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50 free Halloween Food trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Halloween food trivia quiz is about everything that gets baked, boiled, dipped, carved and handed out at the door between the last week of October and the Day of the Dead. It starts with the medieval spiced cakes that gave the world door-to-door begging for treats, moves through the fortune-telling loaves and mashes of Ireland and Scotland, the toffee and treacle of British bonfire nights, and the apples that get bobbed for, candied and caramelised because the harvest has just come in. Then it heads to America for the pumpkin, from pie and roasted seeds to the giant that broke the world record, and to the candy aisle: the polarising three-colour classic and the company that makes most of it, the peanut-butter cup that dominates the season, and the breakfast-cereal monsters that return every autumn. There are questions on Mexican breads and sugar skulls, the overseas cousins of souling, and the numbers behind America's Halloween spending. Easy questions suit a party round; the harder ones on dates, names and origins will test any host. Every answer has been checked against encyclopaedia entries, and each question shows its explanation and source after you answer.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was candy corn originally called when it went on sale in the 1880s?
Chicken Feed
Chicken Feed: the kernel-shaped butter creams were first sold under that name with a rooster on the box, pitched to a largely rural, farming America.
Q 02Which company makes the most candy corn, around seven billion pieces a year?
Brach's
Brach's, part of Ferrara since 2012, makes about seven billion pieces of candy corn a year, roughly 85 percent of the US market.
Q 03Candy corn's yellow, orange and white bands are usually said to stand for what?
The fall harvest
The fall harvest: the yellow, orange and white bands and the tapered shape imitate a kernel of corn, so the candy has long been sold as a harvest-season treat.
Q 04Which company, renamed Jelly Belly in 2001, began making candy corn in 1898?
Goelitz Confectionery
Goelitz Confectionery began producing candy corn in 1898 and was renamed the Jelly Belly Candy Company in 2001.
Q 05What are the spiced treats handed to door-to-door singers at Allhallowtide, ancestor of trick-or-treating, called?
Soul cakes
Soul cakes: the 'soulers' who received them promised to pray for the givers' dead relatives, and the custom lingered in parts of England until the 1930s.
Q 06In which country did children ask door to door for 'bread for God' at Allhallowtide?
Portugal
Portugal: Pão-por-Deus, 'bread for God', sees Portuguese children collect cakes, sweets and nuts door to door on All Saints' Day; the Philippines has a similar custom, Pangangaluwa.
Q 07What is the traditional Irish Halloween fruit bread with charms baked inside called?
Barmbrack
Barmbrack, from the Irish bairín breac or 'speckled loaf', is studded with raisins and sultanas; the charms baked inside foretell the finder's year ahead.
Q 08In the Irish fortune-telling loaf, finding which object meant you would marry within the year?
A ring
A ring foretold marriage within the year; the pea meant no wedding, the stick an unhappy marriage, the cloth poverty, and the coin wealth.
Q 09Colcannon, another Irish dish in which Halloween charms were hidden, is mashed potato mixed with what?
Cabbage or kale
Its Irish name means "white-headed cabbage", and it is also eaten on Saint Patrick's Day.
Q 10In Scotland, bobbing for apples is known by what name?
Dooking
Dooking, the Scots word for ducking, has players lift apples from a tub of water with their teeth; Scottish children call the game 'dookin' for apples'.
Q 11Why do the apples float in the bobbing tub?
They are less dense than water
They are less dense than water: roughly a quarter of an apple's volume is air trapped in its flesh, so it floats, which makes it perfect for the game.
Q 12Which Newark candy-maker is credited with inventing the red candy apple in 1908?
William W. Kolb
William W. Kolb, a Newark confectioner, was experimenting with red cinnamon candy for Christmas in 1908 when he dipped apples in it and sold them for five cents each.
Q 13What is the Commonwealth English name for the whole fruit dipped in a hard red sugar coating on a stick?
Toffee apple
Q 21Pumpkin pie spice is generally a blend of cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and which other spice?
Cloves
Cloves round out the classic blend with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger; allspice is sometimes added, and the mix contains no pumpkin at all.
Q 22Which coffee chain launched the pumpkin spice latte nationally in autumn 2004?
