Sichuan Cuisine
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40 free Sichuan Cuisine trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sichuan food is famous for a sensation as much as a flavour: the tingling numbness of its native peppercorn, layered over the burn of chilies that arrived from the other side of the world. Behind that heat sits one of China's great regional cuisines, with dozens of named flavour styles, fermented pastes aged for years, and dishes whose names tell stories about street vendors, court officials and home cooks. These fun facts about Sichuan food are set out as multiple-choice questions. They cover the classic dishes and where their names come from, the science of the peppercorn's tingle, hot pot and its origins, the sauces and preserved ingredients of a Sichuan pantry, local spirits, and the cities and people who shaped the cooking. The quiz suits anyone who loves ordering from a Sichuan menu, home cooks stocking up on chili bean paste, and quiz hosts who want a ready-made food round. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you finish knowing more than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which fiery Sichuan dish, born in a nineteenth-century Chengdu restaurant, has a name meaning pockmarked grandma's?
Mapo tofu
Mapo tofu is named for Mrs Chen, the pockmarked cook said to have created it; diners reportedly ordered by weight and watched their portion being made.
Q 02Which Sichuan stir-fry of diced poultry and peanuts is believed to be named after Qing governor Ding Baozhen's title?
Kung Pao chicken
Kung Pao chicken takes its name from Gongbao, or palace guardian, and during the Cultural Revolution the imperial-sounding dish was renamed simply spicy chicken.
Q 03Which country banned imports of Sichuan peppercorns from 1968 to 2005 for fear of a crop disease?
United States
United States regulators feared the shipments could carry citrus canker, since the peppercorn shrub belongs to the same plant family as oranges and lemons.
Q 04Which fast-food chain created a Szechuan dipping sauce in 1998 to promote Disney's Mulan?
McDonald's
McDonald's made the sauce for its chicken nuggets, and it returned to fame nearly twenty years later when the cartoon Rick and Morty made a running joke of it.
Q 05Sichuan and Chongqing are estimated to account for about 70 percent of China's consumption of which meat?
Rabbit
Rabbit is much more popular in Sichuan than anywhere else in China, even though pork is overwhelmingly the region's most common meat.
Q 06Which Sichuan street snack takes its name from the shoulder pole that walking vendors used to carry their baskets?
Dandan noodles
Dandan noodles were sold by street pedlars who hung the noodles from one end of the pole and the sauce from the other, cheap enough that the name stuck.
Q 07Sichuan's yuxiang sauce, served on shredded pork and eggplant, is named for the aroma of which food it never contains?
Fish
Fish is missing from the recipe: the name means fish fragrance, yet the sweet, sour and garlicky sauce holds no seafood and is rarely even served on it.
Q 08Chili peppers, now essential to Sichuan cooking, were first cultivated in which country long before reaching Asia?
Mexico
Mexico grew chilies some 6,000 years ago, yet they reached Sichuan kitchens only a few centuries ago, joining the far older native peppercorn.
Q 09Which Sichuan dish of glass noodles and minced pork takes its name from what the finished plate is said to resemble?
Ants climbing a tree
Ants climbing a tree pictures the specks of meat as ants and the noodles as twigs; the softened strands go into the wok to soak up the sauce.
Q 10Which Chinese word, joining the characters for numbing and spicy, names the signature flavour of Sichuan hot pot?
Mala
Mala pairs the tingle of Sichuan peppercorns with the burn of dried chilies, and its strong flavours once helped hide the smell of cheap offal.
Q 11Which Sichuan classic of sliced belly meat, garlic sprouts and chili bean paste is called huiguorou in Chinese?
Twice-cooked pork
Twice-cooked pork is boiled first, then sliced and stir-fried, which is why its Chinese name means meat returned to the wok.
Q 12Which cold Sichuan street dish of shredded poultry is named after the wooden stick used to pound the meat tender?
Bang bang chicken
Bang bang chicken comes from bàng, the Chinese word for stick; the popular story that the name copies the noise of the pounding is thought unlikely.
Q 13Fuqi feipian, a cold and spicy Sichuan dish of thinly sliced offal, is named after which pair of people?
A husband and wife
Q 21Settlers from which nearby province, also famed for chili heat, carried their cooking into war-emptied Sichuan?
Hunan
Hunan migrants arrived after wars had cut Sichuan's population by about three-quarters, and their dry, purely hot style still contrasts with Sichuan's numbing heat.
