Potatoes
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90 free Potatoes trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
27 free potatoes trivia questions with answers. How well do you know potatoes? From their origins in the Andes to their role in global cuisine, potatoes are one of the world's most important crops. Test your knowledge with our engaging 90-question potato trivia quiz and discover surprising facts about this versatile and beloved vegetable.
30 of 90 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Despite their name, French fries are claimed as a national invention by which country?
Belgium
Belgium claims the fry: one story has Meuse valley villagers frying potato strips when the river froze and fish ran short, and American soldiers there in World War I are said to have called them 'French' after the local language.
Q 02Potatoes belong to the nightshade family, along with eggplants, chili peppers and which other crop?
Tobacco
Tobacco is a nightshade too: the family is known for potent alkaloids, from tobacco's nicotine to the poisons of belladonna, and the potato plant's own leaves and berries are toxic.
Q 03Although it grows underground, a potato is botanically a swollen part of which plant organ?
The stem
The stem: each potato swells at the tip of an underground stem called a stolon to store nutrients for the plant, whereas the sweet potato, for all the shared name, is a swollen true root.
Q 04Which European country first introduced potatoes to Europe in the late 16th century?
Spain
Spain carried the potato home after its conquest of the Inca Empire, introducing it to Europe in the second half of the 16th century as part of the Columbian exchange.
Q 05What plant disease caused Ireland's Great Famine in the 1840s?
Late blight
The lack of genetic diversity in potatoes grown in Europe made the crop vulnerable to diseases, with late blight disease destroying potato crops in Ireland and leading to the Great Famine of the 1840s.
Q 06Which country grows more potatoes than any other?
China
China is the world's largest potato producer, with about a quarter of the 2024 crop; the harvest was once centred on Europe, but more than half the world's potatoes now grow in developing countries.
Q 07A medium skin-on potato supplies over 600 milligrams of which mineral?
Potassium
Potassium: a medium skin-on potato has around 620 milligrams against a medium banana's 422, so the fruit famous for it is comfortably beaten.
Q 08Which chef is widely credited with inventing the potato chip at a Saratoga Springs resort in 1853?
George Crum
George Crum, cook at Moon's Lake House, is said to have sliced potatoes wafer-thin after a diner sent back his fries; the tale took hold only after his death, and chip recipes had been in print for decades.
Q 09Which high-starch, dry-fleshed potato is ideal for baking and french fries?
Russet potatoes
Russet potatoes are characterized by their high starch content and dry, mealy flesh, making them excellent for baking and frying into crispy french fries.
Q 10Which waxy potato is a favourite for potato salad because its slices hold their shape when boiled?
Red Bliss
Red Bliss is a waxy potato: with less starch and more moisture than a floury baker, its flesh stays firm through boiling, so the slices keep their shape instead of crumbling into the dressing.
Q 11What natural toxin is found in all green parts of the potato plant?
Solanine
Solanine is the plant's built-in pesticide, found in the leaves, shoots and berries; tubers left in the light turn green and make more of it, which is why green potatoes are best peeled deeply or thrown out.
Q 12Potatoes were first domesticated around 8,000 years ago by farmers living near which South American lake?
Titicaca
Lake Titicaca, 3,800 metres up on the border of Bolivia and Peru, is where highland farmers first tamed wild tubers; the crop took to a cold, harsh climate that defeats most others.
Q 13What are the 'eyes' on a potato for?
Sprouting new plants
Q 21Which Irish dish mashes potatoes with cooked kale or cabbage?
Colcannon
Colcannon takes its name from the Irish cál ceannann, a word for cabbage; it was a cheap, year-round staple and is now a fixture of St Patrick's Day tables, often beside boiled ham or bacon.
Q 22Which Swiss dish is a pan-fried cake of coarsely grated potato?
Rösti
Rösti is a Swiss cake of coarsely grated potato fried in butter until golden; originally a Bernese farmers' breakfast, it lent its name to the 'Röstigraben', the German-French language divide.
Q 23Which US vice president corrected a schoolboy's 'potato' to 'potatoe' at a 1992 spelling bee?
