Dessert Trivia
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166 free Dessert trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sixty-one dessert trivia questions and answers on the sweets people actually argue about: who really invented the pavlova, why a brownie owes its existence to a Chicago socialite, what tiramisu literally means, and which king supposedly ate himself to death on Lenten buns. The set roams the whole dessert cart. There are French classics like tarte Tatin, éclairs and croquembouche; Italian gelato, cannoli and zabaione; British puddings from Eton mess to spotted dick; American diner staples like the banana split, whoopie pie and Jell-O; and sweets from further afield including baklava, gulab jamun, mochi, mooncakes, halo-halo and brigadeiros. Difficulty runs from easy warm-ups to a few genuinely obscure origin stories. Every answer is checked against a cited encyclopaedia page, so it works for a bake-off night, a dinner party round or a food-themed pub quiz. Play it here for free, see your score and share it with whoever claims to know their puddings.
30 of 166 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the Italian name of the dessert tiramisu literally mean?
Pick me up
Tiramisù means 'pick me up' in Italian (tira mi sù), a nod to the coffee and sugar in its soaked ladyfingers and mascarpone; the dessert appeared in the Veneto and Friuli region only in the 1960s–70s.
Q 02Which New York restaurant is credited with naming baked Alaska after the 1867 purchase from Russia?
Delmonico's
Delmonico's supposedly coined 'baked Alaska' in 1876, and the restaurant's own recipe had been called 'Alaska, Florida' for its contrast of frozen ice cream and hot meringue.
Q 03The pavlova, the meringue dessert fought over by Australia and New Zealand, is named after a famous Russian what?
Ballerina
The ballerina Anna Pavlova toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926, and both countries claim to have created the meringue-and-cream dessert in her honour.
Q 04Franz Sacher, who created the Sachertorte as a teenager, served in the Vienna kitchen of which statesman?
Prince Metternich
Sixteen-year-old apprentice Franz Sacher devised the chocolate cake in 1832 for Prince Metternich, Austria's chancellor, when the head chef fell ill; Hotel Sacher and Demel later fought a court battle over the 'Original' name.
Q 05Tarte Tatin, the upside-down caramelised apple tart, is named after two sisters who ran what kind of business?
A hotel
Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin served it as the signature dish of the Hôtel Tatin in Lamotte-Beuvron, about 169 km south of Paris.
Q 06Banoffee pie was invented in 1971 at the Hungry Monk restaurant in which English county?
East Sussex
The Hungry Monk in Jevington, East Sussex, is where owner Nigel Mackenzie and chef Ian Dowding adapted a San Francisco coffee-toffee pie in 1971; adding banana made it so popular it never left the menu.
Q 07Legend says the first brownie was made at the Palmer House in 1893 for ladies at which event?
The Chicago World's Columbian Exposition
Bertha Palmer asked the Palmer House kitchen for a boxed-lunch dessert for ladies attending the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago; the walnut-and-apricot-glaze brownie was the result.
Q 08Which youth organisation did a 1925 Connecticut newspaper describe eating 'Some-mores'?
Girl Scouts
The Norwalk Hour in 1925 described Girl Scouts eating 'Some-mores' on a camp outing; the Girl Scouts' 1927 handbook Tramping and Trailing printed the first known recipe, and the contraction s'more took hold by the 1930s.
Q 09Bananas Foster, created at Brennan's in New Orleans in 1951, was named after a man who chaired what?
The city's Crime Commission
Richard Foster was a friend of owner Owen Brennan; at the time New Orleans was the main US port for bananas arriving from South America.
Q 10Peach Melba was created in the 1890s at London's Savoy Hotel by which celebrated French chef?
Auguste Escoffier
Auguste Escoffier, then the Savoy's chef, first served it on an ice swan to honour soprano Nellie Melba after she sang Wagner's Lohengrin at Covent Garden in 1892; the raspberry sauce came later.
Q 11The name of the cream-filled éclair comes from a French word meaning what?
Flash of lightning
Éclair is French for 'flash of lightning': one theory says it is eaten in a flash, another that its glossy icing glistens like lightning; the word is first recorded in the 1860s.
Q 12Rum baba reached France via Lorraine in the 18th century and is attributed to an exiled king of which country?
Poland
Stanislaus I supposedly revived a dried-out cake by soaking it in spirits; his daughter married Louis XV, which helped the idea travel.
Q 13Brazil's beloved brigadeiro, a chocolate fudge ball rolled in sprinkles, was created to promote what?
A presidential campaign
Q 21Boston cream pie is said to have been created for the 1856 opening of which hotel?
Parker House
The Parker House hotel, which opened in 1856, claims the cake; it descends from earlier 'pudding-cake pies' and appeared on menus as chocolate cream pie before taking Boston's name and becoming the Massachusetts state dessert in 1996.
