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50 free Thanksgiving Food trivia questions with answers. Thanksgiving is the one American holiday built entirely around a menu, and every dish on it has a backstory. This quiz works through the whole table: how the Broad Breasted White took over the turkey business, what Butterball's Turkey Talk-Line gets asked most, why Dorcas Reilly's 1955 casserole eats 40 percent of America's cream of mushroom soup, how a mountain of unsold Swanson turkey became the TV dinner, and what the Plymouth colonists actually ate in 1621 (hint: not potatoes). It covers cranberry sauce, stuffing versus dressing, pumpkin and pecan pie, marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes, Parker House rolls, Tofurky, leftovers sandwiches, Beaujolais nouveau, Canadian Thanksgiving and regional tables from Baltimore sauerkraut to Puerto Rican arroz con gandules. Easy openers sit beside genuinely hard ones, so it suits a family game after dinner, a Friendsgiving round or a November pub quiz. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, official company pages, Smithsonian or primary sources, and each question shows its citation, so any argument over the canned-versus-fresh cranberry question can be settled at the table.
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Q 01Per Edward Winslow's 1621 letter, what did the four men sent hunting bring back for the Plymouth harvest feast?
Enough fowl to feed the colony for a week
Winslow was trying to lure more colonists across the Atlantic, so the letter reads a little like a brochure.
Q 02Based on Winslow's letter, some historians think the 1621 harvest feast was mostly which food?
Seafood
Lobster, fish, eels, mussels and oysters were all on hand in coastal Massachusetts, and mussels could simply be pulled off the shoreline rocks.
Q 03There were no pies at the 1621 harvest feast because the colonists had no butter, no sugar and no what?
Wheat flour
Potatoes were missing too: they are native to South America and had not yet entered the global food system.
Q 04Roughly what share of the turkeys Americans eat are Broad Breasted Whites?
More than 99%
The breed can top 40 pounds but has to be artificially bred and suffers health problems because of its size.
Q 05What was the compact 8-to-15-pound bird with extra breast meat that the USDA bred and sold from 1947 called?
Beltsville Small White
It was developed at the Beltsville Agricultural Research Center in Maryland and later lost out to the much bigger Broad Breasted White.
Q 06Given their huge breasts, how do most Broad Breasted White turkeys reproduce?
Through artificial insemination
The oversized breast also means the birds cannot fly, unlike their wild cousins.
Q 07What is the most frequently asked question on Butterball's Turkey Talk-Line?
Thawing time
The toll-free line has run every holiday season since late 1981.
Q 08Roughly how many people call Butterball's Turkey Talk-Line each holiday season now?
Over 200,000
The line only started employing men in 2013, when Butterball noted a quarter of callers were male.
Q 09Butterball's rule of thumb: allow one day of fridge thawing for every how much frozen bird?
4 pounds
In a hurry, the cold-water method works out to about 30 minutes per pound with the water changed every half hour.
Q 10Which safety-certification body has refused to list (certify) turkey fryers at all?
Underwriters Laboratories
The whole operation counts as hazardous from the moment the burner is lit until the oil has cooled.
Q 11An early printed mention of deep-fried turkey appeared in a 1984 article in which newspaper?
New Orleans Times-Picayune
The first recipes called for cooking 12-to-15-pound birds in lard at 375 degrees.
Q 12Hebert's Specialty Meats, which claims to have created the turducken in 1985, is in which state?
Louisiana
Cajun chef Paul Prudhomme is more generally credited with introducing the dish, and John Madden once sawed one open bare-handed on air.
Q 13A turducken is an example of which cooking method, in which one animal is stuffed inside another?
Engastration
The British version is called a three-bird roast, and a goose-duck-chicken stack is a gooducken.
Q 21Which pie, a Southern speciality, is often served at Thanksgiving in place of pumpkin?
Sweet potato pie
It applies European custard-pie technique to a crop that reached Southern kitchens by way of Native American cooking.
Q 22Angelus Marshmallows, whose 1917 booklet had the first marshmallow-topped sweet potato recipe, originally made what?
Cracker Jack
Angelus had introduced mass-produced marshmallows in 1907 and hired Boston cooking-school founder Janet McKenzie Hill to dream up uses for them.
Q 23Dorcas Reilly's 1955 Campbell's recipe was first printed on soup cans under what name?
Green Bean Bake
Q 14Marcus Urann, inventor of commercial cranberry sauce, went on to found which growers' cooperative?
Ocean Spray
All four are farmer-owned cooperatives; Urann was a lawyer turned cranberry grower.
Q 15Canned cranberry sauce first reached the market in which year, making it available year-round?
1941
The jellied version can be slid out of the can whole and sliced at the table, ridges and all.
Q 16What was part of the 1959 cranberry crop announced to be tainted with, collapsing the market before Thanksgiving?
Aminotriazole, a weedkiller
Growers lost millions, and the shock pushed Ocean Spray to reorganise and pour money into new products like juice.
Q 17American Cookery (1796), the first cookbook by an American, was published in which city?
Hartford, Connecticut
Its author, Amelia Simmons, signed herself simply 'An American Orphan'.
Q 18American Cookery introduced American cooks to pearlash, an early form of what?
Chemical leavener
It was a precursor of baking soda, and the same book was the first to use the Dutch-derived word 'cookey'.
Q 19Morton, Illinois, the 'Pumpkin Capital of the World', is home to which brand's pumpkin cannery?
Libby's
The town claims 99 percent of the world's canned pumpkin and throws a four-day Pumpkin Festival every September.
Q 20Libby's, the best-selling canned pumpkin, is made solely from which pumpkin variety?
Dickinson
It is a tan, oblong Cucurbita moschata, closer to a butternut squash than to a jack-o'-lantern.
It was written for an Associated Press feature that asked for a quick dish using ingredients most households already had.
Q 24What share of US Cream of Mushroom soup sales does Campbell's say ends up in green bean casserole?
About 40 percent
That single dish shows up at an estimated 20 million American Thanksgiving dinners a year.
Q 25In 2002 Dorcas Reilly donated her green bean casserole recipe card to which Akron institution?
National Inventors Hall of Fame
The card sits alongside the paperwork of light bulbs and telephones; a food historian called the fried-onion topping 'a touch of genius'.
Q 26Stove Top stuffing was introduced in 1972 by which food company?
General Foods
Inventor Ruth Siems's name is on U.S. Patent 3,870,803 for the product.
Q 27Kraft Heinz reportedly sells about how many boxes of Stove Top stuffing at Thanksgiving?
60 million
Kraft has owned the brand since 1990.
Q 28The American word 'dressing' for stuffing is first recorded in about which year?
1850
It arrived long after 'farce' (around 1390), 'stuffing' (1538) and 'forcemeat' (1688).
Q 29Which herb is the standard seasoning in classic American Thanksgiving stuffing?
Sage
Chopped onion and celery round out the base; chestnuts, sausage, apples and cranberries are regional add-ins.
Q 30Traditional Southern cornbread differs from Northern versions by containing little or none of what?
Sugar
It was also made with white cornmeal and buttermilk and poured into a hot greased cast-iron skillet.