Turkish Food Trivia
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48 free Turkish Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Turkish cuisine grew out of the Ottoman court kitchen, which fused Central Asian cooking with Mediterranean and Middle Eastern influences and then spread that mix across the Balkans, the Levant and North Africa. The result is a table that runs from a sprawling breakfast of cheeses, olives and menemen, through mezes, dolma and a bewildering family of kebabs, to baklava, künefe and milk puddings thickened with chicken breast. This quiz covers the regions — Black Sea anchovies, Kayseri mantı, Gaziantep pistachios, Bursa's İskender kebab — and the icons: the two-teapot method for çay, coffee brewed in a copper cezve and read for fortunes, rakı with şalgam, simit sellers in Istanbul since 1525, and the döner sandwich that Turkish guest workers turned into Berlin's signature fast food. There are questions on cheeses, soups, street food, Ramadan sweets and the English word borrowed from Turkish for a fermented milk product. Fifty questions, four options each, with a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a food-themed quiz night.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Ottoman sultans staged a yearly 'Baklava Procession' to present trays of the pastry to which elite troops?
The Janissaries
The Janissaries, the sultan's elite infantry, collected trays baked in the palace kitchens in a public pageant that survived until the corps itself was abolished in 1826.
Q 02Hamsi, a staple of Black Sea cooking in Turkey, is what kind of fish?
Anchovy
Anchovy: in the winter hamsi season, Black Sea cooks fry the little fish in corn flour, bake them into pilaf and even work them into bread.
Q 03Mantı, the small stuffed dumplings, are especially associated with which Central Anatolian city?
Kayseri
Kayseri: tradition there holds that a bride-to-be should fold her mantı so small that forty of them fit on a single spoon.
Q 04Urfa kebap is the mild version of Turkey's hand-minced lamb kebab; which city names the fiery, chilli-laced one?
Adana
Adana is protective of it: the city's Chamber of Commerce has registered Adana kebabı as a geographically protected product.
Q 05The Turkish word for breakfast, kahvaltı, literally means what?
Before coffee
Before coffee: kahve-altı is literally 'under coffee', the food eaten ahead of the day's cup. The cup has since lost out, because a Turkish breakfast now comes with tea.
Q 06Menemen, often likened to shakshuka, simmers tomatoes and peppers with which main ingredient?
Eggs
Eggs go in last, scrambled into the stewed tomatoes and peppers; whether onion belongs too is a national argument that a food critic once put to a Twitter poll.
Q 07Lakerda, traditionally served with rakı at taverns, is made by pickling which fish?
Bonito
Bonito: thick steaks are layered in salt under a weight and left to cure, then soaked to draw the salt back out and sliced thin with red onion.
Q 08Cacık blends garlic, dried mint and olive oil with which vegetable into a cold dairy dip?
Cucumber
Cucumber: Greek tzatziki takes its name from cacık, though Turks often serve theirs thinned down into something closer to a cold summer soup than a dip.
Q 09Turkey has long been the world's largest producer of which nut, grown along its Black Sea coast?
Hazelnuts
Hazelnuts: Turkey so dominates the crop that a frost on its Black Sea hillsides can raise the price of Nutella, whose maker buys about a quarter of the world's supply.
Q 10Kuyruk yağı, sometimes used in kebabs, is fat from which part of a sheep?
The tail
The tail: Turkey's fat-tailed sheep store their fat in a heavy, baggy tail, and cooks mince it into kebab meat along with the lamb.
Q 11İmam bayıldı, eggplant braised whole in olive oil, has a name saying the imam did what?
Fainted
Fainted: in one telling the imam swooned at the taste, in another at learning how much costly olive oil his wife had poured into the dish.
Q 12Which English food word is borrowed directly from Turkish?
Yogurt
Yogurt reached English in the 1620s from Ottoman Turkish, where the word grows out of a verb meaning to knead or thicken, which is just what happens to the milk.
Q 13Turkish tea is traditionally served in small, narrow-waisted glasses said to be shaped like which flower?
Tulip
Tulip: the clear, slim-waisted glass, known as an 'ince belli', is meant to show off the tea's deep red hue as much as to hold it.
Q 21Flour helva is nicknamed 'ölü helvası' because it is traditionally cooked on which occasion?
