World Food Trivia
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129 free World Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This world food trivia quiz takes you around the globe one plate at a time. You will find the national dishes (poutine, haggis, feijoada, koshary, jollof rice, adobo), the food that turned out to come from somewhere unexpected (the croissant, ketchup, chicken tikka masala), the dishes UNESCO has declared cultural heritage, and the ones that get banned from planes, hotels and entire trading blocs. There are questions on the ingredients that changed the world too: where the potato, tomato and chili pepper started out, which country grows most of the world's saffron and coffee, and the enslaved boy whose trick made vanilla a global crop. The mix runs from easy questions anyone who eats out will get, to expert ones about who invented what and when. Every answer has been checked against a reliable source, so it is safe to use for a pub quiz, a classroom geography lesson or a dinner-party argument.
30 of 129 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Poutine, the dish of fries, cheese curds and hot gravy, was created in the late 1950s in which country?
Canada
It came out of the Centre-du-Québec region and was mocked for years; in 2007 a CBC poll ranked it among the greatest Canadian inventions.
Q 02Which savoury pudding of sheep's heart, liver and lungs is the centrepiece of a Burns supper?
Haggis
Haggis, the sheep-offal pudding, is piped in at Burns suppers held on or near 25 January, Robert Burns's birthday; the US banned sheep lung in food in 1971, shutting out the traditional version.
Q 03In which city is chicken tikka masala, hailed in 2001 as 'a true British national dish', thought to have been invented?
Glasgow
Glasgow's Shish Mahal restaurant is the usual claimant: owner Ali Ahmed Aslam supposedly improvised a creamy tomato sauce for a customer who found his chicken tikka too dry.
Q 04The croissant is descended from the kipferl, a crescent pastry from which country?
Austria
An Austrian officer, August Zang, opened a Viennese bakery in Paris in 1838 or 1839, and the French laminated-dough version grew from there.
Q 05The word ketchup most likely comes from Hokkien Chinese words for the brine of what?
Pickled fish
Hokkien kê-tsiap meant the brine of pickled fish; the sauce reached Europe through Southeast Asian trade, and tomato ketchup only appeared with James Mease's 1812 American recipe.
Q 06From the 1600s, ketchup in Britain was made mainly from which ingredient?
Mushrooms
Mushroom ketchup is still sold in the UK; the tomato version is an American invention of the early 1800s.
Q 07Pavlova, the meringue dessert, is claimed as a national dish by Australia and which other country?
New Zealand
New Zealand and Australia both claim the pavlova, named for ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured both countries in 1926; food historian Helen Leach traced a New Zealand meringue recipe to 1929.
Q 08In 2022 UNESCO listed which country's borscht-cooking culture as heritage in need of urgent safeguarding?
Ukraine
UNESCO added Ukraine's borscht-cooking culture to its urgent-safeguarding list in July 2022, months into Russia's full-scale invasion; the soup's name comes from hogweed, its original fermented base.
Q 09Injera, the spongy sour flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, is traditionally made from which grain?
Teff
Teff, a tiny Ethiopian highland grain, is ground and fermented for a few days to give injera its sour tang and spongy bubbled surface; the bread then doubles as plate and cutlery.
Q 10Ceviche joined UNESCO's heritage list in December 2023 as a traditional dish of which country?
Peru
Peru had already declared it national heritage and gave it its own holiday, National Ceviche Day on 28 June.
Q 11The communal autumn making and sharing of which fermented dish was recognised by UNESCO in 2013?
Kimchi
Kimchi comes in more than 180 recognised varieties, and in 2008 a bacteria-free version was engineered so astronaut Yi So-yeon could take it into space.
Q 12The red, white and green of a pizza Margherita are popularly said to represent what?
The Italian flag
Legend has the pizza made for Queen Margherita of Savoy in June 1889, its tomato, mozzarella and basil matching the red, white and green of the Italian flag; historians note similar pizzas existed decades earlier.
Q 13Which Neapolitan pizzaiolo is credited by legend with creating the pizza Margherita in 1889?
Raffaele Esposito
Q 21Pho, the broth-and-rice-noodle soup usually made with beef, comes from which country?
Vietnam
Pho is Vietnam's signature soup; one theory ties the name to the French pot-au-feu, since beef became common under colonial rule, and Vietnamese refugees carried it worldwide after 1975.
Q 22Residents of which northern city are credited as the first to create pho, in the early 1900s?
