Cheesecake
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40 free Cheesecake trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Cheesecake is far older than the cream cheese most people bake it with. Cooks in the ancient Mediterranean were sweetening fresh cheese with honey long before anyone thought of a crumb crust, and medieval English cookbooks carried curd tarts of their own. The dessert has been reinvented many times since, and almost every country that makes fresh cheese has a version to call its own. This quiz covers the whole story: the ancient and medieval recipes, the accident that produced American cream cheese, the delis and restaurants that made New York-style cheesecake famous, and the regional styles of Europe and Asia. There are questions on baking technique too, from crusts and tins to the tricks that prevent a cracked top, along with the sitcoms, songs and slang that borrowed the name. It is pitched for anyone who likes food history as much as dessert. Home bakers, pub quiz hosts and party planners hunting for quirky cheesecake facts should all find something new, and every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which human organ is named after an early Roman cheesecake made of layered dough, cheese and honey?
Placenta
The placenta was named for its flat, round shape, which was thought to resemble the cake. The Roman recipe stacked many layers of dough with cheese and covered the baked result in honey.
Q 02Which 1980s sitcom's four Miami housemates talked through problems over cheesecake at the kitchen table?
The Golden Girls
The Golden Girls made the late-night cheesecake summit a ritual, and each of its four lead actresses won a Primetime Emmy for the show.
Q 03The best-known cream cheese for cheesecake was first made in Chester, New York, but carries which city's name?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia was chosen in 1880 purely as marketing, because the city and the farms around it had a reputation for rich, high-quality dairy.
Q 04In which sitcom does aspiring actress Penny wait tables at The Cheesecake Factory until the seventh season?
The Big Bang Theory
The Big Bang Theory had Penny quit the restaurant to chase acting full time, though she had also trained as a bartender back in the first season.
Q 05The Sara Lee dessert brand began with a cream cheesecake that baker Charles Lubin named after which relative?
His daughter
His daughter Sara Lee Lubin was eight when her name went on the cake, and the whole business was soon renamed Kitchens of Sara Lee.
Q 06Which country's soufflé-style cheesecake was inspired by a chef's taste of käsekuchen in 1960s Berlin?
Japan
Japan's version, also called cotton cheesecake, gets its airy texture from whipping the egg whites and yolks separately.
Q 07Cheesecake is reputed to have been served to athletes at which ancient Greek event, first held in 776 BC?
The Olympic Games
The Olympic Games story is tradition rather than proof, but Greek poets of the 4th century BC did describe plakous, a cake of goat cheese, wheat flour and honey.
Q 08If pin-up photos of women are known in slang as cheesecake, which word describes glamour shots of muscular men?
Beefcake
Beefcake is believed to have been coined by Hollywood columnist Sidney Skolsky, and for decades such poses by actors were far rarer than pin-up layouts of actresses.
Q 09In a seventh-season Friends episode, which two characters get hooked on cheesecakes delivered for another tenant?
Rachel and Chandler
Rachel and Chandler share the episode with Phoebe juggling two dinner dates and Monica turning up uninvited at a cousin's wedding.
Q 10Which piece of bakeware, with latched sides that lift away from the base, is the usual choice for cheesecake?
Springform pan
A springform pan lets the ring come away without the cake being turned out, which suits desserts with a delicate crumb base.
Q 11Which fresh whey cheese fills Italy's baked crostata cheesecake and is layered into Sicilian cassata?
Ricotta
Ricotta has been made on the Italian peninsula since the Bronze Age, from the whey left over when other cheeses are produced.
Q 12Junior's, founded by Harry Rosen in 1950 and famous for its cheesecake, began in which New York City borough?
Brooklyn
Brooklyn loved the place enough that when it caught fire in 1981, a crowd watching the firefighters chanted for the cheesecake to be saved.
Q 13Which snack, inspired by a temperance minister's preaching, is crushed for the classic US cheesecake crust?
Graham crackers
Graham crackers trace back to Sylvester Graham, a Presbyterian minister who championed whole-grain bread and a vegetarian diet.
Q 21Sernik, a baked cheesecake made with the curd cheese twaróg since the 17th century, comes from which country?
Poland
Poland's sernik takes its name from ser, the Polish word for cheese, and the Kraków style is finished with a pastry lattice on top.
