98 Fun Facts About Breakfast Food

The word 'breakfast' literally refers to what?

Breaking the night's fast is the idea, and 'dinner' shares it: the word comes from a Latin verb meaning 'to break one's fast'.

In Britain, pancakes are traditionally eaten on which day, historically to use up ingredients before Lent?

Shrove Tuesday's pancake race in Olney supposedly began in 1445, when a housewife heard the church bell and ran to church still holding her pan.

Crêpes are most closely associated with which region of France?

Brittany's savoury crêpes use buckwheat flour, a crop suited to its wet, poor soils, where ordinary wheat grew badly.

The word 'waffle' entered English from which language?

Dutch wafel gave English its waffle, but 'to waffle', meaning to talk vaguely, is a separate word thought to come from 'waff', to yelp.

'Bel-Gem' waffles took hold in America at which event?

The 1964 New York World's Fair stand renamed Brussels waffles Bel-Gems after its Belgian owners found many Americans couldn't place Brussels.

Eggs Benedict tops a poached egg and ham on an English muffin with which sauce?

In one story, hungover stockbroker Lemuel Benedict ordered poached eggs, bacon, toast and hollandaise at the Waldorf in 1894, and the hotel put it on the menu.

Which Manhattan restaurant, one claimed birthplace of eggs Benedict, gave its name to a famous steak?

Delmonico's backs its claim with history: its chef Charles Ranhofer printed an almost identical 'Eggs à la Benedick' in his 1894 cookbook.

Bagels, boiled before they are baked, originated in which country's Jewish communities?

Poland's bagel went national in America when the Lenders, a baking family who came from Poland to Connecticut, began selling frozen bagels.

Unlike the New York style, a Montreal-style bagel is boiled in water sweetened with what?

Honey goes into the dough too, and the style reflects where in the old country Montreal's Jewish immigrant bakers learned their trade.

The croissant's crescent shape was inspired by which Austrian pastry?

The kipferl gave it the shape, but the flaky, butter-layered croissant is a 20th-century French creation.

Which breakfast spread began in 1946 as a solid loaf that had to be cut with a knife?

Nutella's forerunner, Giandujot, used little cocoa and lots of local hazelnuts, because chocolate was scarce and costly in post-war Italy.

Which item belongs to a traditional full English breakfast rather than being a modern addition?

Black pudding is a classic, while hash browns are a newer filler that often takes the place of the traditional bubble and squeak.

The full breakfast variant of Northern Ireland is known as what?

The Ulster fry's soda farls take their name from an old Scots word for a fourth, since each round is cut into four.

'Granula', the ancestor of granola, was invented in 1863 at a sanitarium in which state?

New York's Dr. James Caleb Jackson called it granula, so John Harvey Kellogg renamed his similar cereal 'granola' to avoid a legal fight.

How does muesli traditionally differ from granola?

It is not baked: granola is baked with oil and sweetener into crunchy clusters, while muesli's oats stay raw.

Muesli was developed around 1900 by a physician for hospital patients in which country?

Switzerland's Dr. Bircher-Benner had the oats soaked overnight, the same method now sold as 'overnight oats'.

Steel-cut oats are also known by which name?

Irish oatmeal is whole oat groats chopped into two or three pieces rather than rolled flat, which makes a chewier, nuttier porridge.

What is the usual French name for French toast?

Pain perdu means 'lost bread': the dish rescues loaves too stale to eat on their own.

Which quaint British name has been used for French toast?

Poor knights of Windsor were real too: retired officers housed at Windsor Castle, until William IV renamed them the Military Knights in 1833.

Which breakfast brand named a football bowl whose winners got to eat an edible mascot?

The first Pop-Tarts Bowl, in December 2023, put its giant Pop-Tart mascot in a giant toaster before the winners got an edible copy.

In June 2018, IHOP briefly 'flipped' its name to IHOb to promote which food?

Burgers were the point: IHOP wanted to shake its breakfast-first image and win more daytime and evening customers.

FEMA has used which restaurant chain's openings as an informal gauge of how badly a storm hit an area?

Waffle House readies standby crews before a storm so its restaurants can reopen fast, which is why a closed one is rare.