Nam Dinh
Nam Dinh, a textile town southeast of Hanoi, is usually named as pho's birthplace; cooks from its Van Cu village carried the soup to Hanoi, where it became a street food before spreading south.
Q 23The friendly "Jollof wars" over the best jollof rice are fought mainly between Nigeria and which country?
Ghana
Raffaele Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi supposedly baked it for Queen Margherita's 1889 visit to Naples; Gennaro Lombardi, by contrast, is credited with opening America's first pizzeria in New York in 1905.
Q 14In the strictest Neapolitan tradition there are only two true pizzas: the Margherita and which other?
Marinara
The marinara has no cheese at all, just tomato, garlic, oregano and oil. Neapolitan pizza has been an EU traditional speciality guaranteed since 2010.
Q 15The name of the dessert tiramisu translates from Italian as what?
Pick me up
Tiramisù means 'pick me up' (tirami sù); the lift comes from espresso-soaked savoiardi biscuits layered with mascarpone cream and dusted with cocoa.
Q 16In which city was tiramisu reportedly invented at Ado Campeol's restaurant Le Beccherie in 1969?
Treviso
Le Beccherie in Treviso, in the Veneto, credits Campeol's wife Alba di Pillo and pastry chef Roberto Linguanotto with the dessert; the recipe was first published by Giuseppe Maffioli in 1981.
Q 17The Turkish word döner, as in döner kebab, comes from a verb meaning what?
To rotate
Döner comes from the Turkish verb dönmek, 'to turn' or 'to rotate': the meat cooks on a rotating vertical spit, and the sandwich version was popularised by Turkish immigrants in 1970s West Germany.
Q 18Currywurst was invented in 1949 by Herta Heuwer, who sold it from a stand in which city?
Berlin
Heuwer's stand stood on Kantstraße in Charlottenburg, Berlin; she reputedly got ketchup and curry powder from British soldiers stationed there, and a memorial plaque marks the spot.
Q 19Which country's Cheese Union, a cartel trying to sell more cheese, promoted fondue as a national dish in the 1930s?
Switzerland
Switzerland's Cheese Union pushed fondue as the national dish in the 1930s and later pitched it to Americans at the 1964 New York World's Fair.
Q 20What is the name of the communal pot in which fondue is served?
Caquelon
The caquelon, a wide ceramic or enamelled cast-iron pot, sits over a small spirit burner (réchaud) so the cheese-and-wine mixture stays liquid throughout the meal.
Ghana and Nigeria trade jollof bragging rights online and at cook-offs; the dish takes its name from the Wolof people of Senegal, whose Jolof Empire flourished from the 14th century.
Q 24"Paella" is the Valencian word for what?
Frying pan
Paella is simply the Valencian word for a frying pan, from Latin patella; the rice dish cooked in that wide shallow pan grew up around Valencia's Albufera lagoon in the mid-1800s.
Q 25Which of these belongs in a traditional paella valenciana, according to Valencian cooks?
Rabbit
The classic version uses rabbit, chicken, duck, snails and beans; seafood, in the words of purists, is absolutely out of the question.
Q 26What is the single defining component of sushi?
Vinegared rice
Sushi is defined by its vinegared rice (shari); the dish evolved from narezushi, fish fermented in rice for preservation, and the rice, originally thrown away, became the point once vinegar replaced fermentation.
Q 27Nigiri sushi, seafood on hand-pressed rice, was invented around 1824 by which Edo-period cook?
Hanaya Yohei
Hanaya Yohei sold nigiri from a stall in Edo's Ryogoku district around 1824 as fast food for workers; the pieces were far larger than the modern two-bite version.
Q 28Which country produces around 90% of the world's saffron?
Iran
Iran, chiefly its Khorasan region, grows around 90% of the world's saffron crop; premium grades fetch upwards of US$5,000 a kilogram, making it the most expensive spice by weight.
Q 29Roughly how many crocus flowers does it take to produce one kilogram of saffron?
150,000
Each crocus yields just three crimson stigmas, all picked by hand, so roughly 150,000 flowers go into a kilogram of dried saffron, which is the whole reason for the price.
Q 30Which pungent 'king of fruits' is banned from hotels and public transport in Singapore?
Durian
Durian's smell can linger for days, which is why hotels and transit in Singapore and Bangkok ban it; Thailand was the world's top exporter as of 2018.