Dishes, drinks and where your favorite foods come from.
About this quiz
This Food & Drink Quiz travels through kitchens in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Americas, from street snacks and tapas to stews, pasta and baked dishes. Expect questions about drinks and cocktails, cheeses and spices, cooking terms, and foods that are not quite what their names suggest.
Food history runs all through it, from a Mesopotamian hymn and Egyptian tombs to the first meal eaten on the Moon. A round is 10 questions, 20 seconds each, and the fact after every answer often explains where a dish, a drink or its name comes from.
Try a few questions
Tap an answer to check it, or open the answer underneath.
Which classic Italian cocktail is made from equal parts gin, Campari and sweet vermouth?
- Americano
- Negroni
- Bellini
- Aperol Spritz
Answer: Negroni
Did you know? The Negroni is said to have been created in Florence around 1919, when Count Camillo Negroni asked a bartender to strengthen his Americano by swapping the soda water for gin; it is traditionally served over ice with a slice of orange.
Louisiana's gumbo stew takes its name from an African word for one of its key ingredients. Which?
- Peanut
- Okra
- Yam
- Black-eyed pea
Answer: Okra
Did you know? In Kimbundu, spoken in Angola, okra is ki-ngombo; both the vegetable and its name reached Louisiana with enslaved Africans. Okra's slippery juices help thicken the stew, and the earliest known written mention of gumbo, from 1802, describes a thick okra soup eaten with rice.
Twinkies, the snack cakes jokingly said to last forever, actually have a shelf life of roughly what?
- One hundred years
- Ten years
- Truly indefinite
- A few weeks
Answer: A few weeks
Did you know? Despite the legend of the eternal Twinkie, their real shelf life is only around 45 days. The myth grew because they contain no dairy to spoil quickly — but they're far from the immortal survival food of popular imagination.
The 'baby carrots' sold in bags are usually what?
- Carrots picked while tiny
- Carrots grown in shallow trays
- A separate dwarf variety
- Full-sized carrots cut and shaped by machine
Answer: Full-sized carrots cut and shaped by machine
Did you know? A California farmer invented them in the 1980s to rescue misshapen carrots that shops rejected. Sales of carrots in the United States jumped enormously within a few years.
Stored in large quantities, which nut can actually generate enough heat to spontaneously catch fire?
- Chestnuts
- Walnuts
- Peanuts
- Pistachios
Answer: Pistachios
Did you know? Pistachios are rich in oils that can slowly react with oxygen and give off heat; packed tightly in bulk, that heat can build until they combust. Shipping guidelines treat large loads of pistachios as a genuine fire risk.
Most 'wasabi' served outside Japan — and even much of it inside — is really what?
- Ground chilli
- Powdered seaweed
- Green food gel
- Dyed horseradish and mustard
Answer: Dyed horseradish and mustard
Did you know? Real wasabi is difficult and expensive to grow, so the fiery green paste on most sushi is usually horseradish and mustard tinted green. Genuine wasabi has a fresher, more fleeting heat.