Waffle Trivia
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45 free Waffle trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
40 free Waffle trivia questions with answers. Waffle trivia goes back further than most food quizzes: the Greeks were pressing flat cakes between hot metal plates, medieval guilds fought over who could make them, and the first written recipe is a 14th-century husband explaining the job to his wife. From there this quiz follows the waffle everywhere it went. The Brussels waffle and the one Americans call Belgian, which is really a brand name. The Liege pockets, the Hong Kong grid cake, the stroopwafel that is split apart while it is still hot. Then the industrial era: the 1869 patent that made the iron flippable, the frozen waffle invented in a San Jose plant in 1953, the chain that opened in Georgia in 1955, and the running shoe that started as ruined kitchen equipment. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and every answer is written against an encyclopaedic source with the sentence that proves it, so a waffle argument at breakfast can be settled properly.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The English word 'waffle' comes directly from which language?
Dutch
Dutch 'wafel' gave English the word; behind it sits the Frankish word for honeycomb, which is exactly what the iron leaves behind.
Q 02Krumkake, Norway's thin patterned Christmas cookie, is rolled into what shape while warm?
A cone
A cone: the name means 'curved cake', and each one is wrapped around a cone-shaped form straight off the iron, because it is only soft enough to shape while hot; many are then filled with whipped cream.
Q 03In British English, what does it mean to 'waffle on'?
Talk a lot, saying little
Talk a lot, saying little: this 'waffle' is no relation of the food. It probably grew from 'waff', an old northern English dialect word for a dog's yelp.
Q 04What did the ancient Greeks cook between hot metal plates?
Flat cakes
Flat cakes were baked between two hot metal plates in ancient Greece; medieval wafer-makers kept the method, and once their plates were cut with a honeycomb pattern the wafer became the waffle.
Q 05What do French speakers call a waffle?
Une gaufre
Une gaufre was already Paris street food in the 13th century; on feast days the sellers set up their irons at church doors and sold them piping hot.
Q 06Which future US president brought four waffle irons home from France in 1789?
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson shipped the four irons home after his years as minister to France, but he did not introduce the dish: colonists had been holding waffle parties in America since the 1740s.
Q 07What 11th-century movement brought flavourings like orange blossom water into the medieval wafers that became waffles?
The Crusades
The Crusades carried new ingredients into Western Europe; before that, sweetness came from local honey, if it came at all.
Q 08The first known waffle recipe, from the late 14th century, was written by whom?
A husband instructing his young wife
A husband instructing his young wife wrote it: Le Ménagier de Paris (c. 1393) gives the earliest known waffle recipe and ends by advising an oiled cloth on the iron if the dough sticks.
Q 09Which 16th-century painter showed a woman baking waffles in The Fight Between Carnival and Lent?
Bruegel
Bruegel set her on the Carnival side of his 1559 picture, the side of feasting; across the square the Lenten crowd gets a fish stall instead.
Q 10Brussels waffles are easiest to tell from Liege waffles by what?
Their rectangular sides
Their rectangular sides give Brussels waffles away: a thin batter fills the iron edge to edge, while a Liège waffle is a lump of brioche dough that comes out with no corners at all.
Q 11Belgian waffles first won over Americans topped with whipped cream and which fruit?
Strawberries
Strawberries: each hot waffle was piped with whipped cream, heaped with berries and sold for about a dollar, and most buyers ate it by hand off a paper napkin.
Q 12Where did Americans get the term 'Belgian waffle'?
A brand called Bel-Gem
A brand called Bel-Gem: Maurice Vermersch first sold his 'Brussels waffles' in America under their own name, found that few customers could place Brussels, and renamed them within days.
Q 13At which event did thick Belgian waffles become a craze across America?
The 1964 New York World's Fair
Q 21Where does the Eggo brand name come from?
An earlier mayonnaise
An earlier mayonnaise: the Dorsa brothers first sold Eggo mayonnaise in the 1930s, named for its fresh eggs; the name later covered waffle mix and potato chips before the frozen waffle took over.
Q 22A waffle seller is said to have rolled his pastry to hold ice cream at the 1904 World's Fair in which city?
