Dessert Trivia
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157 free Dessert trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sixty-one dessert trivia questions and answers on the sweets people actually argue about: who really invented the pavlova, why a brownie owes its existence to a Chicago socialite, what tiramisu literally means, and which king supposedly ate himself to death on Lenten buns. The set roams the whole dessert cart. There are French classics like tarte Tatin, éclairs and croquembouche; Italian gelato, cannoli and zabaione; British puddings from Eton mess to spotted dick; American diner staples like the banana split, whoopie pie and Jell-O; and sweets from further afield including baklava, gulab jamun, mochi, mooncakes, halo-halo and brigadeiros. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few genuinely obscure origin stories. Every answer is checked against a cited encyclopaedia page, so it works for a bake-off night, a dinner party round or a food-themed pub quiz. Play it here for free, see your score and share it with whoever claims to know their puddings.
30 of 157 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the Italian name of the dessert tiramisu literally mean?
Pick me up
Pick me up is the literal sense of tirami sù; despite its classic status the dessert is young, probably invented in north-eastern Italy in the 1960s.
Q 02Which New York restaurant is credited with naming baked Alaska after the 1867 purchase from Russia?
Delmonico's
Delmonico's gets the credit for the tribute to the Alaska purchase, though its chef Charles Ranhofer listed the dessert as 'Alaska, Florida', a nod to its contrast of cold ice cream and hot meringue.
Q 03The pavlova, the meringue dessert fought over by Australia and New Zealand, is named after a famous Russian what?
Ballerina
Ballerina Anna Pavlova toured Australasia in 1926 and 1929, and the airy meringue is said to echo her lightness on stage or, in one telling, her fluffy tutu.
Q 04Franz Sacher, who created the Sachertorte as a teenager, served in the kitchen of which statesman?
Prince Metternich
Prince Metternich, Austria's chancellor, wanted a special dessert in 1832; the story goes that his head chef was ill, so 16-year-old apprentice Franz Sacher stepped in and devised the chocolate cake.
Q 05Tarte Tatin, the caramelised apple tart named after two sisters who ran a hotel, is baked in which unusual way?
Upside down
Upside down, with the pastry laid over apples caramelising in butter and sugar, then flipped to serve; the Tatin sisters never called it by their name, which caught on only after their deaths.
Q 06In which country was banoffee pie invented in the early 1970s, at a restaurant called the Hungry Monk?
England
England is its home: at the Hungry Monk in Jevington, owner Nigel Mackenzie and chef Ian Dowding reworked an American coffee toffee pie, and the banana version proved so popular they could not take it off the menu.
Q 07Legend says the first brownie was made at the Palmer House for ladies attending which 1893 event?
The Chicago World's Fair
The Chicago World's Fair of 1893 led Bertha Palmer to ask her hotel's kitchen for a cake small enough to eat from a boxed lunch, and the walnut-topped square it produced is the hotel's claim to the brownie.
Q 08Which youth organisation did a 1925 Connecticut newspaper describe eating 'Some-mores'?
Girl Scouts
Girl Scouts printed the recipe as 'Some More' in their 1927 handbook Tramping and Trailing, with the dry warning that though it tastes like 'some more', one is really enough.
Q 09Which dessert was created at Brennan's in New Orleans in 1951, when the city was a major gateway for its fruit?
Bananas Foster
Bananas Foster was chef Paul Blangé's 1951 answer to the banana cargoes then arriving from Latin America; it honours Richard Foster, a friend of owner Owen Brennan who chaired the city's Crime Commission.
Q 10Peach Melba was created in the 1890s at London's Savoy Hotel by which celebrated French chef?
Auguste Escoffier
Auguste Escoffier, then the Savoy's chef, first served it in an ice swan, a nod to the swan in Wagner's Lohengrin, which soprano Nellie Melba had just sung at Covent Garden; the raspberry sauce came later.
Q 11The name of the cream-filled éclair comes from a French word meaning what?
Flash of lightning
Éclair is French for 'flash of lightning': one theory says it is eaten in a flash, another that its glossy icing glistens like lightning; the word is first recorded in the 1860s.
Q 12The rum-soaked baba, born in France, became a signature pastry of which Italian city, where it is called babà?
Naples
Naples made the babà its own, and it is a listed traditional product of Campania; the cake's story starts with the exiled king Stanislaus, said to have had a dry cake doused in liquor.
Q 13Brazil's beloved brigadeiro, a chocolate fudge ball rolled in sprinkles, was created to promote what?
A presidential campaign
Q 21Boston cream pie is said to have been created in the 1850s by a French chef at which hotel?
Parker House
Parker House, which also gave its name to a soft dinner roll, claims the dessert; it is a cake called a pie because cooks of the day baked both in the same pans and used the words interchangeably.
