🍕 Ingredients & Dishes Trivia Questions & Answers
Spices, staples and the signature dishes built from them. Below are 30 free ingredients & dishes trivia questions with answers — part of Food trivia on BUZZ. Want a real challenge that adapts to what you know? Play the Food quiz — no signup needed to start.
30 Ingredients & Dishes trivia questions
Q1. What is the main ingredient in hummus?
Answer: Chickpeas
💡 Hummus has been eaten in the Middle East for thousands of years.
Q2. Which spice of dried, ground red peppers is the national spice of Hungary?
Answer: Paprika
💡 Hungary's Szeged and Kalocsa regions are famed for it, and it flavours the national dish, goulash.
Q3. Which paste of ground sesame seeds is a key ingredient in hummus?
Answer: Tahini
💡 Ground sesame releases its own oil into a rich paste that also underpins baba ganoush and halva.
Q4. What hard-wheat flour is used to make dried pasta and couscous?
Answer: Semolina
💡 Coarsely milled from hard durum wheat, semolina's high protein gives pasta its firm, springy bite.
Q5. What dark, tangy pod pulp gives pad thai and many curries their sourness?
Answer: Tamarind
💡 The sticky pulp inside tamarind pods is sweet-sour, and it also flavours Worcestershire and HP sauces.
Q6. What colour is wasabi?
Answer: green
💡 Most wasabi served in restaurants outside Japan is actually horseradish dyed green.
Q7. What type of cheese is used in a traditional Greek salad?
Answer: Feta
💡 Feta is a Protected Designation of Origin product and must be made in specific regions of Greece.
Q8. What country does spaghetti bolognese originate from?
Answer: Italy
💡 The original 'Bolognese' sauce from Bologna is traditionally served with tagliatelle, not spaghetti.
Q9. What is the main ingredient in traditional Japanese tofu?
Answer: Soy milk
💡 Tofu is made by coagulating soy milk and pressing the curds into solid white blocks.
Q10. Which herb is used to make pesto?
Answer: Basil
💡 Traditional Genovese pesto is made from fresh basil, pine nuts, Parmesan, Pecorino, garlic, and olive oil — all pounded with a pestle and mortar.
Q11. What is the name of the sauce made from garlic, oil, and lemon?
Answer: Aioli
💡 Traditional aioli is just garlic and olive oil emulsified together. The modern version commonly found in restaurants usually includes egg yolk and is closer to garlic mayonnaise.
Q12. What is the primary ingredient in a traditional French onion soup?
Answer: Onions
💡 The magic of French onion soup comes from slowly caramelizing onions for 45–60 minutes until they turn deeply golden and sweet.
Q13. What type of pasta is shaped like small butterflies or bow-ties?
Answer: Farfalle
💡 'Farfalle' means 'butterflies' in Italian. The pinched waist gives each piece two different thicknesses, which cook at slightly different rates — that's the fun of it.
Q14. Which spice comes from the lacy red aril that wraps the nutmeg seed?
Answer: Mace
💡 Nutmeg and mace grow on the same tree, Myristica fragrans; mace is milder and more delicate than the seed.
Q15. Which Middle Eastern blend mixes sumac, thyme, and toasted sesame seeds?
Answer: Za'atar
💡 Often stirred into olive oil as a dip for flatbread, its recipe shifts from family to family.
Q16. Which Italian cheese is made by 'recooking' the leftover whey from cheesemaking?
Answer: Ricotta
💡 'Ricotta' literally means 'recooked'; heating leftover whey again coaxes out its small remaining curds.
Q17. Which Roman pasta uses egg, pecorino, and guanciale but never cream?
Answer: Carbonara
💡 The silky sauce comes from egg and starchy pasta water, not cream, which is not part of the classic recipe.
Q18. Which fiery North African paste blends hot chillies, garlic, and spices?
Answer: Harissa
💡 A staple of Tunisian cooking, harissa is stirred into stews and couscous or spread straight onto bread.
Q19. Which North Indian spice blend's Hindi name translates to 'warm spice mix'?
Answer: Garam masala
💡 'Garam' means warm and 'masala' means spice blend; the 'warmth' is an Ayurvedic idea, not chilli heat.
Q20. What traditional Japanese dish is made from fermented soybeans?
Answer: Natto
💡 Natto has a strong smell and sticky texture that many non-Japanese find challenging.
Q21. What fermented paste gives miso soup its name and savoury flavour?
Answer: Soybean paste
💡 Miso is made by fermenting soybeans with salt and a mould called koji.
Q22. What cheese is traditionally used on a Caesar salad?
Answer: Parmesan
💡 Caesar dressing was invented in 1924 at Hotel Caesar in Tijuana, Mexico.
Q23. What is the main ingredient in a traditional Spanish gazpacho?
Answer: Tomato
💡 Gazpacho is a cold tomato-based soup from Andalusia in southern Spain. It was originally a peasant food made to cool down in the summer heat.
Q24. What is the main ingredient in the Spanish cold soup gazpacho?
Answer: Tomatoes
💡 Gazpacho is a cold soup from Andalusia, southern Spain, traditionally made from tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, garlic, olive oil, and bread. It predates the tomato arriving from the Americas.
Q25. Ethiopia's spongy flatbread, doubling as plate and cutlery, is made from which gluten-free grain?
Answer: Teff
💡 Injera's tang comes from wild yeasts and bacteria fermenting the teff batter for two to three days — basically Ethiopia's answer to sourdough.
Q26. Which squeaky Indian cheese won't melt in curry, since it's set with lemon juice instead of rennet?
Answer: Paneer
💡 Paneer skips rennet entirely — just acid, hot milk, and a cloth to drain the curds — which is why it stays firm and mild instead of aging or melting like most cheeses.
Q27. Two Quebec towns each claim to have invented this fries-gravy-curds dish in the late 1950s — name it.
Answer: Poutine
💡 Restaurants in Warwick and Drummondville have argued for decades over who served the first plate — with zero written recipes from the era, nobody's ever settled it for good.
Q28. Which notoriously stinky fruit will get you fined nearly $400 in some Singapore hotels?
Answer: Durian
💡 Durian's stench has been compared to rotting onions mixed with gym socks, and it clings so hard to air-conditioning systems that hotels across the region ban it outright.
Q29. Which spice takes roughly 150,000 hand-picked crocus flowers to yield a single kilogram?
Answer: Saffron
💡 Each crocus flower yields only three tiny stigmas, all plucked by hand with tweezers — around 370 to 470 hours of labor per kilogram of dried saffron.
Q30. The Carolina Reaper's hottest-pepper record was beaten by which pepper, bred by the same grower?
Answer: Pepper X
💡 Breeder Ed Currie created both peppers — the Carolina Reaper reigned from 2013 to 2023, then his own Pepper X knocked it off the throne.
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