Dan Quayle
Dan Quayle, George H. W. Bush's vice president, told 12-year-old William Figueroa to add an 'e' at a June 1992 spelling bee in Trenton, although the boy had spelled 'potato' correctly.
Sprouting new plants: each eye is a cluster of buds, so farmers plant cut pieces of 'seed potato' instead of true seed, and every plant that grows is a clone of its parent.
Q 14Despite its name, the sweet potato is only a distant relative of the potato and belongs to which plant family?
Morning glory family
The morning glory family: the sweet potato is the swollen root of a twining vine and shares only its plant order with the true potato, so the two are distant cousins that happen to share a name.
Q 15The potato ranks third among the world's food crops for human consumption, behind which two staple grains?
Rice and Wheat
Rice and wheat rank ahead of the potato as food for people; corn is harvested in greater tonnage than any of them, but much of it goes to animal feed.
Q 16Which classic French dish bakes thinly sliced raw potatoes slowly in cream, in a dish rubbed with garlic?
Gratin Dauphinois
Gratin dauphinois was first recorded in 1788, at a dinner the Duke of Clermont-Tonnerre gave in Gap; the classic version has no cheese, which crept in with later recipes such as Escoffier's Gruyère one.
Q 17Southern German potato salad swaps mayonnaise for a warm dressing of oil, vinegar and what?
Meat broth
Meat broth is the Swabian secret: the potatoes are sliced while still hot and doused with broth, vinegar and oil, which they soak up as they cool.
Q 18In 1926 Laura Scudder's workers ironed sheets of what into sealed bags that kept potato chips fresh?
Wax paper
Wax paper: chips had gone stale fast and travelled badly, so Scudder's hand-ironed bags, each printed with a freshness date, let them be sold well beyond the neighbourhood fryer.
Q 19Which spirit has traditionally been distilled from potatoes as well as from grain?
Vodka
Vodka began as a grain spirit in Russia and Poland; potatoes went into the still only later, once the crop had spread there, and most vodka today is again made from grain.
Q 20What type of organism is Phytophthora infestans, the cause of Ireland's Great Famine?
Water mould
Phytophthora infestans is an oomycete, or water mould: it looks and behaves like a fungus but belongs to a separate lineage, and it thrives in cool, wet weather.
Q 24Decades before the Saratoga Springs legend, the earliest known potato chip recipe was printed in 1817 in which country?
England
England: Dr William Kitchiner's bestselling The Cook's Oracle told readers to fry potato 'slices or shavings' in lard or dripping, 36 years before the Saratoga story is set.
Q 25The overcrowded vessels that carried emigrants away from Ireland's potato famine earned which grim nickname?
Coffin ships
Coffin ships earned the name because so many passengers died on the Atlantic crossing: packed, short of food and water and riddled with disease, they set off a typhus epidemic at North American quarantine stations in 1847.
Q 26Florenceville-Bristol, New Brunswick, calls itself the French fry capital of the world as the home of which potato-processing giant?
McCain Foods
McCain Foods was founded in Florenceville in 1957 and now claims to make one in every four French fries eaten worldwide; the community is also home to a museum called Potato World.
Q 27Which triangular Indian pastry is most often stuffed with spiced potato and peas?
Samosa
Samosa: for all its Indian fame, the pastry arrived from the Middle East and Central Asia, where cousins such as sambusak are still eaten, and it now turns up from West Africa to Southeast Asia.
Q 28From 1909 the Northern Pacific Railway won fame for serving which oversized dish in its dining cars?
Baked potato
Baked potato: dining-car chief Hazen Titus bought two-pound Yakima Valley potatoes that farmers could not sell because they were too big, and the line was soon billing itself as the Route of the Great Big Baked Potato.
Q 29The English word 'potato' descends from 'batata', a word in which language?
Taíno
The Taíno word batata actually meant the sweet potato; Europeans simply transferred the name to the Andean tuber.
Q 30Which nickname for the potato first meant a short knife and later a narrow digging spade?
Spud
Spud meant a short knife or dagger in the 15th century, then a spade-like digging tool; the name seems to have passed to the potato from the implement that lifted it out of the ground.