50 free Soul Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This soul food trivia quiz covers the food and the story behind it. There are questions on where okra, black-eyed peas and rice came from, why enslaved cooks used every part of the hog, what pot liquor is, and why Hoppin' John and greens go on the table every New Year's Day. It also covers the cooks and places that made the cuisine famous: Sylvia's in Harlem, Paschal's in Atlanta, Dooky Chase in New Orleans, Edna Lewis, and the earliest cookbooks by Black authors. You will also find the term itself, which only took hold in the 1960s, the red foods of Juneteenth, the difference between soul food and Southern food, and a few questions on the 1997 film Soul Food. About a third are easy for anyone who has eaten a Sunday dinner, a third are medium, and the rest are for cooks and food historians. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and the historians it cites, and each question carries the sentence that establishes it. If you think one is wrong, use the report button and we will look again.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The expression 'soul food' came into use in which decade?
The 1960s
'Soul' was the word of the moment for Black American culture; the phrase spread alongside soul music and the Black Power movement.
Q 02One of the earliest written uses of the term 'soul food' appears in which 1965 book?
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
The poet LeRoi Jones, later Amiri Baraka, also published an essay titled 'Soul Food' that argued for the cuisine as part of Black identity.
Q 03Under what earlier name did Amiri Baraka publish the article 'Soul Food'?
LeRoi Jones
For families of the Great Migration, the food was a reminder of the Southern homes they had left for northern cities.
Q 04Which month is celebrated as National Soul Food Month?
June
It coincides with Juneteenth, the holiday whose barbecues and red foods are themselves part of the tradition.
Q 05Per historian Adrian Miller, Black cooks distinguish their corn bread from white Southern versions by adding what?
Sugar
White Southerners, Miller notes, say that once you put sugar in cornbread it becomes cake.
Q 06Which of these crops was NOT an African food carried on slave ships to the American South?
Maize
Maize is a Native American crop; okra, black-eyed peas, millet, rice and yams all crossed the Atlantic from Africa.
Q 07By tradition, enslaved African women smuggled rice, okra and millet seeds to the Americas by hiding them where?
In their braided hair
The seeds were a hedge against an unknown future in the land where they would be forced to work.
Q 08Which African bird, brought to the Americas via the slave trade, fed enslaved people on plantations?
Guinea fowl
The Spanish introduced it to the Caribbean and it reached the American South in the early 16th century.
Q 09A typical weekly ration for an enslaved person was a peck of corn meal and roughly how much pork?
3-4 pounds
The owners kept the smoked ham and left the offal, which is why so many soul food classics come from the parts nobody else wanted.
Q 10What did enslaved people call the plantation-house leftovers put in troughs on Sundays?
Juba
The word appears in many African languages, where folk knowledge records it meaning 'little bits' of food.
Q 11Slave cabin digs found far more bowls than plates. What did that suggest about the meals?
They were mostly stews and one-pot dishes
White plantation families used plates and flatware, pointing to individual cuts of meat and vegetables served separately.
Q 12Douglass wrote that enslaved people fished turtles and eels from which Maryland river?
The Choptank
Douglass recorded a monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork or its equivalent in fish, plus a bushel of cornmeal.
Q 13Which prized enslaved cook at Mount Vernon had quasi-freedom to leave the house and sell leftovers for money?
Hercules Posey
Q 21Collard greens are the same species as which common vegetables?
Cabbage and broccoli
All are cultivars of Brassica oleracea; collards sit in the loose-leafed 'kale group' and have been eaten since classical antiquity.
Q 22Hominy is corn treated with an alkali in a process called what?
Nixtamalization
The Native American technique frees up niacin in the corn; around Charleston, cooked grits were simply called 'hominy' until the 1980s.
Q 23A hushpuppy is a deep-fried ball made from what kind of batter?
Cornmeal
They are the classic side for fried catfish and other fried seafood.
James Hemings, who cooked for Thomas Jefferson, was another enslaved chef with unusual autonomy.
Q 14Chitterlings, or chitlins, are which part of the pig?
The intestines
Field slaves slow-cooked them while they worked; the dish is a delicacy in other cultures too, from Asia to West Africa.
Q 15What is 'pot liquor'?
The liquid left after boiling greens
The vitamins that leach out of slow-cooked greens end up in the liquid, so drinking it or sopping it up with cornbread was good sense.
Q 16Which pie is the traditional soul food holiday dessert, in place of pumpkin pie?
Sweet potato pie
The filling is a custard of mashed sweet potato, evaporated milk, eggs, sugar and spices, baked in an open shell.
Q 17Hoppin' John is a dish of rice cooked with which legume?
Black-eyed peas
In the Lowcountry, smaller field peas or Sea Island red peas are used instead; the pot always gets bacon or another cut of pork.
Q 18Eating Hoppin' John with collard greens on which day is believed to bring twelve months of prosperity?
New Year's Day
The peas stand for coins and the greens for folding money; some cooks drop a real coin in the pot.
Q 19The black-eyed pea is a subspecies of which Old World plant domesticated in Africa?
The cowpea
The common commercial variety is the California Blackeye; the South grows countless heirloom types, including the purple hull pea.
Q 20Okra, a staple of gumbo and soul food, is native to which region?
West Africa
It belongs to the mallow family, the same as cotton and hibiscus, and is known as lady's fingers in some English-speaking countries.
Q 24Chicken and waffles, a soul food staple, originated as a meal of which American culinary tradition?
Pennsylvania Dutch
Maryland cooks fried chicken under a lid in shallow fat, half-frying and half-steaming it, and served it with waffles.
Q 25Fufu's role soaking up West African stews is compared to which African-American food?
Cornbread
The same comparison is drawn between West African yams and the sweet potatoes of the American South.
Q 26Which mid-20th-century seasoned salt is a staple in Black American kitchens?
Lawry's
It is cheap and puts several herbs and spices in one shaker, so it goes on almost everything except desserts.
Q 27The first soul food cookbook is usually credited to Abby Fisher. In what year was What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking published?
1881
Rufus Estes, a former slave who worked for the Pullman railway car service, followed with Good Things to Eat in 1911.
Q 28Rufus Estes, author of the 1911 cookbook Good Things to Eat, had worked for which company?
The Pullman railway car service
Many other cookbooks by Black authors of the period were never widely distributed and are now lost.
Q 29Sylvia Woods, the 'queen of soul food', opened her Harlem restaurant in which year?
1962
She had worked at the luncheonette on the site since 1954 before she and her husband bought it; the restaurant now sells sauces, cookbooks and even a children's book.
Q 30Sylvia Woods was born in Hemingway, in which state?
South Carolina
She moved to Harlem as a teenager and worked in a Brooklyn factory before finding her way into a luncheonette kitchen.