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This breakfast food trivia quiz has 50 free questions with answers and covers the first meal of the day from the Olney pancake race to the Egg McMuffin. There are questions on why the word breakfast exists at all, where the crescent-shaped croissant really comes from, why bagels are boiled, which hangover cure supposedly created eggs Benedict, what goes into a full English and an Ulster fry, and how a New York sanitarium gave the world granola. The modern era gets its due: the World's Fair that made Belgian waffles American, the mayonnaise company behind Eggo, the Post product that forced Kellogg's to rush out Pop-Tarts, the year the frosting arrived, the pop-up toaster patent, Quebec's stranglehold on maple syrup, the Salvation Army's Doughnut Day, Sweden's Cinnamon Roll Day and the essay that coined the word brunch. There are also questions on breakfasts from Mexico, the Maghreb, India and China. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia pages for each dish and brand, and each explanation adds one detail worth passing around the table.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'breakfast' literally refers to what?
Breaking the night's fast
It came into written English around the 15th century; before that a morning meal was 'morgenmete' and 'dinner' itself meant to break one's fast.
Q 02In Britain, pancakes are traditionally eaten on which day, historically to use up ingredients before Lent?
Shrove Tuesday
The pancake race at Olney supposedly began in 1445 when a housewife heard the church bells and ran to the service still holding her frying pan.
Q 03A crêpe is a thin pancake originating in which region of France?
Brittany
Buckwheat versions like blini and kaletez form a whole family of pancakes; buttermilk gives American and Scottish pancakes their tang.
Q 04The word 'waffle' entered English in 1725 from which language?
Dutch
Belgium alone has more than a dozen regional waffle varieties.
Q 05'Bel-Gem' waffles took hold in America at which event?
The 1964 New York World's Fair
A Belgian had tried at the 1962 Seattle fair first; the Flushing Meadows version came topped with strawberries and cream.
Q 06Eggs Benedict tops a poached egg and ham on an English muffin with which sauce?
Hollandaise
One story credits stockbroker Lemuel Benedict, who ordered toast, poached eggs, bacon and 'a hooker of hollandaise' at the Waldorf in 1894 to cure a hangover.
Q 07Which Manhattan restaurant claims eggs Benedict was 'first created in our ovens in 1860'?
Delmonico's
The competing Waldorf story is dated 1894, and there are several other origin tales besides.
Q 08Bagels are traditionally boiled before baking. In which country's Jewish communities did they originate?
Poland
They are first mentioned in 1610 in community ordinances in Kraków; the hole lets them be strung on a dowel for sale.
Q 09Unlike the New York style, a Montreal-style bagel is boiled in water sweetened with what?
Honey
It contains malt and sugar but no salt, and is baked in a wood-fired oven.
Q 10The croissant's crescent shape was inspired by which Austrian pastry?
The kipferl
The modern croissant only dates from the early 20th century, when French bakers swapped the kipferl's brioche dough for yeast-leavened laminated dough.
Q 11Which Austrian artillery officer opened a Viennese bakery in Paris around 1838, bringing Vienna's pastries to France?
August Zang
'Viennoiserie' is still the French term for the whole family of yeasted, laminated pastries, and the Danes call their pastry 'wienerbrød', Viennese bread.
Q 12Which of these is a traditional component of a full English breakfast, rather than a modern addition?
Black pudding
Bacon, sausages, eggs, tomatoes, mushrooms and fried bread are the classics; beans, hash browns and coffee are common but newer.
Q 13The full breakfast variant of Northern Ireland is known as what?
The Ulster fry
Q 21Under what name did Post announce its 1964 toaster pastry, prompting Kellogg's to rush out Pop-Tarts?
Country Squares
Post's product eventually went to market as 'Toast'em Pop-Ups', but Kellogg's had already won the shelf.
Q 22The Eggo brand name was derived from inventor Frank Dorsa's first product, which was what?
Mayonnaise
Dorsa worked out how to cook, freeze and package waffles in 1953; Kellogg bought the company in 1968, and Stranger Things made the brand global in 2016.
Q 23McDonald's Egg McMuffin, invented in 1972, was designed by which McDonald's franchisee?
Herb Peterson
He built it to mimic eggs Benedict: English muffin, Canadian bacon and egg, with a slice of cheese standing in for the hollandaise.
Fried breakfasts took off in the Victorian era; Mrs Beeton's 1861 Book of Household Management has 'fried ham and eggs'.
Q 14'Granula', the ancestor of granola, was invented in 1863 at a sanitarium in which state?
New York
The Jackson Sanitarium was a health spa in Dansville; John Harvey Kellogg later made a similar cereal in Michigan.
Q 15How does muesli traditionally differ from granola?
It is neither sweetened nor baked
Granola is baked with oil and honey until crisp; muesli's oats were originally just soaked overnight.
Q 16Muesli was developed around 1900 by a physician for hospital patients in which country?
Switzerland
Maximilian Bircher-Benner's original was oats soaked overnight with apple, nuts, lemon juice and condensed milk, essentially the first overnight oats.
Q 17Steel-cut oats are also known by which name?
Irish oatmeal
'Pinhead oats' is another name; ground oats are the ones called white oats, and rolled oats are the classic old-fashioned kind.
Q 18What is the usual French name for French toast?
Pain perdu
It means 'lost bread', because it rescues stale loaves; in Britain it's eggy bread, and a Roman recipe in Apicius comes close.
Q 19Which of these is a genuine alternative name for French toast?
Poor knights of Windsor
'Bombay toast' and 'gypsy toast' are others; the savoury version is fried with salt and served with ketchup.
Q 20Pop-Tarts were launched in 1964. In which year did the first frosted ones appear?
1967
Kellogg's first had to develop a frosting that could survive the toaster; the pastries are the company's most popular US brand.
Q 24Hash browns are made from potatoes prepared how?
Finely julienned and fried
They're a diner staple in North America, usually cooked on the same big flat-top as everything else.
Q 25Grits are a porridge made from which grain?
Corn
Hominy grits use corn treated with alkali (nixtamalization); Georgia declared grits its official prepared food in 2002.
Q 26Which US state declared grits its official prepared food in 2002?
Georgia
Around Charleston, cooked hominy grits were simply called 'hominy' until the 1980s.
Q 27The word 'bacon' comes from a Proto-Germanic root meaning what?
Back meat
The world's first commercial bacon processing plant was opened by John Harris in Calne, Wiltshire, in the 1770s.
Q 28Which Canadian province alone produces about 72% of the world's maple syrup?
Quebec
Indigenous peoples of the Northeast made it first; the trees are tapped in late winter when stored starch turns to sugar in the rising sap.
Q 29Hanson Gregory claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 while working where?
Aboard a lime-trading ship
He was 16 at the time, and the tale of how the hole got there has been embellished ever since.
Q 30National Doughnut Day, the first Friday of June, grew from a 1938 event by which organisation?
The Salvation Army
It honoured the volunteers who served doughnuts to soldiers in the First World War.