St. Louis
St. Louis: in the best-known account, Syrian-born Ernest Hamwi rolled up one of his crisp waffle-like pastries when the ice cream stand next door ran out of dishes; other vendors at the fair claimed the idea too.
Q 23Wells Supper Club fed jazz musicians late-night chicken and waffles in which New York neighbourhood?
Harlem
The 1964 New York World's Fair sold the thick waffles for two summers, and imitators were opening waffle stands in other cities before it had even closed.
Q 14What leavens a standard American waffle?
Baking powder
Baking powder does the lifting, so the batter can be cooked as soon as it is mixed; a yeast-raised batter, like the classic Brussels one, has to stand and rise first.
Q 15Which thin Italian cookie from Abruzzo is pressed in a patterned waffle-style iron and often flavoured with anise?
Pizzelle
Pizzelle were once pressed one at a time in an iron held over the fire by hand; in Abruzzo the iron could go into a bride's dowry, sometimes engraved with initials.
Q 16Why did Waffle House's founders name their new restaurant after the waffle in 1955?
It was their most profitable dish
It was their most profitable dish: one founder proposed naming the place after the best earner on its 16-item menu, and the other liked that waffles, too flimsy to carry out, marked it as a sit-down restaurant.
Q 17What did the 1869 US waffle-iron patent add to the design?
A handle and swivelling hinge
A handle and swivelling hinge let the cook flip the cast-iron plates on the stove top without slips or burns; Cornelius Swartwout of Troy, New York, was granted the patent on 24 August 1869.
Q 18Which company built a prototype plug-in waffle iron in 1911 and put one on sale in 1918?
General Electric
General Electric's electric iron took waffle-making off the stove and onto the kitchen counter; by the 1930s boxed mixes had joined it and waffles were a standard home breakfast.
Q 19Norwegians often top their waffles with brunost, which is what?
A brown cheese
A brown cheese: brunost is made by boiling whey with milk or cream until the milk sugars caramelise, which gives it a sweet, toffee-like taste that suits a warm waffle.
Q 20Which cereal company acquired the frozen-waffle brand Eggo?
Kellogg's
Kellogg's took over the brand that Frank Dorsa had built; in 1953 he devised a carousel machine that cooked waffles and then froze them, ready to be packed and sold.
Harlem: Wells opened in 1938 and fed musicians who finished their gigs too late for dinner and too early for breakfast, so a plate of fried chicken beside a waffle covered both.
Q 24What hours has Waffle House kept since its first restaurant began trading in 1955?
Around the clock, every day
Around the clock, every day: one founder argued that in an age of interstates and television people would want a restaurant that never closed, not even on Christmas.
Q 25Whose waffle iron did the Nike co-founder ruin by pouring rubber into it?
His wife's
His wife's: Bill Bowerman poured rubber into Barbara Bowerman's waffle iron around 1971, looking for a sole that would grip without spikes, and the pattern became Nike's Waffle Trainer.
Q 26Where did the first Waffle House open, in 1955?
Avondale Estates, Georgia
Avondale Estates, Georgia, just outside Atlanta, got the first Waffle House on Labor Day 1955; the original building was later turned into the Waffle House Museum.
Q 27Who founded the Waffle House chain?
Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner
Joe Rogers Sr. and Tom Forkner were neighbours: Rogers, a manager for a diner chain, had bought his house from Forkner, an estate agent, and the pair died within two months of each other in 2017.
Q 28At Waffle House, hash browns ordered 'smothered' come with what added?
Onions
Onions: in Waffle House's hash-brown code 'smothered' adds onions and 'covered' adds cheese, and the full call, 'scattered, smothered and covered', gave Hootie and the Blowfish an album title in 2000.
Q 29The stroopwafel was first made in which city in the Netherlands?
Gouda
Gouda is the stroopwafel's home town: by local tradition a baker there first pressed leftover crumbs and scraps together with syrup, a thrifty trick that bakers in other cities were copying after 1870.
Q 30Hong Kong's egg waffle, gai daan jai, is baked as a sheet of small what?
Balls
Balls: the batter is cooked between two plates of half-round cells, and the pan is flipped as soon as it is filled, so each bubble sets crisp outside and fluffy inside.