, as the Polish saying goes. The soup is cheap, filling and easy to cook in bulk, so retired army field kitchens still dish it out at public events.
Q 08After a day of fasting, what sight in the sky tells a Polish family that Wigilia supper may begin?
The first star
The first star signals the start of Wigilia, a nod to the Star of Bethlehem, which is why Christmas itself is sometimes called Gwiazdka, 'little star', in Poland.
Q 09Which Polish drink, bottled at 96 per cent alcohol, ranks among the strongest liquors on sale anywhere?
Spirytus Rektyfikowany
Spirytus Rektyfikowany sits near the ceiling of ordinary distillation: column stills top out at about 96 per cent, because beyond that point alcohol and water boil off together instead of separating.
Q 10Kopytka, the Polish potato dumplings cut on the diagonal and served under goulash, are named for resembling what?
Little hooves
Little hooves is the literal meaning of kopytka, from kopyto, a hoof. The same dumplings are eaten in Belarus and Lithuania, and they can be served sweet, with melted butter and sugar, as well as under savoury sauces.
Q 11Zapiekanka, the toasted half-baguette of 1970s Polish street food, is classically topped with cheese and what?
Sautéed mushrooms
Sautéed mushrooms under melted cheese, finished with a stripe of ketchup, define the classic zapiekanka. It appeared in the 1970s after Edward Gierek's government bought a licence to bake French-style baguettes.
Q 12Alongside stewed plum powidła, which flower's petal jam is the traditional filling of a Polish pączek doughnut?
Rose
Rose petal jam made from wild roses is the classic pączek filling, though bakeries now pipe in custard, strawberry, blueberry and Bavarian cream. The name is easily confused with paczki, which simply means parcels.
Q 13Faworki, the brittle fried ribbons dusted with icing sugar that Poles eat before Lent, go by which name in English?
Q 21Sernik, the baked Polish cheesecake known since the 17th century, uses which fresh curd cheese instead of cream cheese?
Twaróg
Twaróg, the traditional Polish quark, gives sernik its body together with eggs and butter but no cream or sour cream. The krakowski version wears a lattice crust, the królewski a cocoa crust top and bottom, and the wiedeński none at all.
Q 22Hamtramck, the Polish enclave inside Detroit, throws its annual Pączki Day parade on which day of the church calendar?
Shrove Tuesday
Shrove Tuesday, Fat Tuesday to the locals, is Pączki Day in Hamtramck, where people line up at the Polish bakeries. Back in Poland the doughnut binge comes earlier, on Fat Thursday.
Q 23How do Poland's surviving milk bars, now privately owned, manage to keep their prices so low?
Angel wings
Angel wings, also called chruściki, are ribbons of dough slit, twisted through the cut and deep-fried. The Polish name faworki comes from the French faveur, a ribbon of the kind ladies once gave to knights.
Q 14Why do Polish families lay one extra place at the Wigilia table, however many diners are expected on Christmas Eve?
For an unexpected guest
For an unexpected guest, whoever may knock: the spare setting is a gesture of hospitality, and the custom became widespread in the nineteenth century.
Q 15Święconka, observed across Poland on the Saturday before Easter, is the church blessing of what?
Baskets of food
Baskets of food are carried to church to be blessed, each item symbolic: eggs for resurrection, bread for Jesus, horseradish for Christ's bitter sacrifice and a lamb figure for Christ himself. The custom is said to date to the 7th century.
Q 16Kotlet schabowy, the breadcrumbed cutlet at the heart of a Polish Sunday dinner, is pounded from which cut of meat?
Pork loin
Pork loin, with or without the bone, is sliced, hammered flat, breaded and fried. The Sunday classic is younger than it looks: it goes back only to the nineteenth century, and a cookbook first published in 1860 has the recipe.
Q 17Rosół, the clear noodle broth of Polish weddings and sickbeds, is most often made from which meat?
Chicken
Chicken makes rosół z kury, the most popular version, though a rosół królewski layers beef, hen and duck in one pot. The name comes from Old Polish rozsół, the soaking of preserved meat.
Q 18What gives chłodnik litewski, the chilled soup that cools Polish summers, its shocking pink colour?
Beetroot
Beetroot and its young leaves, stirred into soured milk or kefir, turn chłodnik pink. The 'litewski' in its name points to the old Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and Lithuanians know the bowl as šaltibarščiai.
Q 19Krówki, the soft Polish milk toffees in white-and-yellow wrappers, are named as the diminutive of which farm animal?
Cows
Cows, or rather 'little cows', is what krówki means, and most wrappers carry a picture of a Holstein to prove it. The Pomorski family claims to have made the first ones before the German occupation forced a move to Milanówek.
Q 20Grójec, a medieval castellany seat, now sits in a district called Europe's biggest orchard for which fruit?
Apples
Apples from around Grójec are sold under an EU-protected name and are prized for their red blush, credited to the local microclimate. The district is said to grow about every third apple sold in Poland.
State subsidies
State subsidies, set by a finance ministry regulation, cover part of the cost of the meals. Because many milk bars sit on prime sites, activists have rallied to defend them when gentrification threatened closure.
Q 24Oscypek, the spindle-shaped smoked cheese of the Tatras, must by EU rules be made mostly from which animal's milk?
Sheep
Sheep must supply at least 60 per cent of the milk under oscypek's EU protected name, and the cheese may be made only from spring to early autumn, while the flocks graze fresh mountain grass.
Q 25Obwarzanek krakowski, the braided bread ring sold from Kraków street carts, holds which EU food label?
Protected Geographical Indication
Protected Geographical Indication status, granted in 2010, means the ring may be baked only in Kraków and two neighbouring counties. Its name records the method: obwarzać means to parboil, which is done before baking.
Q 26The earliest record of Kraków obwarzanki, a 1394 court account for 'rings', was written for which Polish queen?
Jadwiga
Jadwiga's court accounts for 2 March 1394 record 1 grosz spent 'for the queen, for rings of obwarzanki'. The rings began as Lenten fare, and from 1496 only Kraków's guild bakers were allowed to make them.
Q 27Rogal świętomarciński, the white-poppy crescent baked for St Martin's Day, is the protected pride of which city?
Poznań
Poznań bakers were already advertising St Martin's croissants in the Dziennik Poznański in 1860. The crescent is said to copy a horseshoe shed by the saint's horse, and the EU protected the name in 2008.
Q 28Flaki, eaten in Poland since the 14th century and a favourite of King Władysław Jagiełło, is a peppery stew of what?
Beef tripe
Beef tripe cut into thin strips is flaki, a word that literally means 'guts' and was borrowed from the German Fleck. The diminutive flaczki names the same soup, and German cousins go by Kuttelsuppe.
Q 29Żurek, the sour soup of the Polish Easter table, is served with halved hard-boiled eggs and which sausage?
Biała kiełbasa
Biała kiełbasa, the pale 'white' sausage, is boiled and served in the soup, whose tang comes from a starter of fermented rye flour. Once Easter fare, żurek is now eaten all year round.
Q 30Goldwasser, the herbal liqueur with flakes of gold leaf in every bottle, was created in the sixteenth century in which Baltic port?
Gdańsk
Gdańsk, then Danzig, is where Ambrosius Vermeulen, an immigrant from the Low Countries, devised the liqueur. Since 1945 the original Danziger Goldwasser has been made in Germany, where its makers carried on after the city became Polish.