Which McDonald's breakfast item did franchisee Herb Peterson invent in the early 1970s?

The Egg McMuffin gets its round egg from a Teflon ring, which Peterson had a local blacksmith make for his grill.

Grits are a porridge made from which grain?

Corn for hominy grits is soaked in an alkali such as lime, which frees its niacin and protected maize-eating peoples from pellagra.

Which US state declared grits its official prepared food in 2002?

Georgia honours grits, but next door South Carolina legislates them: grits sold there must generally be enriched by law.

The word 'bacon' comes from a Proto-Germanic root meaning what?

Back meat is the root, yet most American bacon is cut from the pork belly instead.

Which Canadian province produces most of the world's maple syrup?

Quebec keeps a strategic reserve of maple syrup, and in 2011–12 thieves drained thousands of its barrels and refilled them with water.

Hanson Gregory claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 while working where?

Aboard a trading ship, Gregory said, he cut the first hole with a tin pepper box, though other tales credit a spoke of the ship's wheel.

National Doughnut Day, the first Friday of June, grew from a 1938 event by which organisation?

The Salvation Army's World War I volunteers fried doughnuts for American soldiers in huts near the front lines in France.

Which chain did Bill Rosenberg's 1948 Quincy shop Open Kettle become?

Dunkin' Donuts grew from Rosenberg's factory food trade, where coffee and doughnuts outsold everything else, so he built a shop around the pair.

Since 1999, which country has celebrated Cinnamon Roll Day every 4 October?

Sweden's Home Baking Council started the day to celebrate fika, the Swedish custom of a coffee break with a bun.

Guy Beringer's 1895 essay in Hunter's Weekly introduced the name of which meal?

Brunch caught on fast: within a year, Punch magazine was already writing about the fashionable new word.

Charles Strite patented which kitchen device in 1921?

Strite built the automatic pop-up toaster because the cafeteria at the plant where he worked kept serving burnt toast.

Corn flakes began as health food at a sanitarium run by John Harvey Kellogg in which Michigan city?

Battle Creek's sanitarium food went national after Will Keith Kellogg founded his own company in 1906 to sell corn flakes to everyone.

Huevos rancheros, 'ranch-style eggs', is a breakfast dish from which country?

Mexico's ranch hands ate it as a second breakfast, a hearty mid-morning meal to refuel after their early start.

Shakshouka, eggs poached in a spiced tomato and pepper sauce, comes from which region?

Cumin, paprika and cayenne do the seasoning; it is now a brunch-menu fixture far beyond North Africa.

Congee, the savoury breakfast porridge, is made by boiling which grain in a large amount of water?

Rice boiled this soft is easy to digest, which is why congee is a classic meal for the sick and often a baby's first solid food.

Kedgeree, the Anglo-Indian breakfast of rice, curry powder and eggs, traditionally uses which fish?

Smoked haddock was the classic choice, and thrifty cooks later turned kedgeree into a way to use up leftovers.

Scrapple, a fried loaf of pork scraps and cornmeal, is a traditional food of which American community?

The Pennsylvania Dutch made scrapple from butchering scraps that would otherwise have been thrown away, so nothing went to waste.

The breakfast burrito is most notably said to originate in which regional American cuisine?

New Mexican cooks wrapped eggs and potatoes in tortillas long before Santa Fe's Tia Sophia's put 'breakfast burrito' on a menu in 1975.

What does 'wienerbrød', the Danish word for a Danish pastry, mean?

Viennese bread honours Austrian bakers who, the story goes, were hired when Denmark's bakery workers went on strike in 1850.

Which company held about 73% of the US frozen waffle market in 2009?

Eggo waffles vanished from shelves in 2009 after a Listeria cleanup and flooding shut its Atlanta plant and a Tennessee plant needed repairs.

What is added back to long-life commercial OJ after pasteurisation strips its flavour?

The juice is pasteurised and stripped of oxygen so it keeps, which is why 'not from concentrate' juice still tastes engineered.

Which baseball star was the first athlete pictured on a Wheaties box, in 1934?

The cereal had been created by accident in 1921 when a bran mixture spilled onto a hot stove.