Q 22Cherries jubilee, flambéed cherries served over vanilla ice cream, was created for a jubilee of which monarch?
Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee of 1897 is the occasion most accounts give for the flaming cherries; the Victoria sponge also carries her name, as she was said to be fond of it.
Q 23Baklava's Turkish version was probably perfected in the imperial kitchens of which Ottoman palace in Constantinople, today's Istanbul?
Confectioner Heloísa Nabuco de Oliveira made them for Brigadier Eduardo Gomes's 1945 presidential campaign; he lost the election to Eurico Dutra, but the condensed-milk sweet conquered the country.
Q 14The pastel de nata custard tart traces its recipe to the Jerónimos Monastery in which city?
Lisbon
Lisbon's Jerónimos Monastery, in the Belém district, closed in 1834; the recipe is said to have passed to a nearby sugar refinery, whose owners opened the Pastéis de Belém bakery in 1837.
Q 15The caramelised, buttery kouign-amann originated around 1860 in which region of France?
Brittany
Brittany's fishing port of Douarnenez credits baker Yves-René Scordia; the Breton name means 'butter cake', and as it bakes the folded-in sugar seeps out and caramelises into a crisp shell.
Q 16The Australian lamington is believed to be named after a Governor of which state?
Queensland
Queensland's governor from 1896 to 1901 was Lord Lamington; his French-born chef Armand Galland reportedly improvised the treat for unexpected guests, dipping leftover sponge in chocolate and coconut.
Q 17Which soda-fountain classic did 23-year-old pharmacy apprentice David Strickler create in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, in 1904?
Banana split
The banana split was Strickler's answer to fruit-laden sundaes he had seen in Atlantic City; he charged a dime, twice the price of other sundaes, and it still caught on with local students.
Q 18Which frozen treat did Frank Epperson say he invented aged 11 by leaving a drink outside on a cold night?
The Popsicle
The Popsicle, by Epperson's own account, began when a drink and its stirring stick froze overnight in 1905; he first sold it as the Epsicle and is said to have renamed it at his children's urging.
Q 19Which brand did carpenter and cough-syrup maker Pearle Wait trademark in 1897, then sell for just $450?
Jell-O
Jell-O sold so poorly for Wait that he let it go in 1899 to neighbour Orator Woodward, whose magazine adverts from 1902 billed it as 'America's Most Famous Dessert'.
Q 20In 2011 which US state officially recognised the whoopie pie as its state treat?
Maine
Maine's lawmakers first proposed it as the state dessert, then settled on 'state treat' and gave the dessert title to wild blueberry pie; Pennsylvania's Amish country also claims the cake.
Topkapı
Topkapı Palace's kitchens made baklava a ritual: on the 15th of each Ramadan the sultan sent trays of it to his Janissary troops in a procession known as the Baklava Alayı.
Q 24Gulab jamun is made mainly from khoya, which is what?
Milk reduced to a soft dough
Milk reduced to a soft dough by slow simmering is khoya; cooks knead it with a little flour, fry the balls gently and soak them in syrup scented with cardamom and rose water.
Q 25Cannoli, fried pastry tubes filled with sweetened ricotta, come from which Italian island?
Sicily
Sicily first made cannoli as a Carnival treat, and the name means 'little tubes', from the cane reeds once used to roll and shape the shells.
Q 26Panna cotta, Italy's 'cooked cream', holds its wobbly shape thanks to which setting agent?
Gelatin
Gelatin sets the sweetened cream without the eggs a custard needs; although Piedmont claims it as a tradition, the name panna cotta appears in no Italian cookbook before the 1960s.
Q 27What makes kulfi, the frozen dessert of the Indian subcontinent, denser than regular ice cream?
It is never churned
It is never churned: the milk is simmered down and frozen still in sealed moulds, so the kulfi comes out dense and melts more slowly than ice cream.
Q 28Traditional Cantonese mooncakes are filled with a paste made from what?
Lotus seed
Lotus seed paste is the classic Cantonese filling, often wrapped around a salted duck-egg yolk that stands for the full moon when the cake is cut at the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Q 29A tres leches cake is soaked in evaporated milk, whole milk and which third milk?
Condensed
Condensed milk is the third, and the cake's airy sponge is why it drinks up all that liquid without turning soggy; milk companies such as Nestlé spread the recipe by printing it on their cans.
Q 30Which syrup-soaked sweet did West Bengal and Odisha each claim, a dispute that ended with separate GI tags for both?
Rosogolla
Rosogolla won West Bengal a GI tag, but Odisha, which cites the ritual offering of the sweet at Puri's Jagannath Temple, went on to win a tag for its own 'Odisha rasagola'.