Q 22Which hot pot chain, founded in Jianyang in Sichuan, is known for treating its customers to free snacks and manicures?
Haidilao
Haidilao, whose name means scooping the sea floor, began as a single restaurant opened by Zhang Yong and three partners with just 8,000 yuan.
Q 23Which English cook trained at the Sichuan Higher Institute of Cuisine and later wrote Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper?
Fuchsia Dunlop
A husband and wife, Guo Zhaohua and Zhang Tianzheng, made the snack famous in 1930s Chengdu, and despite the lung in its Chinese name it rarely contains any.
Q 14Chen Kenichi, whose father brought Sichuan cooking to Japan, was the Chinese-food champion of which TV contest?
Iron Chef
Iron Chef kept Chen in his post for its entire run, the only one of its resident champions to manage that. His father, Chen Kenmin, was born in Sichuan and moved to Japan in 1952.
Q 15Which gathering places, found all over Chengdu, are where locals play mahjong and even have their ears cleaned?
Teahouses
Teahouses in the city range from ornate halls with bamboo furniture to plain modern rooms, and the larger ones lay on Sichuan opera for their customers.
Q 16Sichuan's numbing hot pot is traced to riverside workers who laboured along which of China's great waterways?
Yangtze River
Yangtze River workers wanted cheap, warming meals, so vendors boiled tripe and other bargain cuts in spiced broth; restaurants took up the dish only in the 1930s.
Q 17Which seasoning blend, named for a number, mixes ground Sichuan pepper with star anise, cloves, cinnamon and fennel?
Five-spice powder
Five-spice powder is said to reflect the five traditional Chinese elements, and a rarer cousin with eight more ingredients is sold as thirteen-spice powder.
Q 18Chaoshou, the Sichuan dumplings whose name means folded hands, are a regional form of which Chinese dumpling?
Wonton
Wonton wrappers are folded here into two points, one crossed over the other, and it is said you can order a bowl in Sichuan just by crossing your arms.
Q 19Suanla fen, the hot and sour noodles sold on Sichuan streets, get their sharp tang from which ingredient?
Rice vinegar
Rice vinegar supplies the sourness and chili oil the heat, and a street vendor can hand over a finished bowl two or three minutes after taking the order.
Q 20Which fermented paste of broad beans and chilies has been called the soul of Sichuan cuisine?
Doubanjiang
Doubanjiang of the best-known kind ferments under sunlight, often for more than three years, until it turns reddish brown and deeply savoury.
Fuchsia Dunlop went to China to research ethnic minorities but stayed on for a chef's course, and several publishers rejected her first cookbook as too regional.
Q 24Zha cai, the salty preserved knob shredded into Sichuan noodles and soups, is the swollen stem of which plant?
Mustard
Mustard stems for zha cai are salted, pressed and dried, then rubbed with chili paste and left to ferment in earthenware jars.
Q 25A traditional Chongqing hot pot gets the richness of its fiery broth from which rendered animal fat?
Beef tallow
Beef tallow is stir-fried and boiled for a long time with chilies, garlic, bean paste and spices to make the seasoning base that flavours the soup.
Q 26Salt from Sichuan's ancient brine wells naturally lacks which element, a gap once blamed for goiter in the region?
Iodine
Iodine was missing from the salt drawn from Sichuan's wells and springs, which led to goiter problems in the region before the twentieth century.
Q 27In the traditional Four Great Traditions of Chinese cooking, Sichuan cuisine represents which part of China?
The West
The West is Sichuan's corner in a scheme that gives Shandong the north, Guangdong the south and Huaiyang the east; a later list names eight great cuisines.
Q 28Sichuan cooking has three regional substyles and a fourth, meat-free style tied to which religion?
Buddhism
Buddhism gives the vegetarian style its name, while the other three are tied to places: Chengdu and Leshan, the towns of southern Sichuan, and Chongqing.
Q 29Shuizhu, the Sichuan method behind so-called water-boiled meat, ends by pouring which liquid over the dish?
Hot oil
Hot oil, heated almost to smoking, is poured over a topping of dried chili, Sichuan pepper and garlic, so the gently poached meat arrives fiery rather than plain.
Q 30Which part of the Sichuan pepper plant is dried and sold as the tingling spice?
The fruit husk
The fruit husk is the whole spice: once the pods are dried, the seeds and stems are discarded, and the husks are used whole or finely ground.