Which rival's trademark complaint forced General Mills to rename Cheerioats as Cheerios in 1945?

The oat rings had launched under the original name on May 1, 1941.

Which brand said in 2020 that it would drop the chef long pictured on its box?

Cream of Wheat's owner said the face may be a real Chicago chef named Frank White, but dropped it because it reminded some shoppers of offensive older images.

Cyril Callister developed Vegemite in Melbourne from which ingredient?

Brewers' yeast went into Callister's spread because war had disrupted Marmite imports and Fred Walker's company wanted a local substitute.

Which food company took over Vegemite after Fred Walker's death in 1935?

Kraft's Vegemite was sent to war in Australian Army rations during World War II and rationed for civilians at home.

Which sportswear company's breakthrough sole was first made by a co-founder in his wife's waffle iron?

Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman ruined his wife's waffle iron in the early 1970s testing rubber in it, and the grippy Waffle Trainer that followed fuelled the company's growth.

Which Dr. Seuss book was written to win a bet that he couldn't use just 50 different words?

Green Eggs and Ham won Seuss $50 from his editor, Bennett Cerf. The dare followed The Cat in the Hat, which had needed 236 different words.

Which powdered orange breakfast drink sold poorly until NASA sent it into orbit with John Glenn in 1962?

Tang was not invented for the space programme, a common myth: General Foods chemist William A. Mitchell formulated it in 1957, and he also invented Pop Rocks.

British sausages are said to be called 'bangers' because First World War rationing packed them with what?

Water bulked out the sausages when meat was rationed, and so much of it went in that they were liable to explode in the pan. The nickname was in print by 1919.

In Britain, what name is given to the thin strips of toast dipped into a soft-boiled egg?

Soldiers earn the name because the strips of toast stand in a row like troops on parade. You can even buy cutters that stamp them into the shape of little infantrymen.

Which character in British children's books arrives in London as a stowaway and loves marmalade sandwiches?

Paddington was first meant to come from Africa, until Michael Bond's agent pointed out that no bears live there, so his home became Peru.

Which US state eats the most Spam per person, with the canned meat even on McDonald's menus there?

Hawaii gets through about seven million cans a year. Spam reached the islands during the Second World War and never left, and Burger King added it in 2007 to keep up.

Whether a chicken's egg has a brown shell or a white one is decided by which factor?

The hen's breed decides it, and there is a tell: hens with white ear lobes generally lay white eggs, and those with red ear lobes lay brown. Shell colour makes no difference to nutrition.

Which pancake mix and syrup brand, dating back to 1889, was renamed Pearl Milling Company in 2021?

Aunt Jemima was retired because the character drew on a racial stereotype. The new name is the old one: Pearl Milling Company was the mill that created the original ready-mix.

W. K. Kellogg fell out with his brother John Harvey Kellogg over adding which ingredient to their cereal flakes?

Sugar split the brothers: W. K. wanted it in the flakes, while John, a doctor who saw cereal as health food, was firmly opposed.

What is true of the differently coloured rings in a box of Kellogg's Froot Loops cereal?

They all taste the same, whatever the colour. The three original colours live on in the striped bill of the cereal's mascot, Toucan Sam.

Lucky Charms was invented in 1964 by mixing Cheerios with chopped-up pieces of which sweet?

Circus peanuts, the orange marshmallow sweets, were what developer John Holahan cut into a bowl of Cheerios after a trip to the grocery store, giving the cereal its marshmallow charms.

Which sweetened cereal, launched in 1963, was first advertised in cartoons by Rocky and Bullwinkle animator Jay Ward?

Cap'n Crunch, in full Horatio Magellan Crunch, captains a ship called the Guppy and was born on Crunch Island in the Sea of Milk.

Thurl Ravenscroft, who sang the Grinch's theme in the 1966 TV special, voiced which cereal mascot for 50 years?

Tony the Tiger kept the same voice from the 1950s until Ravenscroft died in 2005, yet the singer was never credited for the Frosted Flakes commercials.

Weetabix, made in Britain since 1932, is a version of Weet-Bix, a cereal biscuit invented in which country?