Q 22Which country's best-known cheesecake gets its vivid purple color from ube halaya, a jam of mashed yam?
Philippines
In the Philippines the yam jam is layered with cream cheese over a crushed-crumb base, and the cake can be baked or simply chilled until it sets.
Q 23Which French-named kitchen technique, credited to an ancient alchemist, helps stop a baking cheesecake from cracking?
Bain-marie
A bain-marie heats the batter gently and evenly, and its name means Mary's bath, after the alchemist Mary the Jewess, who was credited with inventing it.
Q 14Ashkenazi Jews traditionally eat cheesecake on which holiday, which marks the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai?
Shavuot
Shavuot is a dairy holiday, and one rabbinic explanation is that the newly given kosher laws left the Israelites' meat pots unfit for use, so they ate dairy instead.
Q 15The crustless burnt Basque cheesecake was created by Santiago Rivera at his bar La Viña in which Spanish city?
San Sebastián
San Sebastián's cake is baked very hot so the top caramelises while the centre stays custard-like, and locals seldom use the word burnt for it.
Q 16Germany's Käsekuchen is traditionally made with which soured fresh dairy product in place of cream cheese?
Quark
Quark is made by souring milk with bacterial cultures and straining it, and a firmer type sold as layer cheese is often used for baking.
Q 17Which setting agent firms up no-bake cheesecakes, including the South African version flavored with Amarula liqueur?
Gelatin
Gelatin sets the filling of whipped cream and cream cheese in the fridge, while Amarula adds the fruit of the African marula tree, also known as the elephant tree.
Q 18Which Broadway musical praises the cheesecake at Mindy's, a stand-in for the real New York restaurant Lindy's?
Guys and Dolls
Guys and Dolls drew on the stories of Damon Runyon, a devoted regular who wrote the Broadway restaurant into his fiction under the altered name.
Q 19David Overton opened the first Cheesecake Factory restaurant in 1978 in which upscale Southern California city?
Beverly Hills
Beverly Hills got a small salad-and-sandwich shop with ten cheesecakes on a one-page menu, built on a recipe his mother Evelyn had found in a Detroit newspaper.
Q 20Ostkaka, a crustless cheesecake eaten lukewarm with jam and cream, is a traditional dessert of which Nordic country?
Sweden
Sweden's ostkaka is curdled with rennet, and the style made in the Hälsingland region is firm enough to be compared with halloumi.
Q 24Eli's Cheesecake began in the late 1970s as the signature dessert of a celebrity-filled steakhouse in which US city?
Chicago
Chicago's first Taste of Chicago festival in 1980 put the cake on show, and Eli's later baked 2,000-pound cheesecakes for both of Bill Clinton's inaugurations.
Q 25Which British teatime staple, developed by two Scottish doctors in 1839, is crushed to make many cheesecake bases?
Digestive biscuits
Digestive biscuits were named for the belief that their sodium bicarbonate worked as an antacid, and chemists once sold them alongside indigestion powder.
Q 26Ancient Greeks offered the amphiphon, a cheesecake set with lighted candles, to which goddess at full moon?
Artemis
Artemis received the candle-lit cake in the month of Mounychion, one of many cakes that Greeks offered to their gods as a bloodless alternative to animal sacrifice.
Q 27Which British food writer's recipe, served with a licorice sauce, helped make Basque cheesecake a hit in Britain?
Nigella Lawson
Nigella Lawson borrowed the licorice sauce from Spanish chef Nieves Barragán Mohacho, and by 2021 the cake was being described as ubiquitous in the UK.
Q 28William Lawrence developed American cream cheese, the cheesecake staple, while trying to recreate which French cheese?
Neufchâtel
Neufchâtel is one of the oldest cheeses in France and is often sold in heart shapes, but the extra cream Lawrence added made something richer and more spreadable.
Q 29The family recipe behind the famous Junior's cheesecake of New York calls for which base in place of a crumb crust?
Sponge cake
Sponge cake sits under the filling in a recipe that had been in the Rosen family for three generations before a master baker helped refine it.
Q 30Which Roman statesman wrote down a recipe for libum, a cheesecake offered to the gods, in his farming manual?
Cato the Elder
Cato the Elder left the only recipe for the cake to survive from antiquity, a simple mix of flour and cheese curds. Its name comes from the Latin for making an offering.