Starbucks
Starbucks tested the Pumpkin Spice Latte in Vancouver and Washington, D.C. in 2003 and rolled it out across the United States in autumn 2004.
Q 23The world's largest pumpkin pie, weighing well over a ton and a half, was baked in 2010 in which state?
Ohio
Ohio: the 3,699-pound pie, 20 feet across, was baked at the New Bremen Pumpkinfest in September 2010 using 2,796 eggs and 109 gallons of evaporated milk.
They were first sold in London in the 1890s; caramel apples are made by a distinctly different process.
Q 14Botanically, what kind of fruit is a pumpkin?
A berry
A berry: botanists class pumpkins and other squashes as pepos, berries with a hard rind, which makes the pumpkin a fruit rather than a vegetable.
Q 15Candy apples stopped being handed out to trick-or-treaters largely because of rumours about what?
Razor blades hidden inside
Razor blades hidden inside: from the late 1960s reports of blades and pins in Halloween apples spread, though sociologist Joel Best found nearly all were hoaxes or caused only minor injury.
Q 16Bonfire toffee, eaten at Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night in Britain, gets its strong flavour from what?
Black treacle
Black treacle, boiled with sugar and butter, gives bonfire toffee its dark colour and bitter flavour; in Scotland it is called claggum and in Wales loshin du.
Q 17In Scotland, what sticky treat is strung from the ceiling alongside the apple-bobbing tub at Halloween?
Treacle scones
Treacle scones, coated in sticky treacle and hung by string, must be eaten without hands, a Scottish Halloween game played beside the apple tub.
Q 18Before pumpkins, jack-o'-lanterns in Ireland and Britain were carved from which vegetable?
Turnips
Mangelwurzels and rutabagas were also hollowed out; Scottish guisers in 1895 carried scooped-out turnip lanterns door to door.
Q 19How much did the record-setting heaviest pumpkin of October 2023 weigh?
2,749 lb
2,749 lb: Travis Gienger's pumpkin, weighed at Half Moon Bay, California, in October 2023, set the world record; giant pumpkins are varieties of Cucurbita maxima.
Q 20Roasted pumpkin seeds are known by what Spanish-derived name?
Pepitas
Pepitas, from the Spanish for 'little seed', are hulled pumpkin seeds; ground, they thicken Mexican pipián sauce and the Yucatán dip sikil pak.
Q 24In old Halloween nut-burning divination, each pair of nuts on the fire stood for whom?
A courting couple
A courting couple: in Burns's 1785 poem 'Halloween', nuts named for two sweethearts are set on the fire; if they burn quietly side by side, the pair will marry.
Q 25Pan de muerto, baked in Mexico for the Day of the Dead, is usually decorated with dough shaped like what?
Bones
Bones: strips of dough laid across the round loaf represent bones, the central knob a teardrop, and the loaf is dusted with sugar and scented with orange blossom.
Q 26Mexican sugar skulls made in moulds for the Day of the Dead are known as what?
Alfeñiques
Alfeñiques: moulded from a sugar paste of that name, the skulls are decorated with coloured icing and foil and often carry a name piped across the forehead.
Q 27In parts of Mexico, children ask '¿Me da mi calaverita?' — can you give me my little what?
Skull
Skull: 'calaverita' means little skull, and children who ask for one on Day of the Dead are given sweets, fruit or coins, a custom that merged with American trick-or-treating.
Q 28Which General Mills breakfast cereals, launched in 1971, return to shelves every Halloween season?
Count Chocula and Franken Berry
Count Chocula and Franken Berry launched together in 1971; Boo Berry followed in 1973, and Carmella Creeper, a zombie, joined the line in 2023.
Q 29An early Franken Berry recipe had which alarming side effect in 1972?
It turned children's stool pink
It turned children's stool pink: the red dye passed through the gut unabsorbed, a 1972 Pediatrics report dubbed it 'Franken Berry stool', and General Mills reformulated the cereal.
Q 30Which discontinued monster cereal turns up as a visual Easter egg in Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs?
Fruit Brute
Fruit Brute, discontinued in 1982, was a Tarantino favourite, seen in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction; it returned in 2022 respelled Frute Brute.