Q 01/05

A Vietnamese meal is built to balance how many fundamental tastes (ngũ vị)?

A) Five

B) Three

C) Four

D) Seven

Answer · why

A) Five

Sweet, salty, bitter, sour and spicy each map to one of the classical elements, and cooks aim for the same number of colours on the plate too.

Q 02/05

Potatoes are called khoai tây in Vietnamese, a name that literally means what?

A) Earth apple

B) Western yam

C) French root

D) Foreign bean

Answer · why

B) Western yam

Ingredients the French brought in were often named after a similar native food plus tây, 'western': onions became western shallots and asparagus weste...

Q 03/05

Phở is reputed to have emerged around 1900-1907 in which northern province southeast of Hanoi?

A) Ninh Bình

B) Hà Nam

C) Nam Định

D) Thái Bình

Answer · why

C) Nam Định

Villagers of Vân Cù there insist they were eating it long before the French arrived, and a villager named Vạn opened Hanoi's first province-style stan...

Q 04/05

Phở first appears in written records from which period?

A) The 1400s

B) The 1970s

C) The early 1900s

D) The 1950s

Answer · why

C) The early 1900s

Georges Dumoutier's exhaustive 1907 account of Vietnamese cuisine does not mention it at all; a 1931 dictionary was the first to define it as a soup.

Q 05/05

Why was beef historically uncommon in Vietnamese cooking before the colonial period?

A) Buddhist law forbade it

B) Cattle carried disease

C) Water buffalo were needed for farm work

D) It was reserved for royalty

Answer · why

C) Water buffalo were needed for farm work

Demand for beef only took off under French rule, which is why some historians credit the French with a hand in phở's birth.