Why is rosemary not an herb to a botanist, and which king wanted pepper for a ransom? These spice trivia questions fill four rounds, two of them on black pepper.
Read the full guide
Herb trivia questions and answers, then three rounds of spice
Herbs and spices: which is which counts Charlemagne's garden list and tells pot herbs from salad herbs. The spice trade sails with the monsoon to Alexandria and Venice. Black pepper: the vine and the peppercorn explains black, white and pink. Pepper as black gold weighs a ransom and a shipwreck.
Herbs and spices trivia questions for a cooking club
Four possible answers come with every question. Pick one to learn at once whether it is right, with the reason in a sentence and the article that states it. Questions run in sets of ten.
Questions and answers
What is the difference between an herb and a spice?
Herbs are the leafy green or flowering parts of a plant, fresh or dried. Spices are usually dried and come from other parts: seeds, bark, roots and fruits. Dill gives both, the weed as an herb and the seed as a spice.
What is the difference between black and white pepper?
Both come from the same vine. Black pepper is the unripe green fruit, cooked briefly and dried until its skin turns black. White pepper is only the seed of the ripe fruit, with the darker skin removed.
Were spices used to hide the taste of spoiled meat?
No. The claim is often made, but spices were expensive, do little to hide spoilage or preserve food, and old cookbooks add them near the end of cooking. Salting, smoking, pickling and drying did the preserving.
How were the answers checked?
Each was read on October 3, 2026 in the English Wikipedia article linked under it: Spice, Herb or Black pepper. Herbs and spices as medicine or in religious rites, health claims and present-day trade figures are left out.
A spice comes from a seed, fruit, root or bark. Which parts of a plant are herbs?Answer: The leaves, flowers or stems. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
During the seventeenth century, pot herbs began to be called by which other name?Answer: Vegetables. Source: Wikipedia: Herb
The emperor Charlemagne drew up a list of herbs to be planted in his gardens. How many herbs were on it?Answer: 74. Source: Wikipedia: Herb
Herbs were once sorted into three groups: pot herbs, sweet herbs and which other?Answer: Salad herbs. Source: Wikipedia: Herb
Sage, rosemary and lavender are among the best-known herbs. Why would a botanist not call them herbs?Answer: They have woody stems and do not die down each year. Source: Wikipedia: Herb
To a botanist, an herb is a plant that does not produce what?Answer: A woody stem. Source: Wikipedia: Herb
What is the meaning of herbaceus, the Latin source of the English herbaceous?Answer: Grassy. Source: Wikipedia: Herb
Which ancient Greek philosopher divided the plant world into trees, shrubs and herbs?Answer: Theophrastus. Source: Wikipedia: Herb
Which plant is used both as an herb, for its leaves, and as a spice, for its seed?Answer: Dill. Source: Wikipedia: Herb
Which spice is given as proof that spices can come from temperate climates, not only from the tropics?Answer: Caraway seeds. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
Which substance is often identified as a spice although it comes from an animal?Answer: Ambergris. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
Which two plants native to European cooking are not counted as spices, though they share many of a spice's qualities?Answer: Garlic and horseradish. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
The spice trade 12
By 2000 BCE a spice trade had developed across the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. Black pepper was one of its two spices. What was the other?Answer: Cinnamon. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
By which date were cloves in use in Mesopotamia?Answer: 1700 BCE. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
Cinnamon was one of the most common spices of medieval Europe. What was its cheaper alternative?Answer: Cassia. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
From the 8th to the 15th century, which republic held a monopoly on the spice trade with the Middle East?Answer: Venice. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
Grains of paradise mostly replaced pepper in the cooking of late medieval northern France. Which spice is it a relative of?Answer: Cardamom. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
In 15th-century Oxford a whole pig cost about the same as a pound of the cheapest spice. Which spice was that?Answer: Pepper. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
It is often claimed that medieval cooks used spices to mask the taste of spoiled meat. How well does the claim hold up?Answer: It is false. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
The New World brought new spices to the trade. Which of these came from the Americas?Answer: Vanilla. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
Nutmeg originates from which islands of Southeast Asia?Answer: The Banda Islands. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
The Ragusans were rivals in the spice trade of the 15th and 16th centuries. Which maritime republic were they from?Answer: Dubrovnik. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
What is called the most important discovery before the European spice trade?Answer: The monsoon winds. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
Which Egyptian port city became the main trading center for spices?Answer: Alexandria. Source: Wikipedia: Spice
Black pepper: the vine and the peppercorn 12
Black pepper is made from the fruit of the pepper plant at which stage?Answer: Still green and unripe. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Growers tie pepper vines to trees. Which trees are favored?Answer: Trees with rough bark. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
In the 16th century people began using the word pepper for another, unrelated plant as well. Which one?Answer: The chili pepper of the New World. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Pink peppercorns are not true pepper. Which tree do they come from?Answer: The Peruvian pepper tree. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Spice mills such as pepper mills were found in European kitchens as early as which century?Answer: The 14th century. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
To make white pepper, ripe berries are soaked for about a week so that the flesh softens and comes away. What is the process called?Answer: Retting. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
What does white pepper consist of?Answer: Only the seed of the ripe fruit. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
What is the dried fruit of the pepper plant called?Answer: A peppercorn. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
What kind of plant is black pepper?Answer: A flowering vine. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Where is black pepper native?Answer: South Asia. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Which compound gives black pepper its spicy heat?Answer: Piperine. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Why is white pepper sometimes used in light-colored sauces and mashed potatoes?Answer: Black pepper would visibly stand out. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Pepper as black gold 12
According to the Greek geographer Strabo, about how many ships did the early Roman Empire send each year to India and back?Answer: 120. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Alaric, king of the Visigoths, besieged Rome in the fifth century. How much pepper did he demand as part of the ransom?Answer: 3,000 pounds. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Black pepper first appears for certain in Chinese texts of the third century CE, as hujiao. What does hujiao mean?Answer: Foreign pepper. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
By the 12th century black pepper was popular with the wealthy of China, where it sometimes took the place of which native spice?Answer: Sichuan pepper. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
For how long did the Portuguese monopolize the spice trade?Answer: 150 years. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
In 2021 archaeologists recovered more than 2,000 of something from the wreck of a royal flagship that sank in 1495. What?Answer: Peppercorns. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
In some legal systems, what is a "peppercorn rent"?Answer: A token payment. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
In the 17th century the Portuguese lost most of their Indian Ocean trade. To whom?Answer: The Dutch and the English. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Peppercorns were so prized in trade that they were often called what?Answer: Black gold. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Pliny the Elder gives prices for three peppers in Rome around 77 CE. Which was the dearest?Answer: Long pepper. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Which lost ancient port city of southern India was famous for exporting black pepper?Answer: Muziris. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
Which traveler reported how much pepper was brought each day into the Chinese city of Kinsay in the 13th century?Answer: Marco Polo. Source: Wikipedia: Black pepper
How this list was compiled
Written for this site; nothing was copied from another list. The questions and the wrong choices are our own. Every answer was read on October 3, 2026 in one of three English Wikipedia articles, Spice, Herb or Black pepper (en.wikipedia.org, text under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license); each question links the article that states its fact, and each explanation restates that article in our own sentence. Left out on purpose: herbs and spices as medicine, health claims, their place in the rites of any faith, production shares and trade figures of today, food-safety studies, and drinks with alcohol. Facts that other packs on this site already ask (saffron's price, what a clove is, allspice, nutmeg and mace, cilantro and coriander, the tisane) are not asked again. Levels are our estimate: easy is fair for any table, hard will stump most. Licence: own work