Salad Trivia
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50 free Salad trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
The Caesar salad was invented in Mexico on the Fourth of July. Coleslaw is Dutch for cabbage salad, ranch dressing was born in Alaska, and the word salad itself comes from the Latin for salted, because Romans dressed their greens with brine. This salad trivia quiz covers the famous named salads and who really created them, the world's chopped and bread salads from tabbouleh to panzanella, dressings and croutons, lettuce from ancient Egypt to iceberg, and the salad bar. Every answer is sourced and explained.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'salad' ultimately derives from the Latin for what?
Salted
Romans seasoned their vegetables with brine or salty oil-and-vinegar dressings, so herba salata, salted herb, became salade in French and sallet in 14th-century English.
Q 02Which writer first recorded the phrase 'salad days', meaning youthful inexperience, in 1606?
William Shakespeare
Cleopatra uses it in Antony and Cleopatra about being 'green in judgment'. The term 'salad bar' did not appear until 1937, in American English.
Q 03John Evelyn's 1699 Acetaria, often called the first book on salads, tried to get whom to eat fresh greens?
The Britons
He had little success. Its subtitle was A Discourse of Sallets, and it catalogued some 70 salad plants.
Q 04In which city was the Caesar salad created in 1924?
Tijuana
Italian immigrant Caesar Cardini ran his restaurant across the border to serve Americans dodging Prohibition. A Fourth of July rush had emptied his kitchen.
Q 05Which lettuce is the traditional base of a Caesar salad?
Romaine
It is still tossed tableside at the original Tijuana restaurant. The anchovies many consider essential were not in Cardini's recipe; columnist Dorothy Kilgallen described them in 1946.
Q 06Julia Child's Caesar recipe in the 1970s was based on an interview with whom?
Cardini's daughter Rosa
Rosa said her father tossed the ingredients in one at a time with whole lettuce leaves. Child had eaten the salad in Tijuana as a child.
Q 07The Cobb salad is named after the owner of which Hollywood restaurant?
The Brown Derby
Robert Howard Cobb supposedly raided the kitchen for a midnight snack in 1937. Another story credits chef Robert Kreis in 1929, the year the Hollywood branch opened.
Q 08Which blue cheese is traditional in a Cobb salad?
Roquefort
The ingredients, including bacon, chicken, egg, avocado and tomato, are laid out in neat rows rather than tossed.
Q 09The original 1890s Waldorf salad was just mayonnaise plus which two ingredients?
Apples and celery
Walnuts and grapes were later additions. Maître d'hôtel Oscar Tschirky published it in 1896 as 'Oscar of the Waldorf'.
Q 10Oscar Tschirky, credited with the Waldorf salad, held what job at the hotel?
Maître d'hôtel
He was not a cook at all, yet he inspired many of the Waldorf-Astoria's signature dishes and is also linked to eggs Benedict and Thousand Island dressing.
Q 11What distinguishes an authentic Greek horiatiki from most 'Greek salads' served abroad?
It contains no lettuce
Horiatiki means 'village' or 'peasant' salad: tomatoes, cucumber, onion, feta and Kalamata olives with oregano and olive oil.
Q 12Salade niçoise originated in which French city?
Nice
Purists like former mayor Jacques Médecin insisted it be mostly tomatoes, in a garlic-rubbed wooden bowl, with 'never, never' a boiled potato.
Q 13Which three ingredients make up a Caprese salad?
Tomato, mozzarella, basil
Red, white and green echo the Italian flag. It is named for the island of Capri in the Bay of Naples.
Q 21Laab, the minced-meat salad seasoned with lime, fish sauce and roasted ground rice, comes from which cuisine?
Lao
Pork, chicken, beef, duck or fish can all be used, with mint and chilli. It is central to Lao celebratory meals.
Q 22Gado-gado, an Indonesian salad of vegetables, egg, tofu and tempeh, is served with which sauce?
Peanut
In 2018 Indonesia named it one of five national dishes alongside soto, sate, nasi goreng and rendang.
Q 23Israeli salad, also called salat katzutz, is a finely diced mix of cucumber, onion, peppers and what?
Tomato
Jewish immigrants adopted it from the local Arab salad in the late 19th century, using the small Kirby cucumbers grown in the Levant.
Q 14The word 'coleslaw' is an 18th-century anglicisation of a term from which language?
Dutch
Koolsla simply means 'cabbage salad'. A 1667 Dutch cookbook already had a recipe mixing cabbage strips with melted butter, vinegar and oil.
Q 15Austrian and south German potato salad is traditionally dressed with what, and served warm?
Oil and vinegar
North German versions are cold and often use mayonnaise. The earliest American recipes, from the mid-1800s, came from German settlers.
Q 16Tabbouleh is a Levantine salad built around soaked bulgur and which herb?
Parsley
Tomatoes, mint and onion follow, with olive oil and lemon. Some versions swap bulgur for semolina or add lettuce.
Q 17Fattoush gets its crunch from toasted or fried pieces of what?
Pita bread
It is the Levant's answer to stale bread, mixed with greens, radishes, cucumber and tomatoes and often dusted with sumac.
Q 18Panzanella, the summer bread salad, comes from which region of Italy?
Tuscany
The name is thought to combine 'pane', bread, with 'zanella', the deep plate it was served in. The 16th-century painter Bronzino wrote a poem praising it.
Q 19Olivier salad, a Russian New Year staple, was invented in the 1860s by the chef of which Moscow restaurant?
The Hermitage
Lucien Olivier was of French and Belgian origin and took his exact dressing recipe to the grave. Abroad it is simply called Russian salad.
Q 20Green papaya salad, known as tam mak hoong, is considered a national dish of which country?
Laos
Thais know it as som tam, and it is hugely popular in Isan, the north-eastern region whose people are mostly ethnic Lao.
Q 24Lettuce belongs to the same plant family as which of these?
Sunflowers
Lactuca sativa is an aster, related to daisies and dandelions; its milky sap gives the genus its name. Rocket, by contrast, is a brassica.
Q 25Which ancient civilisation first farmed lettuce, originally for the oil in its seeds?
Egyptians
They bred it into a leafy crop; it appears in tomb paintings as a symbol of the fertility god Min. Lettuce reached China only around the 5th to 7th century CE.
Q 26Which country grew more than half the world's lettuce in 2023?
China
World production of lettuce and chicory hit 28 million tonnes, with China alone accounting for 53 percent.
Q 27Iceberg lettuce was created in 1894 by which American seed company?
Burpee
Its catalogue boasted 'there is no handsomer or more solid cabbage lettuce in cultivation'. The crisphead's toughness made it the first lettuce to ship nationwide.
Q 28British cooks call the long-leaved Caesar-salad lettuce by what name, taken from a Greek island?
Kos
Dictionaries trace 'cos' to the island from which the lettuce was supposedly introduced. The American name recalls its popularity in Rome.
Q 29Arugula, or rocket, belongs to the same plant family as which vegetable?
Cabbage
Eruca sativa is a brassica native to the Mediterranean and Asia, which explains its peppery mustard bite.
Q 30Kale is a cultivar group of which species?
Brassica oleracea
That makes it the same species as cabbage, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. Its central leaves never form a head, hence 'leaf cabbage'.