After someone has died
After someone has died: ölü helvası means helva of the dead, and it is handed round to everyone who calls at the house of mourning.
Q 22Güllaç, layers of thin dough in milk and rose water, is typically served during which period?
Ramadan
Ramadan: light and milky after a day's fast, güllaç was served at the Ottoman palace, and the 'gül' in its name is the rose of the rose water that scents it.
Q 23Legend says aşure, the sweet soup of beans, wheat and dried fruit, was first cooked where?
On Noah's Ark
Q 14Beyaz peynir, the salty brined cheese on every breakfast table, takes its name from what?
Its white colour
Its white colour: beyaz peynir means simply 'white cheese'. The pressed curds are cut into blocks and left to mature in brine, the way feta is, unless they are eaten fresh.
Q 15Fırın sütlaç, a Turkish milk pudding baked until its top blisters dark brown, is thickened with which grain?
Rice
Rice: sütlaç is Turkey's rice pudding, and the name is a worn-down form of 'sütlü aş', which means nothing grander than 'food with milk'.
Q 16Tulum cheese is traditionally moulded and aged inside what?
An animal-skin bag
An animal-skin bag: tulum is the Turkish word for the goatskin the curd is packed into, and for a bagpipe too, and the filled skins ripen for months in a cool cave or cellar.
Q 17Which spice is tossed with the sliced raw onions served beside Turkish kebabs?
Sumac
Sumac: its ground red berries taste sour and lemony, and that tang is there to cut through the richness of the grilled meat.
Q 18Gaziantep, Turkey's baklava capital, is famous for filling the pastry with which locally grown nut?
Pistachios
Pistachios: since 2013 the name Antep baklavası has been protected by the European Union, the first Turkish product so listed, so only baklava made the Gaziantep way may carry it.
Q 19Hatay's künefe hides which filling between two layers of syrup-soaked shredded pastry?
Melted cheese
Melted cheese: Hatay's own unsalted, mozzarella-like cheese goes between the layers, and the dish is served straight from the heat so that it still pulls into strings.
Q 20Tavuk göğsü is a sweet milk pudding given a chewy texture by which surprising ingredient?
Chicken breast
Chicken breast, simmered until it shreds into fine threads that vanish into the milk. Europe's blancmange began the same way and dropped the meat centuries ago; the Turkish pudding never did.
On Noah's Ark, or just as it came to rest: with the stores almost gone, the story goes, everything left went into one pot. Turks cook it in huge batches to this day, to hand round to the neighbours.
Q 24Tahin-pekmez mixes sesame paste with a syrup most often made from which fruit?
Grapes
Grapes: Turks cook mulberries, figs and carob down the same way, but grape has always been the commonest pekmez, and the syrup is prized as an iron-rich tonic as much as a sweet.
Q 25Hünkârbeğendi, lamb over a purée of grilled eggplant and cheese, has a name meaning what?
The sultan liked it
The sultan liked it: one legend has a cook throwing it together from scraps for a hungry Murad IV, another has it charming France's Empress Eugénie, to Sultan Abdülaziz's delight.
Q 26Karnıyarık, fried eggplant stuffed with minced meat, has a name that translates as what?
Split belly
Split belly: each fried eggplant is slit down the middle, its flesh pushed apart into a pocket, and the opening packed with spiced minced meat before it goes into the oven.
Q 27Çiğ köfte, a spicy meze from south-eastern Turkey, has a name that means what?
Raw meatballs
Raw meatballs: the original kneads raw minced meat into bulgur and hot pepper, but since Turkey banned public sales of that version in 2008, shops have served a meatless one.
Q 28Sucuk, commonly eaten at breakfast, is what kind of food?
A spiced raw sausage
A spiced raw sausage: the beef is cured and dried instead of cooked, so slices are fried before eating and crisp up in the garlicky red fat they give off.
Q 29Kokoreç, a cheap traditional street food, is made from which part of a sheep?
The intestines
The intestines of a lamb, wound round a spit and grilled over charcoal. In the 2000s Turkish media warned that joining the EU would see it banned; by 2009 it was on sale in Germany.
Q 30Arnavut ciğeri, cubes of fried liver served with raw onion and parsley, is named after which people?
Albanians
Albanians: the dish is traced to Balkan migrants who settled in Ottoman Istanbul, and the city left the credit in its name, as it did with Circassian chicken.