Q 22Cherries jubilee, flambéed with kirsch over vanilla ice cream, was created for a jubilee of which monarch?
Queen Victoria
Auguste Escoffier is usually credited with creating it for Queen Victoria's jubilee, most accounts saying the Diamond Jubilee of 1897; the Victoria sponge is another dessert named for the same queen.
Q 23Baklava's Turkish version was probably perfected in the imperial kitchens of which Ottoman palace in Constantinople, today's Istanbul?
Confectioner Heloísa Nabuco de Oliveira made them for Brigadier Eduardo Gomes's 1945 presidential campaign; he lost the election to Eurico Dutra, but the condensed-milk sweet conquered the country.
Q 14The pastel de nata custard tart was created by monks at a monastery in which Lisbon parish?
Belém
The Jerónimos Monastery in Belém sold its recipe after closing in 1834; the buyers opened the Fábrica de Pastéis de Belém in 1837, where the secret recipe has been kept in a locked room ever since.
Q 15The caramelised, buttery kouign-amann originated around 1860 in which region of France?
Brittany
Kouign-amann is Breton for 'butter cake'; the Brittany fishing town of Douarnenez credits baker Yves-René Scordia with inventing the laminated, caramelised pastry around 1860.
Q 16The Australian lamington is believed to be named after a Governor of which state?
Queensland
Lord Lamington was Governor of Queensland from 1896 to 1901; his French-born chef Armand Galland reportedly improvised the coconut-coated sponge squares for unexpected guests at Government House in Brisbane.
Q 17In which Pennsylvania town did a 23-year-old soda jerk create the banana split in 1904, per most historians?
Latrobe
David 'Doc' Strickler, a pharmacy apprentice at Tassel's in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, was inspired by fruit-laden sundaes he saw on holiday in Atlantic City; Wilmington, Ohio, disputes the claim with its own 1907 story.
Q 18Frank Epperson said he invented the ice pop in 1905 by leaving a stirred drink out on a cold night, aged what?
11
Epperson said he was 11 in 1905 when he left a soda-powder drink with its stirring stick outside overnight in Oakland; he applied to patent his 'frozen confectionery' on a stick in 1923, first calling it the Epsicle.
Q 19Jell-O was trademarked in 1897 by Pearle Bixby Wait, whose day job was carpenter and maker of what?
Cough syrup
Pearle Wait of LeRoy, New York, made cough syrup and laxatives; he and his wife May flavoured gelatin with strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon, then sold Jell-O to neighbour Orator Woodward in 1899 for $450.
Q 20In 2011 which US state officially recognised the whoopie pie as its state treat?
Maine
Maine's 2011 law made the whoopie pie the official state treat while blueberry pie became the state dessert; that March bakers in South Portland, Maine, built a 1,062-pound whoopie pie for the record.
Topkapı
Topkapı Palace's kitchens are the likely birthplace of baklava in its Turkish form, though an archaic version was already made in the Byzantine empire; the word reached English in 1650.
Q 24In Spain, long thick churros are known in some regions by which name?
Porras
Porras are the thicker, softer cousins of churros in Madrid and much of Spain; both are choux-style dough piped through a star tip into hot oil and dipped in coffee at breakfast or thick hot chocolate.
Q 25Gulab jamun is made mainly from khoya. What is khoya?
Milk reduced to a soft dough
The dough balls are deep-fried at low temperature, then soaked in syrup scented with cardamom and rose water, kewra or saffron.
Q 26Cannoli, fried pastry tubes filled with sweetened ricotta, come from which Italian island?
Sicily
In Palermo they are finished with candied orange zest; on the mainland the pastry is simply called cannolo siciliano.
Q 27Panna cotta, 'cooked cream', is usually cited as a traditional dessert of which northern Italian region?
Piedmont
Despite the tradition, the name does not appear in Italian cookbooks before the 1960s; Piedmont added it to its list of traditional products in 2001.
Q 28What makes kulfi, the frozen dessert of the Indian subcontinent, denser than regular ice cream?
It is not churned while freezing
The lack of churning keeps air out, so it counts as a distinct category of frozen dairy dessert rather than an ice cream.
Q 29Traditional Cantonese mooncakes are filled with a paste made from what?
Lotus seed
Cantonese mooncakes are filled with sweet lotus seed paste, often around a salted duck-egg yolk standing for the full moon; the round pastry is about 10 cm across and is eaten at the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Q 30A tres leches cake is soaked in evaporated milk, whole milk and which third milk?
Condensed
Condensed milk is the third, and the cake's airy sponge is why it drinks up all that liquid without turning soggy; the recipe spread with US condensed-milk exports to Nicaragua.