59 free Spice trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
52 free Spice trivia questions with answers. Spices moved empires, and this quiz follows them from the Malabar Coast to the supermarket rack. Fifty-two questions cover why saffron costs more than silver, what black, white and pink peppercorns really are, the bark that becomes cinnamon, the nutmeg island the Dutch swapped for Manhattan, the enslaved 12-year-old who cracked vanilla pollination, Wilbur Scoville's heat scale, the Hungarian paprika that yielded vitamin C, and why most 'wasabi' is horseradish. Easy questions ask which spice is the most expensive and where chili peppers come from; the hard ones want the compound that makes Sichuan pepper tingle, the flu drug made from star anise and the medieval price of a pound of pepper. Good for foodies, pub quizzes and anyone who has ever wondered what mace actually is. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the spices, plants and history involved, and each question carries the sentence that supports it.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which spice, harvested by hand from a crocus, is the world's most expensive by weight?
Saffron
Premium grades regularly top US$5,000 per kilogram because every thread is picked by hand.
Q 02The threads of the crocus-derived spice are which part of the flower?
The stigmas and styles
About 150,000 flowers go into a single kilogram of dried spice.
Q 03Which country produces around 90% of the world's crocus-thread spice?
Iran
Afghanistan is a distant second, and Spain's La Mancha crop is famous but small.
Q 04Roughly how many crocus flowers does it take to make one kilogram of the dried threads?
About 150,000
That works out to some 440,000 individual stigmas per kilo.
Q 05Black pepper is made from the unripe fruit of a vine native to which region?
South Asia
The vine Piper nigrum comes from India's Malabar Coast; today Vietnam grows about 30% of the world's crop.
Q 06How does white pepper differ from black pepper?
It is only the seed of the ripe fruit
The outer fruit is removed, which is why white pepper is milder and paler.
Q 07Which country led world black pepper production in 2023 with about 30% of the total?
Vietnam
The world produced 855,105 tonnes of peppercorns that year.
Q 08Peppercorns were found stuffed in the nostrils of which Egyptian pharaoh's mummy?
Ramesses II
They were placed there as part of the mummification ritual, proof of trade with India over 3,000 years ago.
Q 09Pink peppercorns are actually the fruit of what?
The berry of a cashew-family tree
The plant belongs to the Anacardiaceae, the same family as cashews and mangoes, which is why some allergy sufferers avoid them.
Q 10The heat in pepper comes mainly from which compound?
Piperine
It is found in both the outer fruit and the seed, unlike chili heat which comes from capsaicin.
Q 11Cinnamon is obtained from which part of the tree?
The inner bark
The bark curls into quills as it dries; ancient Egyptians used it to embalm mummies.
Q 12'True' or Ceylon cinnamon takes its name from the former name of which country?
Sri Lanka
Most supermarket cinnamon is actually cassia, which contains far more coumarin.
Q 13Herodotus claimed cinnamon sticks were collected by giant what?
Birds
The 'cinnamon bird' story helped Arabian traders hide the spice's real source for centuries.
Q 14Mace is a spice made from what part of the nutmeg?
Q 21The word 'vanilla' comes from a Spanish word meaning what?
Little pod
Vainilla is the diminutive of vaina, 'sheath'.
Q 22Cloves are what part of the Syzygium aromaticum tree?
Dried flower buds
They are native to Indonesia's Maluku Islands, the original Spice Islands.
Q 23In Indonesia, cloves are famously blended into which product?
Kretek cigarettes
Indonesia is the largest clove producer but exports only 10-15% of its crop, smoking most of the rest.
Q 24Eugenol, which makes up 72-90% of clove oil, is chiefly responsible for what?
The reddish seed covering
The lacy aril is peeled off the seed and dried separately, giving two spices from one fruit.
Q 15Under the 1667 Treaty of Breda, Britain traded the nutmeg island of Run for which island?
New Amsterdam (Manhattan)
At the time a sack of nutmeg looked like the better end of the deal.
Q 16The nutmeg tree is native to which island group?
The Banda Islands
The Dutch East India Company waged a bloody campaign against the Bandanese in 1621 to secure a monopoly.
Q 17Eating large amounts of nutmeg can cause poisoning from which compound?
Myristicin
In pure form it is a toxin, which is why nutmeg 'highs' tend to end badly.
Q 18Vanilla comes from the seed pods of what kind of plant?
An orchid
The Totonac people of Veracruz were farming it by at least 1185.
Q 19In 1841, who discovered vanilla could be hand-pollinated, enabling cultivation outside Mexico?
A 12-year-old enslaved boy on Réunion
Edmond Albius's technique is still used on every vanilla farm today.
Q 20Which island supplies, together with Indonesia, about two-thirds of the world's vanilla?
Madagascar
By weight vanilla is the second most expensive spice after saffron.
Its aroma
Dentists have long used it as a numbing antiseptic, which is why the dentist's office smells of cloves.
Q 25Chili pepper heat is measured in units named after which pharmacist, who devised the test in 1912?
Wilbur Scoville
The original test relied on panels of tasters diluting extracts until the burn disappeared.
Q 26Capsicum plants, the ancestors of all chili peppers, originated in which region?
Peru and Bolivia
They were being eaten by about 7,500 BC and were cultivated in Mexico some 6,000 years ago.
Q 27Why did Columbus's crew call the fiery Capsicum fruits 'peppers'?
They were pungent like black pepper
The misnomer stuck, and the Portuguese then carried chilies to Africa, Arabia and Asia.
Q 28Which animals cannot feel the burn of capsaicin and happily eat the hottest chilies?
Birds
That suits the plant, since birds spread the seeds intact while mammals would grind them up.
Q 29Which country grew about 39% of the world's chilies and peppers in 2024?
China
World production reached 45 million tonnes of green chillies and peppers that year.
Q 30In the 2020s, after the two costliest spices, which was the third most expensive by weight?
Cardamom
Guatemala overtook India as the leading producer around 1980, though the plant is native to the Indian subcontinent.