British Food
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48 free British Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
British food has a worse reputation than it deserves, and most of the blame belongs to wartime rationing. Before it, Britain had invented the sandwich, the Sunday roast, the ice cream cone and the first English curry recipe; after it, the country reinvented itself with chicken tikka masala, the gastropub and more cheeses than France. This quiz covers the whole story. These 48 questions run from Celtic cider and Colchester oysters to the Anglo-Saxon love of bacon, the Norman words for beef and pork, the Forme of Cury and the live blackbirds baked in Tudor pies. The Georgian and Victorian sections cover Hannah Glasse, the Earl of Sandwich, Cornish pasties, Welsh rarebit, the Duchess who invented afternoon tea, Joseph Malin's first chippy, Lea & Perrins and the Quaker chocolate dynasties. Then come rationing, beans on toast, Coronation chicken, the Birmingham balti and the Michelin stars of Bray, plus the regional classics: stargazy pie, Stinking Bishop, Dorset knobs, Wensleydale and the correct order of jam and cream. Easy questions stick to famous dishes; the expert tier asks about medieval cookbooks, 1893 recipes and cheese-rolling prizes. Every answer is cited and explained.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which TV cook's BBC career ended in 1976 after she scorned an amateur's banquet menu on air?
Fanny Cradock
Fanny Cradock rolled her eyes at Devon farmer's wife Gwen Troake's menu on The Big Time; viewers were incensed, and the BBC ended her contract two weeks later.
Q 02Which British chef became the youngest then to win three Michelin stars, aged 33 in 1995?
Marco Pierre White
Marco Pierre White was also the first Briton to win three, yet in 1999 he handed the stars back and retired from cooking, saying they had not made him happy.
Q 03Which TV chef's Chelsea restaurant won its third Michelin star in 2001?
Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Ramsay had earned two stars at Aubergine, also in Chelsea, but fell out with its owners in 1998; the whole staff walked out, and he set up on his own.
Q 04Scrumpy is a rough, traditional West Country form of which drink?
Cider
Cider called scrumpy probably takes its name from 'scrump', a dialect word for something withered or undersized, such as a small apple. West Country farm labourers once received a daily allowance of it with their wages.
Q 05Which Essex city, the first capital of Roman Britain, is famed for its native oysters?
Colchester
Colchester, then called Camulodunum, was destroyed in Boudica's revolt around AD 60, and London later took over as the province's capital.
Q 06Which ingredient gives black pudding its dark colour?
Pig's blood
Pig's blood spoils quickly, so it was cooked with fat and oatmeal as soon as an animal was slaughtered, which makes black pudding one of the oldest kinds of sausage.
Q 07English words like beef, pork and gravy come from the language of which conquerors?
The Normans
The Normans brought the words to the tables of the wealthy, it is thought, while the English-speaking peasants who raised the animals kept the old names for them.
Q 08Which English king is said to have died after eating 'a surfeit of lampreys'?
Henry I
Henry I ate them against his physician's orders on a hunting trip, the chronicler Henry of Huntingdon wrote; historians doubt the lampreys really killed him.
Q 09Which nursery rhyme recalls a banquet trick of hiding live birds inside a pie?
Sing a Song of Sixpence
Sing a Song of Sixpence echoes a real party piece: a 1549 Italian cookbook explained how to make pies so that live birds flew out when they were cut.
Q 10Which 16th-century monarch is popularly credited with refining shortbread into its modern form?
Mary, Queen of Scots
Mary, Queen of Scots is linked by tradition to 'petticoat tails', the thin wedges cut from a round, though historians find little evidence she shaped the recipe.
Q 11Which spirit did the Royal Navy stop issuing on 'Black Tot Day' in 1970?
Rum
Rum was withdrawn because the Admiralty judged a lunchtime tot unsafe for sailors operating increasingly complex weapons and machinery.
Q 12Which writer's 1747 bestseller, a century before Mrs Beeton, included the first known English curry recipe?
Hannah Glasse
Hannah Glasse wrote The Art of Cookery in plain language so that servants could follow it, and it stayed a bestseller for a hundred years.