Australia is where Bennison Osborne created Weet-Bix in the 1920s. He later reworked his own recipe for the British market, and the result was Weetabix.

British marmalade is usually made from a bitter orange named after which Spanish city?

Seville oranges give marmalade its bitter edge. A legend from Dundee says the orange version was created there by accident, and the Keiller family's shop went on to sell it as Dundee Marmalade.

Which breakfast-table staple was first sold in 1928 by a firm in Chillicothe, Missouri?

Sliced bread nearly never arrived: inventor Otto Rohwedder lost his 1912 prototype in a fire and needed until 1928 to build a slicing machine that worked.

Bubble and squeak, the British fry-up of leftover potato and cabbage, takes its name from what?

The sounds of it frying gave the dish its name, first recorded in 1762. Early versions were built on beef, and potato did not appear in recipes until the 1880s.

Which fictional people in J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth are known for eating a 'second breakfast'?

Hobbits like six meals a day when they can get them, Tolkien wrote, and Bilbo Baggins sits down to a second breakfast in The Hobbit.

Red-eye gravy, served over country ham in the American South, mixes the pan drippings with which drink?

Coffee deglazes the pan once the ham is fried. One tale traces the name to Andrew Jackson, who asked for gravy as red as the eyes of his hungover cook.

The word 'cereal' comes from the name of Ceres, the Roman goddess of what?

Agriculture was her realm, along with grain crops and motherhood, and the Latin word cerealis simply meant 'of Ceres'.

Margarine was invented in 1869 after which French ruler called for a cheap substitute for butter?

Napoleon III wanted a cheap spread for his armed forces and the poor. Chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès answered with one made from beef tallow, which he named oleomargarine.

Which country singer, famous for the 1961 hit Big Bad John, founded a breakfast sausage company in 1969?

Jimmy Dean started the company with his brother Don and fronted its commercials for decades. His 1960s TV show also gave puppeteer Jim Henson his first national exposure.

Log Cabin syrup, launched in 1887, was named in honour of which US president's boyhood home?

Abraham Lincoln was the childhood hero of the grocer who created the syrup. A later owner of the brand teamed up with the National Park Service to restore historic log cabins.

HP Sauce, the brown sauce of the British fry-up, takes its initials from which London landmark?

Houses of Parliament it is: a Nottingham grocer registered the name in 1895 after hearing a rumour that a restaurant there was serving his sauce. The building has been on the label since 1903.

Pork roll, the breakfast-sandwich meat that half its fans insist on calling Taylor ham, belongs to which US state?

New Jersey splits roughly north and south over the name. John Taylor of Trenton sold his creation as prepared ham until a 1906 food law ruled that it did not legally count as ham.

Hangtown fry, an omelette made famous in California's Gold Rush, combines bacon with which seafood?

Oysters had to be brought on ice from San Francisco, over 100 miles away, so the dish gathered the most expensive ingredients a mining town could offer.

By Bavarian tradition, Weisswurst, the white veal sausage, should be eaten before which daily event?

The noon church bells should never be heard by the sausages, the saying goes. Made early each morning and neither smoked nor preserved, they are very perishable.

The Golden Spurtle is the trophy at a world championship, held yearly in Carrbridge, for making what?

Porridge wins the prize, which is named after the spurtle, a wooden Scottish rod that stirs the pot without leaving lumps. The contest has run since 1994.

Which 'father of public relations', a nephew of Sigmund Freud, sold Americans on bacon and eggs for breakfast?

Edward Bernays, hired to sell more bacon, had a doctor poll thousands of physicians, then fed newspapers the story that doctors urged a bigger breakfast.

Lox, the classic topping for a bagel with cream cheese, is a brined fillet of which fish?

Salmon is in the name itself: lox comes from laks, the Yiddish word for the fish. The milder Nova style is named for Nova Scotia, once the source of much of the catch.

Eggs Florentine replaces the ham or bacon in eggs Benedict with which vegetable?

Spinach takes the meat's place in eggs Florentine. Swap in crab instead and the same dish becomes eggs Neptune.

Natto, a sticky Japanese breakfast food with a powerful smell, is made by fermenting what?

