Breakfast Food Trivia
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This breakfast food trivia quiz has 98 free questions with answers and covers the first meal of the day from the Olney pancake race to the Egg McMuffin. There are questions on why the word breakfast exists at all, where the crescent-shaped croissant really comes from, why bagels are boiled, which hangover cure supposedly created eggs Benedict, what goes into a full English and an Ulster fry, and how a New York sanitarium gave the world granola. The modern era gets its due: the World's Fair that made Belgian waffles American, the mayonnaise company behind Eggo, the Post product that forced Kellogg's to rush out Pop-Tarts, the year the frosting arrived, the pop-up toaster patent, Quebec's stranglehold on maple syrup, the Salvation Army's Doughnut Day, Sweden's Cinnamon Roll Day and the essay that coined the word brunch. There are also questions on breakfasts from Mexico, the Maghreb, India and China. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia pages for each dish and brand, and each explanation adds one detail worth passing around the table.
30 of 98 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The word 'breakfast' literally refers to what?
Breaking the night's fast
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'.
Q 02In Britain, pancakes are traditionally eaten on which day, historically to use up ingredients before Lent?
Shrove Tuesday
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.
Q 03Crêpes are most closely associated with which region of France?
Brittany
Brittany's savoury crêpes use buckwheat flour, a crop suited to its wet, poor soils, where ordinary wheat grew badly.
Q 04The word 'waffle' entered English from which language?
Dutch
Dutch wafel gave English its waffle, but 'to waffle', meaning to talk vaguely, is a separate word thought to come from 'waff', to yelp.
Q 05'Bel-Gem' waffles took hold in America at which event?
The 1964 New York World's Fair
The 1964 New York World's Fair stand renamed Brussels waffles Bel-Gems after its Belgian owners found many Americans couldn't place Brussels.
Q 06Eggs Benedict tops a poached egg and ham on an English muffin with which sauce?
Hollandaise
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.
Q 07Which Manhattan restaurant, one claimed birthplace of eggs Benedict, gave its name to a famous steak?
Delmonico's
Delmonico's backs its claim with history: its chef Charles Ranhofer printed an almost identical 'Eggs à la Benedick' in his 1894 cookbook.
Q 08Bagels, boiled before they are baked, originated in which country's Jewish communities?
Poland
Poland's bagel went national in America when the Lenders, a baking family who came from Poland to Connecticut, began selling frozen bagels.
Q 09Unlike the New York style, a Montreal-style bagel is boiled in water sweetened with what?
Honey
Honey goes into the dough too, and the style reflects where in the old country Montreal's Jewish immigrant bakers learned their trade.
Q 10The croissant's crescent shape was inspired by which Austrian pastry?
The kipferl
The kipferl gave it the shape, but the flaky, butter-layered croissant is a 20th-century French creation.
Q 11Which breakfast spread began in 1946 as a solid loaf that had to be cut with a knife?
Nutella
Nutella's forerunner, Giandujot, used little cocoa and lots of local hazelnuts, because chocolate was scarce and costly in post-war Italy.
Q 12Which item belongs to a traditional full English breakfast rather than being a modern addition?
Black pudding
Black pudding is a classic, while hash browns are a newer filler that often takes the place of the traditional bubble and squeak.
Q 13The full breakfast variant of Northern Ireland is known as what?
The Ulster fry
The Ulster fry's soda farls take their name from an old Scots word for a fourth, since each round is cut into four.
Q 21In June 2018, IHOP briefly 'flipped' its name to IHOb to promote which food?
Burgers
Burgers were the point: IHOP wanted to shake its breakfast-first image and win more daytime and evening customers.
Q 22FEMA has used which restaurant chain's openings as an informal gauge of how badly a storm hit an area?
Waffle House
Waffle House readies standby crews before a storm so its restaurants can reopen fast, which is why a closed one is rare.
Q 23Which McDonald's breakfast item did franchisee Herb Peterson invent in the early 1970s?
Egg McMuffin
The Egg McMuffin gets its round egg from a Teflon ring, which Peterson had a local blacksmith make for his grill.
Q 14'Granula', the ancestor of granola, was invented in 1863 at a sanitarium in which state?
New York
New York's Dr. James Caleb Jackson called it granula, so John Harvey Kellogg renamed his similar cereal 'granola' to avoid a legal fight.
Q 15How does muesli traditionally differ from granola?
It is not baked
It is not baked: granola is baked with oil and sweetener into crunchy clusters, while muesli's oats stay raw.
Q 16Muesli was developed around 1900 by a physician for hospital patients in which country?
Switzerland
Switzerland's Dr. Bircher-Benner had the oats soaked overnight, the same method now sold as 'overnight oats'.
Q 17Steel-cut oats are also known by which name?
Irish oatmeal
Irish oatmeal is whole oat groats chopped into two or three pieces rather than rolled flat, which makes a chewier, nuttier porridge.
Q 18What is the usual French name for French toast?
Pain perdu
Pain perdu means 'lost bread': the dish rescues loaves too stale to eat on their own.
Q 19Which quaint British name has been used for French toast?
Poor knights of Windsor
Poor knights of Windsor were real too: retired officers housed at Windsor Castle, until William IV renamed them the Military Knights in 1833.
Q 20Which breakfast brand named a football bowl whose winners got to eat an edible mascot?
Pop-Tarts
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.
Q 24Grits are a porridge made from which grain?
Corn
Corn for hominy grits is soaked in an alkali such as lime, which frees its niacin and protected maize-eating peoples from pellagra.
Q 25Which US state declared grits its official prepared food in 2002?
Georgia
Georgia honours grits, but next door South Carolina legislates them: grits sold there must generally be enriched by law.
Q 26The word 'bacon' comes from a Proto-Germanic root meaning what?
Back meat
Back meat is the root, yet most American bacon is cut from the pork belly instead.
Q 27Which Canadian province produces most of the world's maple syrup?
Quebec
Quebec keeps a strategic reserve of maple syrup, and in 2011–12 thieves drained thousands of its barrels and refilled them with water.
Q 28Hanson Gregory claimed to have invented the ring-shaped doughnut in 1847 while working where?
Aboard a trading ship
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.
Q 29National Doughnut Day, the first Friday of June, grew from a 1938 event by which organisation?
The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army's World War I volunteers fried doughnuts for American soldiers in huts near the front lines in France.
Q 30Which chain did Bill Rosenberg's 1948 Quincy shop Open Kettle become?
Dunkin' Donuts
Dunkin' Donuts grew from Rosenberg's factory food trade, where coffee and doughnuts outsold everything else, so he built a shop around the pair.