Q 13Which pudding, first cooked under roasting meat to catch the dripping, got its present name in a 1747 cookbook?
Yorkshire pudding
Yorkshire pudding was plain 'dripping pudding' until then; it was served first, with gravy, to blunt appetites so that the costlier meat went further.
Q 21The word marmalade comes from the Portuguese name for a paste of which fruit?
Quince
Quince paste, 'marmelada', was the original marmalade, a firm sweet closer to fruit cheese; the bitter-orange spread for toast came later.
Q 22Eccles cakes are small round pastries filled with what?
Currants
Currants fill them, but the name is anyone's to use: Eccles cakes were refused protected status as too generic, so they can be baked anywhere.
Q 23Which monarch wrote in a journal of the 'excellent curry' made by newly arrived Indian servants?
Victoria
Victoria soon promoted one of them, Abdul Karim, from waiter to 'Munshi', her teacher of Urdu, to the dismay of her family and courtiers.
Q 14The Earl of Sandwich reputedly ordered meat between bread so he could keep doing what?
Gambling
Gambling is the popular story, spread by a 1770s travel book; the earl's own biographer thinks he more likely ate the snack at his desk while working.
Q 15Cornish pasties became the classic portable lunch of workers in which local industry?
Tin mining
Tin mining left hands filthy, so one popular story has miners holding the pasty by its thick crimped edge and throwing that away; others say they ate it from a bag.
Q 16The classic Welsh rarebit tops toast with a sauce of cheese, mustard and which drink?
Ale
Ale goes into the classic sauce, but rabbit never did: the name was first recorded as 'Welsh rabbit', probably as a joke, and 'rarebit' came later.
Q 17Which neighbours nicknamed the English after their love of roast beef?
The French
The French say 'les rosbifs'; the dish was such a patriotic emblem that theatre audiences once sang 'The Roast Beef of Old England' before plays.
Q 18Bubble and squeak is traditionally a fry-up of leftover potato and which vegetable?
Cabbage
Cabbage was there from the start, but potato was not: early versions fried it with cooked beef, and the name copies the noises in the pan.
Q 19The stew scouse gave its name to the people of which city?
Liverpool
Liverpool took the word from lobscouse, a stew of meat and ship's biscuit eaten by sailors across northern Europe, which is how a port city came by the name.
Q 20Which ingredient was the usual base of British ketchup before tomato versions took over?
Mushrooms
Mushrooms were packed in salt until their juice ran, then cooked with spices into a thin dark sauce; the tomato kind was a later American twist.
Q 24Which mealtime custom is Anna, Duchess of Bedford, credited with starting around 1840?
Afternoon tea
Afternoon tea began, the story goes, when the duchess grew hungry around four o'clock, with dinner not served until eight, and asked for a tray.
Q 25Which dark savoury spread was first made in Burton upon Trent in 1902?
Marmite
Marmite was sited in a brewing town for its raw material: brewer's yeast, which a German scientist had found could be concentrated, bottled and eaten.
Q 26Which high-street bakery chain, founded in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1939, is famous for its sausage rolls?
Greggs
Greggs began as John Gregg's pushbike round delivering eggs and yeast; in 2012 it warned a 'pasty tax' on hot bakes would shut shops, and the Chancellor backed down.
Q 27Besides vinegar, molasses and tamarind, which seafood gives Worcestershire sauce its savoury kick?
Anchovies
Anchovies go into the mix; company lore says the chemists' first batch was shelved as inedible, then found to have mellowed when tasted 18 months later.
Q 28HP Sauce is named after what?
The Houses of Parliament
The Houses of Parliament inspired the name in 1895, when Nottingham grocer Frederick Garton claimed a restaurant there had begun serving his sauce.
Q 29Which Cadbury chocolate bar is pushed into soft ice cream to make a '99'?
Flake
Flake was born in 1920 when a Cadbury worker saw that chocolate spilling over the moulds set in thin, crumbly folds; a half-size bar for ice-cream sellers followed.
Q 30Which cake is said to have been created to mark an 1884 royal wedding?
Battenberg cake
Battenberg cake carries the name of the groom's family, who turned it into English as Mountbatten in 1917, when anti-German feeling ran high.