Soybeans, by legend, first fermented by accident inside the straw bags used to carry them. The sticky strings and strong smell make natto an acquired taste.

Laverbread, fried with bacon and cockles in a traditional Welsh breakfast, is made from what?

Seaweed gathered off the Welsh coast is washed repeatedly, then boiled until it becomes a stiff green purée, so the 'bread' is nothing of the kind.

Lorne sausage, a staple of the full Scottish breakfast, is made with no casing and served in which shape?

A square slice comes from packing the meat into a rectangular tin and cutting across it, though the slices often turn out not quite square.

Nasi lemak, a coconut-milk breakfast wrapped in banana leaf, is considered the national dish of which country?

Malaysia treats it as an essential breakfast, sold at roadside stalls with spicy sambal, fried anchovies and cucumber.

Beignets, pillowy doughnuts with no hole, are the signature of Café du Monde, a landmark of which US city?

New Orleans has had the café since 1862, and at its original French Market stand beignets are still the only food on the menu, sold three to an order.

Tim Hortons, Canada's doughnut-shop chain, was co-founded in 1964 by a professional star of which sport?

Ice hockey defenceman Tim Horton played 24 NHL seasons and was still on the ice at 44 when he died in a car crash in 1974. His first shop had opened in Hamilton, Ontario.

Which General Mills monster cereal alarmed parents in 1972 by harmlessly turning children's stools pink?

Franken Berry contained a pigment the body could not digest, and the harmless result was even given a name, 'Franken Berry stool'. The recipe was soon changed.

Which American diner chain, founded in 1953 as a doughnut stand, launched the Grand Slam breakfast in 1977?

Denny's began as Danny's Donuts in Lakewood, California, and changed its name in 1959 so that nobody would confuse it with a rival Los Angeles chain.

The grapefruit arose in Barbados as an accidental cross between the sweet orange and which other citrus?

Pomelo was once the grapefruit's own name too. The cross happened by chance in the 1700s, and the fruit's true parentage was not worked out until the 1940s.

The word 'marmalade' comes from a Portuguese name for a firm paste made from which fruit?

Quince, marmelo in Portuguese, was slowly cooked into a sticky reddish paste called marmelada, which England imported in the 1500s. Only later did the word shift to citrus.

Chef Bill Granger is often credited with first putting avocado toast on a café menu, in 1993, in which city?

Sydney's claim rests on Granger's café menu, but he may not have been first to the idea: avocado on toast was documented in Brisbane as early as 1929.

Danone, the yogurt giant, began in 1919 in a small workshop in which Spanish city?

Barcelona is where Isaac Carasso began making yogurt, and he named the brand Danon after the Catalan nickname of his young son, Daniel, who later took it to France.

Which Canadian city claims the peameal bacon sandwich, served on a Kaiser roll, as its signature dish?

Toronto pork packer William Davies is credited with the bacon, which was once rolled in ground dried yellow peas to help it keep, and that is where the name comes from.

Kolaches, the fruit-filled pastries of small-town Texas bakeries, arrived with immigrants of which nationality?

Czech settlers brought the sweet pastry, and in Texas their community went on to invent a sausage-filled cousin, the klobasnek, which most Texans also call a kolache.

Menemen, eggs scrambled with tomato and green peppers in olive oil, is a breakfast favourite of which country?

Turkey even has a national argument about it: whether onions belong in menemen is so contested that a food critic ran a Twitter poll in 2018 to settle the matter.

Streaky bacon, the standard rasher in the United States, is cut from which part of the pig?

Belly meat gives streaky bacon its bands of fat. Italian pancetta is the same cut, sold either smoked or unsmoked.

Kaya toast, spread with coconut jam and served with soft-boiled eggs, is a breakfast icon of which Asian city?

Singapore's Hainanese immigrants are believed to have created it in the 19th century, adapting food they had cooked while serving aboard British ships.

Which cereal biscuit did Henry Perky invent in Denver, then unveil at Chicago's Columbian Exposition in 1893?

Shredded wheat left John Harvey Kellogg unimpressed: he declined to buy the patent, likening the taste to eating a whisk broom, then tried again once it was selling well.