48 Fun Facts About Breakfast Food

The word 'breakfast' literally refers to what?

Breaking the night's fast is the idea, and 'dinner' shares it: the word comes from a Latin verb meaning 'to break one's fast'.

In Britain, pancakes are traditionally eaten on which day, historically to use up ingredients before Lent?

Shrove Tuesday's pancake race in Olney supposedly began in 1445, when a housewife heard the church bell and ran to church still holding her pan.

Crêpes are most closely associated with which region of France?

Brittany's savoury crêpes use buckwheat flour, a crop suited to its wet, poor soils, where ordinary wheat grew badly.

The word 'waffle' entered English from which language?

Dutch wafel gave English its waffle, but 'to waffle', meaning to talk vaguely, is a separate word thought to come from 'waff', to yelp.

'Bel-Gem' waffles took hold in America at which event?

The 1964 New York World's Fair stand renamed Brussels waffles Bel-Gems after its Belgian owners found many Americans couldn't place Brussels.

Eggs Benedict tops a poached egg and ham on an English muffin with which sauce?

In one story, hungover stockbroker Lemuel Benedict ordered poached eggs, bacon, toast and hollandaise at the Waldorf in 1894, and the hotel put it on the menu.

Which Manhattan restaurant, one claimed birthplace of eggs Benedict, gave its name to a famous steak?

Delmonico's backs its claim with history: its chef Charles Ranhofer printed an almost identical 'Eggs à la Benedick' in his 1894 cookbook.

Bagels, boiled before they are baked, originated in which country's Jewish communities?

Poland's bagel went national in America when the Lenders, a baking family who came from Poland to Connecticut, began selling frozen bagels.

Unlike the New York style, a Montreal-style bagel is boiled in water sweetened with what?

Honey goes into the dough too, and the style reflects where in the old country Montreal's Jewish immigrant bakers learned their trade.

The croissant's crescent shape was inspired by which Austrian pastry?

The kipferl gave it the shape, but the flaky, butter-layered croissant is a 20th-century French creation.

Which breakfast spread began in 1946 as a solid loaf that had to be cut with a knife?

Nutella's forerunner, Giandujot, used little cocoa and lots of local hazelnuts, because chocolate was scarce and costly in post-war Italy.

Which item belongs to a traditional full English breakfast rather than being a modern addition?

Black pudding is a classic, while hash browns are a newer filler that often takes the place of the traditional bubble and squeak.

The full breakfast variant of Northern Ireland is known as what?

The Ulster fry's soda farls take their name from an old Scots word for a fourth, since each round is cut into four.

'Granula', the ancestor of granola, was invented in 1863 at a sanitarium in which state?

New York's Dr. James Caleb Jackson called it granula, so John Harvey Kellogg renamed his similar cereal 'granola' to avoid a legal fight.

How does muesli traditionally differ from granola?

It is not baked: granola is baked with oil and sweetener into crunchy clusters, while muesli's oats stay raw.

Muesli was developed around 1900 by a physician for hospital patients in which country?

Switzerland's Dr. Bircher-Benner had the oats soaked overnight, the same method now sold as 'overnight oats'.

Steel-cut oats are also known by which name?

Irish oatmeal is whole oat groats chopped into two or three pieces rather than rolled flat, which makes a chewier, nuttier porridge.

What is the usual French name for French toast?

Pain perdu means 'lost bread': the dish rescues loaves too stale to eat on their own.

Which quaint British name has been used for French toast?

Poor knights of Windsor were real too: retired officers housed at Windsor Castle, until William IV renamed them the Military Knights in 1833.

Which breakfast brand named a football bowl whose winners got to eat an edible mascot?

The first Pop-Tarts Bowl, in December 2023, put its giant Pop-Tart mascot in a giant toaster before the winners got an edible copy.

In June 2018, IHOP briefly 'flipped' its name to IHOb to promote which food?

Burgers were the point: IHOP wanted to shake its breakfast-first image and win more daytime and evening customers.

FEMA has used which restaurant chain's openings as an informal gauge of how badly a storm hit an area?

Waffle House readies standby crews before a storm so its restaurants can reopen fast, which is why a closed one is rare.

Which McDonald's breakfast item did franchisee Herb Peterson invent in the early 1970s?

The Egg McMuffin gets its round egg from a Teflon ring, which Peterson had a local blacksmith make for his grill.

Grits are a porridge made from which grain?

Corn for hominy grits is soaked in an alkali such as lime, which frees its niacin and protected maize-eating peoples from pellagra.

