Unusual Foods Trivia
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100 free Unusual Foods trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Somewhere in the world right now, someone is eating a shark that had to cure for months to become safe, a pecorino whose larvae jump, or a coffee that passed through an animal first. Unusual foods are where taste, survival and showmanship meet, and almost every one of them has a better story than the dish it replaced on the table. These 100 questions travel from Iceland's fermented shark and Sweden's bulging herring tins to Korea's wriggling raw dishes, Mexico's insect caviar, the Inuit's buried and fermented meats, and fruits that are banned on trains or dangerous to pick too early. Expect how things are made and why they smell, plus the court cases, kings and legends that trail behind them. Play it straight through, use it as a pub-quiz round for strong stomachs, or print it for a food-themed party. Every answer comes with a one-line explanation that tells you what you would actually be eating.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Rocky Mountain oysters, deep-fried at ranch festivals in the American West, are which part of a bull?
The testicles
The testicles come from young bulls castrated at spring branding, and ranch hands fried them up rather than waste the meat, which is how a by-product of cattle work became festival food.
Q 02Century eggs, preserved in a paste of clay, ash, salt and quicklime, actually cure for roughly how long?
Weeks to months
Weeks to months is all it takes for the paste to raise the egg's pH, which turns the white a translucent dark brown and the yolk creamy and grey-green.
Q 03Haggis, Scotland's pudding of sheep offal and oatmeal, is the butt of a running joke that claims it is what?
A small wild animal
A small wild animal with legs longer on one side, the joke goes, so it can run round steep Highland hills without falling over, while real haggis is sheep's heart, liver and lungs minced with oatmeal and suet.
Q 04Huitlacoche, the swollen corn galls that Mexican cooks prize and fold into quesadillas, is caused by what?
A fungus
A fungus, the corn smut Ustilago maydis, swells the kernels into galls that one promotional dinner tried to rebrand as the 'Mexican truffle' to win over American diners.
Q 05Sardinia's casu martzu, a pecorino eaten with its live cheese-fly larvae, is notorious because the maggots can do what?
Leap up to 15 cm
Leap up to 15 cm is what the larvae manage when disturbed, so diners hold a hand over the bread; Guinness World Records named casu martzu the world's 'most dangerous cheese' in 2009.
Q 06Balut, the Philippine street snack eaten from the shell with salt, is incubated for about how long?
Two to three weeks
Two to three weeks, 14 to 21 days depending on local taste, lets the embryo develop, and the longer it goes the more recognisable the bird's features become.
Q 07Which person in Japan is said never to have eaten fugu pufferfish, thanks to a centuries-old ban?
The Emperor
The Emperor is kept from fugu by a ban one Tokyo fugu chef could only call 'centuries old'; the Tokugawa shogunate outlawed the fish in Edo, and Meiji-era Japan banned it again in many areas.
Q 08Durian, the pungent fruit banned on Singapore's transport, is named after a Malay word for what?
Thorn
Thorn, 'duri' in Malay, names the spiky rind; the pungent smell can cling for days, which is why some hotels as well as trains and buses in Southeast Asia turn the fruit away.
Q 09Sannakji, a Korean raw dish whose freshly cut pieces keep wriggling, is made from which animal?
Octopus
Octopus arms keep moving because their neurons work after cutting, and the suction cups can grip the throat, which makes the dish a genuine choking hazard.
Q 10Witchetty grubs, an Aboriginal Australian bush food said to taste of almonds when raw, are the larvae of what?
A moth
A moth, the cossid Endoxyla leucomochla, lays the grub that feeds on witchetty-bush roots; cooked, its skin crisps like roast chicken and the inside turns egg-yellow.
Q 11Escamoles, eaten in Mexico since Aztec times and nicknamed 'insect caviar', are the larvae and pupae of what?
Ants
Ants of the genus Liometopum nest among the roots of maguey plants, and their larvae can be dug out only in a short season early in the year, which makes escamoles one of Mexico's costliest ingredients.
Q 12Nattō, Japan's sticky fermented-soybean breakfast, was traditionally made by wrapping the boiled beans in what?
Straw bags
Straw bags were the original starter, because the natto bacterium lives on rice straw; legend says the samurai Minamoto no Yoshiie's troops packed hot soybeans in straw during an attack and opened them days later.
Q 13Kopi luwak, coffee brewed from beans an animal has excreted, began on colonial plantations in which country?
Indonesia
Q 21Edible bird's nests, harvested from cave walls for a prized Chinese soup, are built by swiftlets out of what?
Saliva
Saliva is what the swiftlet builds with, gluing strand after strand to the rock for about a month until it sets into a small cup; the red nests are the rarest and fetch the highest prices.
