The Offal Truth Trivia Quiz

Answer: Variety meats

The term "organ meats" is also sometimes used in the USA. While strictly speaking offal is just the internal organs such as heart, liver, kidney, lungs and brain, when discussing foodstuffs it is usually taken to include the other parts mentioned in the question, and this broader definition has been used in the context of this quiz.

Answer: Stomach

Beef tripe is the most common, with sheep and pig sometimes encountered. Other less common varieties include goat and venison (deer). In the north of England (especially Yorkshire and Lancashire) tripe and onions was a traditional cheap and nutritious dish. Northern butchers still display it as part of their routine stock.

Answer: False

Polar bear liver is in fact extremely dangerous to humans, as it is very high in Vitamin A, too much of which can make you seriously ill. Arctic tribes thus always avoid it, although they will use most of a polar bear carcass for food and clothing.

Answer: Testicles

As the name suggests, Turkey Fries are normally served deep-fried. In the United States and Canada, it is more common to be served up with the testicles of bull calves, usually under the name of Rocky Mountain Oysters or Prairie Oysters. The bull testicles are a by-product of castrating the young animals (which survive, at least until they are eaten as beef).

The turkey version, on the other hand, is usually removed at the time the bird is killed and prepared for cooking.

Answer: Sheep's head

Smalahove is basically a sheep's head, normally salted and dried before being boiled, and served up cut in half top-to-bottom as a single portion. When served, it looks like something created by Damien Hirst. Think about it for a moment, and you will realise why I did not make this a photo quiz.

Answer: Brain Omelette

"Omolete de mioleira" is exactly that - an omelette cooked with eggs and the brain of a cow or pig. A similar Austrian delicacy is "hirn mit ei" - literally, "brain with egg". In both countries, the dishes have become much less popular since outbreaks of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in Europe in the 1980s, which can be caused by consumption of infected brain products.

Answer: Faggots

Faggots are basically large meatballs, and are traditionally served with peas, mashed potatoes and gravy. They are normally associated with the English Midlands, especially the Birmingham area. Caul fat is the thin membrane that surrounds the internal organs of an animal, and is also used as a natural sausage casing. Haggis is a Scottish dish made from offal, Scouse is a Liverpudlian stew, and frumenty is a kind of thick porridge.

Answer: Miltz

The spleen has a texture similar to liver, and tastes a little like it too. To make proper Jewish miltz, you will of course have to buy it from a kosher butcher, but apparently non-kosher spleen tastes fine too.

Answer: True

Originally, the word chitterlings referred only to pork intestines, although it is sometimes used as a generic word for those of any animal when eaten as food. They are usually eaten either fried or stewed. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word chitterling dates back to the Middle English period (11th to 15th centuries).

Answer: Lungs

The lights of a sheep are one of the traditional ingredients of the Scottish dish Haggis, along with its heart and liver. Other international dishes using the lights are the Indonesian "paru" (beef lights fried with spices), "bopis" from the Philippines (pork lights), and the Jewish "Lungen stew" (beef again).