Q 01/05

Which Japanese chemist identified umami as a distinct taste in 1908 and co-founded Ajinomoto?

A) Umetaro Suzuki

B) Jokichi Takamine

C) Kikunae Ikeda

D) Kunihiko Kodaira

Answer · why

C) Kikunae Ikeda

He traced the taste to glutamic acid; the company's first product was monosodium glutamate, launched in 1909.

Q 02/05

Which USDA chemist established the mechanism of the Maillard browning reaction in 1953?

A) John E. Hodge

B) Harold McGee

C) Justus von Liebig

D) Wilbur Atwater

Answer · why

A) John E. Hodge

Louis Camille Maillard had first described the reaction between amino acids and sugars four decades earlier while trying to reproduce protein synthesi...

Q 03/05

Saffron's golden colour comes from which carotenoid pigment?

A) Crocin

B) Safranal

C) Picrocrocin

D) Lycopene

Answer · why

A) Crocin

Safranal supplies the aroma and picrocrocin the taste. The ISO 3632 grading standard measures all three in the dried stigmas.

Q 04/05

Casu martzu, the Sardinian cheese containing live maggots, is made from which animal's milk?

A) Cow

B) Goat

C) Sheep

D) Water buffalo

Answer · why

C) Sheep

Larvae of the cheese fly are introduced to pecorino, and their digestion softens it until a liquid called làgrima, or teardrop, seeps out.

Q 05/05

Fresh meat of the shark used for Iceland's hákarl is poisonous because of its high content of what?

A) Mercury

B) Urea

C) Histamine

D) Tetrodotoxin

Answer · why

B) Urea

The Greenland shark is buried under gravel for weeks to press the fluids out, then hung to dry for four or five months.