Which US state declared grits its official prepared food in 2002?

Georgia honours grits, but next door South Carolina legislates them: grits sold there must generally be enriched by law.

The word 'bacon' comes from a Proto-Germanic root meaning what?

Back meat is the root, yet most American bacon is cut from the pork belly instead.

Which Canadian province produces most of the world's maple syrup?

Quebec keeps a strategic reserve of maple syrup, and in 2011–12 thieves drained thousands of its barrels and refilled them with water.

Hanson Gregory claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 while working where?

Aboard a trading ship, Gregory said, he cut the first hole with a tin pepper box, though other tales credit a spoke of the ship's wheel.

National Doughnut Day, the first Friday of June, grew from a 1938 event by which organisation?

The Salvation Army's World War I volunteers fried doughnuts for American soldiers in huts near the front lines in France.

Which chain did Bill Rosenberg's 1948 Quincy shop Open Kettle become?

Dunkin' Donuts grew from Rosenberg's factory food trade, where coffee and doughnuts outsold everything else, so he built a shop around the pair.

Since 1999, which country has celebrated Cinnamon Roll Day every 4 October?

Sweden's Home Baking Council started the day to celebrate fika, the Swedish custom of a coffee break with a bun.

Guy Beringer's 1895 essay in Hunter's Weekly introduced the name of which meal?

Brunch caught on fast: within a year, Punch magazine was already writing about the fashionable new word.

Charles Strite patented which kitchen device in 1921?

Strite built the automatic pop-up toaster because the cafeteria at the plant where he worked kept serving burnt toast.

Corn flakes began as health food at a sanitarium run by John Harvey Kellogg in which Michigan city?

Battle Creek's sanitarium food went national after Will Keith Kellogg founded his own company in 1906 to sell corn flakes to everyone.

Huevos rancheros, 'ranch-style eggs', is a breakfast dish from which country?

Mexico's ranch hands ate it as a second breakfast, a hearty mid-morning meal to refuel after their early start.

Shakshouka, eggs poached in a spiced tomato and pepper sauce, comes from which region?

Cumin, paprika and cayenne do the seasoning; it is now a brunch-menu fixture far beyond North Africa.

Congee, the savoury breakfast porridge, is made by boiling which grain in a large amount of water?

Rice boiled this soft is easy to digest, which is why congee is a classic meal for the sick and often a baby's first solid food.

Kedgeree, the Anglo-Indian breakfast of rice, curry powder and eggs, traditionally uses which fish?

Smoked haddock was the classic choice, and thrifty cooks later turned kedgeree into a way to use up leftovers.

Scrapple, a fried loaf of pork scraps and cornmeal, is a traditional food of which American community?

The Pennsylvania Dutch made scrapple from butchering scraps that would otherwise have been thrown away, so nothing went to waste.

The breakfast burrito is most notably said to originate in which regional American cuisine?

New Mexican cooks wrapped eggs and potatoes in tortillas long before Santa Fe's Tia Sophia's put 'breakfast burrito' on a menu in 1975.

What does 'wienerbrød', the Danish word for a Danish pastry, mean?

Viennese bread honours Austrian bakers who, the story goes, were hired when Denmark's bakery workers went on strike in 1850.

Which company held about 73% of the US frozen waffle market in 2009?

Eggo waffles vanished from shelves in 2009 after a Listeria cleanup and flooding shut its Atlanta plant and a Tennessee plant needed repairs.

What is added back to long-life commercial OJ after pasteurisation strips its flavour?

The juice is pasteurised and stripped of oxygen so it keeps, which is why 'not from concentrate' juice still tastes engineered.

Which baseball star was the first athlete pictured on a Wheaties box, in 1934?

The cereal had been created by accident in 1921 when a bran mixture spilled onto a hot stove.

Which rival's trademark complaint forced General Mills to rename Cheerioats as Cheerios in 1945?

The oat rings had launched under the original name on May 1, 1941.

Which brand said in 2020 that it would drop the chef long pictured on its box?

Cream of Wheat's owner said the face may be a real Chicago chef named Frank White, but dropped it because it reminded some shoppers of offensive older images.

Cyril Callister developed Vegemite in Melbourne from which ingredient?

Brewers' yeast went into Callister's spread because war had disrupted Marmite imports and Fred Walker's company wanted a local substitute.

Which food company took over Vegemite after Fred Walker's death in 1935?

Kraft's Vegemite was sent to war in Australian Army rations during World War II and rationed for civilians at home.