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What familiar dishes are made of, and where they came from.
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Ingredients and Where They Grow
Most cooks handle these ingredients weekly without knowing what part of the plant they are holding. Ten questions on bark, seeds, buds and roots.
About this topic
Almost every spice rack is a small museum of botany. One jar holds dried bark, another a seed kernel, another the lacy wrapper that grew around that same kernel. Two jars may hold the same berry picked at different stages. The labels tell you none of this, which is why the answers here surprise people who cook every day. The geography is just as tangled. Potatoes are Andean, coffee is Ethiopian, nutmeg came from a handful of small Indonesian islands, and the grapefruit did not exist anywhere until two other citrus fruits crossed in the Caribbean. Knowing where an ingredient started usually explains why it tastes the way it does and why it once cost what it did.
Questions & answers
Ingredients and Where They Grow: all 10 questions and answers
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
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1Vanilla pods grow on a plant belonging to which family?
- A Palms
- B Cacti
- C Ferns
- D Orchids Correct
Answer: D. Orchids
Why: Vanilla planifolia is the only orchid grown as a food crop anywhere in the world. Away from its native Mexican range it has no natural pollinator, so every flower is pollinated by hand, which is the main reason the pods are expensive.
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2Where was the potato first domesticated?
- A West Africa
- B Central Asia
- C The Andes of South America Correct
- D The Mediterranean coast
Answer: C. The Andes of South America
Why: Farmers around Lake Titicaca were growing potatoes thousands of years before they reached Europe in the sixteenth century. The Andes still hold thousands of local varieties, in colours no supermarket stocks.
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3Nutmeg and mace come from the same fruit. Which part gives you mace?
- A The bark of the trunk
- B The lacy red covering wrapped around the seed Correct
- C The dried flower buds
- D The flesh of the outer fruit
Answer: B. The lacy red covering wrapped around the seed
Why: Nutmeg is the hard seed kernel, and mace is the aril, a red net that grows around it and dries to orange. The tree is native to the Banda Islands in eastern Indonesia, which made those islands worth fighting over for two centuries.
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4Cinnamon sticks are made from which part of the plant?
- A The inner bark Correct
- B The dried root
- C The seed pod
- D The flower bud
Answer: A. The inner bark
Why: Strips of inner bark curl into quills as they dry. True cinnamon from Sri Lanka is pale and brittle, while the thicker, darker cassia sold in much of the world comes from related trees.
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5Black, white and green peppercorns are produced how?
- A From three unrelated vines
- B From three different regions of India only
- C By blending pepper with other spices
- D From the same plant, picked and processed differently Correct
Answer: D. From the same plant, picked and processed differently
Why: All three come from Piper nigrum. Black are unripe berries dried in the sun until they wrinkle, white are ripe berries with the outer skin soaked off, and green are unripe berries preserved before they can darken.
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6The coffee species Coffea arabica is native to the highlands of which country?
- A Colombia
- B Indonesia
- C Ethiopia Correct
- D Brazil
Answer: C. Ethiopia
Why: It grows wild in the montane forests of southwestern Ethiopia. The plant was first cultivated as a crop across the Red Sea in Yemen, from where it spread to the rest of the world.
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7European sugar beet production expanded sharply during which period?
- A The First World War
- B The Napoleonic Wars Correct
- C The Thirty Years War
- D The Crimean War
Answer: B. The Napoleonic Wars
Why: A British naval blockade cut off cane sugar from the Caribbean, and Napoleon ordered large areas planted with beet instead. The chemist Franz Achard had already opened the first beet sugar factory in Silesia in 1801.
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8Where on the plant does a cashew nut grow?
- A Hanging beneath a fleshy stalk called the cashew apple Correct
- B Inside a pod under the soil
- C In clusters on the trunk
- D Inside a woody cone
Answer: A. Hanging beneath a fleshy stalk called the cashew apple
Why: The nut is the true fruit, dangling below a swollen stalk that is sold as a fruit in Brazil and India. Its shell contains a caustic oil chemically related to the irritant in poison ivy, which is why cashews are never sold unshelled.
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9The grapefruit arose in the Caribbean as a cross between the pomelo and which fruit?
- A The lemon
- B The lime
- C The citron
- D The sweet orange Correct
Answer: D. The sweet orange
Why: It was first recorded in Barbados in the eighteenth century, where both parents were already growing. The name comes from the fruit hanging in tight clusters like oversized grapes.
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10Tomatoes, potatoes, chillies and aubergines all belong to which plant family?
- A The legumes
- B The gourds
- C The nightshades Correct
- D The brassicas
Answer: C. The nightshades
Why: All four are Solanaceae, along with tobacco and deadly nightshade. That family resemblance is a large part of why European cooks treated the tomato with suspicion for well over a century.
Frequently asked questions about Ingredients and Where They Grow
How many questions are in Ingredients and Where They Grow?
Ingredients and Where They Grow has 10 questions and takes about 7 minutes to finish. It is rated Medium and sits in our Food & Drink category.
How is Ingredients and Where They Grow scored?
Each of the 10 correct answers adds 10 XP, up to 100 XP for a clean run. Wrong answers cost you nothing, and your full question-by-question review is shown at the end.
Are the answers to Ingredients and Where They Grow explained?
Yes. All 10 questions carry a written explanation of why the correct answer is right, so the quiz works as a study sheet as well as a test.
Can I replay Ingredients and Where They Grow?
Yes, as often as you like. The questions and the answer options are reshuffled on each run, and you can use Practice Mistakes afterwards to retry only the ones you missed. No account is needed to play.
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