Q 22Hasma, a Chinese dessert ingredient that swells greatly when soaked, is dried tissue from which animal?
Frogs
Frogs, usually the Asiatic grass frog, supply the fatty tissue near the fallopian tubes; once kept for the imperial court, it is now double-boiled with rock sugar and served in Chinese communities as far off as North America.
Q 23Shirako, a creamy Japanese delicacy taken from cod, anglerfish and even fugu, is which part of the male fish?
The milt
Indonesia's colonial plantation owners barred Javanese workers from picking coffee for themselves, so in the 19th century the workers brewed the beans that wild civets had eaten and passed instead.
Q 14Lutefisk, the Nordic dried cod that turns to jelly before cooking, is cured by soaking it in what?
Lye
Lye soaks into the dried fish until it is caustic and inedible, so it then needs days in cold water, changed daily, before it is safe to cook into its jelly-like final form.
Q 15Stinky tofu, Taiwan's night-market favourite, traditionally gets its smell from months in a brine of what?
Vegetables and meat
Vegetables and meat ferment together in the brine for several months in the traditional method, whereas factory versions soak for just a day or two.
Q 16A German landlord won a 1984 eviction case by opening a can of which fermented fish in the courtroom?
Surströmming
Surströmming brine had been spread in the building's stairwell by the tenant at Christmas 1981, and Cologne's regional court upheld the eviction once the landlord's side opened a can in front of it.
Q 17Hákarl, Iceland's fermented shark, is cured and hung for months because the fresh meat is loaded with what?
Urea
Urea, the same waste compound found in urine, plus trimethylamine oxide make the fresh flesh poisonous, and the cured strips are served at Iceland's midwinter Þorrablót feasts.
Q 18Kiviak, a Greenlandic winter dish, packs up to 500 whole seabirds, feathers and all, into what to ferment?
A seal skin
A seal skin, sealed with seal fat to keep flies out and buried under stones for about three months, holds the little auks until they are eaten at winter birthdays and weddings.
Q 19Smalahove, western Norway's dish of half a sheep's head per diner, is traditionally eaten starting with what?
The ear and eye
The ear and eye go first because they are the fattiest parts and best while warm; since 1998 EU rules allow smalahove only from lambs, over scrapie fears.
Q 20Traditional chicha, the Andean corn beer, is started in some cultures by the brewer doing what to the grain?
Chewing it
Chewing it mixes in ptyalin, an enzyme from the brewer's mouth that breaks the corn's starch down into maltose; the chewed balls are then flattened and dried before brewing.
The milt, the male fish's sperm sacs, goes by a name meaning 'white children'; the costliest comes from fugu, whose liver and ovaries can kill but whose milt is grilled and served as a winter luxury.
Q 24Jellied eels, sold with pie and mash since the 1700s, are a traditional speciality of which part of London?
The East End
The East End's poor made eels a staple because they were cheap and among the few fish that could survive the polluted Thames; London's oldest surviving eel and pie house, M. Manze, has served them since 1902.
Q 25Czernina, a Polish soup whose name comes from the word for 'black', is made from poultry broth and what?
Duck blood
Duck blood gives the colour, and until the 19th century the soup carried a message: a suitor who was served czernina knew his proposal had been turned down, a custom recalled in the Polish epic Pan Tadeusz.
Q 26Scrapple, a fried slice of pork scraps bound with cornmeal, is a signature of which American community?
Pennsylvania Dutch
Pennsylvania Dutch farmers made it on butchering day so that nothing went to waste: head meat, liver and trimmings too odd for sausage were boiled, thickened with cornmeal and buckwheat, then fried in slices.
Q 27Deep-fried tarantulas are a roadside speciality and tourist stop in the town of Skuon in which country?
Cambodia
Cambodia's taste for the spiders may date from the food shortages of the Khmer Rouge years, and Skuon now sells them as a snack to passing travellers.
Q 28Chapulines, toasted with garlic, lime and chilli and sold as snacks at Oaxaca's sports events, are which insect?
Grasshoppers
Grasshoppers crossed into American sport in 2017, when the Seattle Mariners put the Oaxacan snack on their ballpark menu and the stand sold out at the home opener.
Q 29Beondegi, a Korean street snack served in paper cups and literally meaning 'pupa', is made from which insect?
Silkworms
Silkworms leave the pupae behind once the silk is reeled off their cocoons, and Koreans took to eating this by-product widely only after the Korean War, when cheap protein was scarce.
Q 30Milbenkäse, a German 'mite cheese', ripens for at least three months in a wooden box filled with what?
Rye flour
Rye flour feeds the Tyrophagus casei mites, whose digestive juices seep into balls of caraway-flavoured quark; the craft was nearly lost by 1970 before its revival in the village of Würchwitz.