50 free Sausages trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Sausages are one of humanity's oldest ways of wasting nothing, and every food culture has its own tube of seasoned meat. This quiz covers them all, from an Akkadian tablet to a hot-dog-eating contest on Coney Island. The easy questions ask why British sausages are called bangers, what goes into black pudding, which country gave us bratwurst, what makes chorizo red and where the frankfurter and the wiener got their names. From there it moves into the details: what a casing is made of, why haggis is a Burns Night dish, how long a Cumberland sausage is, why a Bavarian never eats a weisswurst after noon and what Herta Heuwer poured over a sausage in 1949. The harder end is for the true wurst enthusiast: the Roman lucanica, the Byzantine emperor who banned blood sausage, the 1313 Nuremberg record, the coronation frankfurters, Charles Feltman's Coney Island cart, the Tad Dorgan myth, the sausage that started Oscar Mayer, mortadella's mortar, boerewors law, saveloy etymology, the pigs' brains in cervelat, the Lorne sausage, Greggs' 140 million sausage rolls a year and the Kobayashi era of competitive eating. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on sausages and their national varieties, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our cheese, bread and world food quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01From which Latin word meaning 'seasoned with salt' does 'sausage' ultimately derive?
Salsicus
It reached English in the mid-15th century, spelled sawsyge, via Old North French saussiche.
Q 02What are traditional sausage casings made from?
Cleaned intestines
Industrial sausages now often use collagen, cellulose or even plastic instead.
Q 03Which Greek poet mentioned a kind of blood sausage in the Odyssey?
Homer
Aristophanes' play The Knights is about a sausage seller who ends up running Athens.
Q 04Which region of ancient Italy gave its name to the famous sausage lucanica?
Lucania
The name lives on in Mediterranean sausages such as Greek loukaniko.
Q 05Which Byzantine emperor outlawed blood sausages in the 10th century after food poisonings?
Leo VI the Wise
Botulism itself is named from the Latin for sausage.
Q 06Why are British sausages nicknamed 'bangers'?
They tend to burst when cooked
The tight skin shrinks in the pan; served with mash they make bangers and mash.
Q 07What is the minimum meat content for a product labelled 'pork sausages' in the UK?
42%
For sausages of other meats the floor is 32%.
Q 08What is the Christmas side dish of small sausages wrapped in bacon called?
Pigs in blankets
They usually use chipolatas alongside the roast turkey.
Q 09What is toad in the hole?
Sausages baked in Yorkshire pudding batter
It appeared in print by 1762 as a way to stretch cheap meat in poor households.
Q 10Which English county's sausage is sold in a long flat coil up to 50 centimetres long?
Cumberland
The meat is chopped rather than minced and the seasoning is dominated by pepper.
Q 11What is Scotland's square, casing-free breakfast slice called?
Lorne sausage
It has no casing and is sliced from a block; it is rarely seen outside Scotland.
Q 12Which non-meat ingredient, in high proportion, sets British black pudding apart?
Cereal such as oatmeal
It is a delicacy in Stornoway and in Bury, Lancashire.
Q 13What was haggis traditionally encased in?
A sheep's stomach
It contains sheep's heart, liver and lungs with oatmeal, suet and onion.
Which poet's 1786 'Address to a Haggis' made it Scotland's national dish?
Q 21Who invented currywurst at a West Berlin food stand in 1949?
Herta Heuwer
She got ketchup and curry powder from British soldiers and patented her sauce as Chillup in 1951.
Q 22Roughly how many currywursts are eaten in Germany each year, per its Currywurst Museum?
800 million
About 70 million of them are eaten in Berlin alone.
Q 23Frankfurter Würstchen were traditionally handed out at what events?
Imperial coronations
They were served at coronations on the Römerberg from Maximilian II onward.
Robert Burns
It is served at Burns suppers on or near his birthday, January 25.
Q 15Which British bakery chain sells sausage rolls by the hundreds of millions each year?
Greggs
It sells about 2.5 million every week, roughly 140 million a year.
Q 16What gives Spanish chorizo its deep red colour and smokiness?
Pimentón, smoked paprika
It comes in picante and dulce varieties depending on the pimentón used.
Q 17In which German city is bratwurst first documented, in 1313?
Nuremberg
Its tiny Nürnberger Rostbratwurst, first recorded in 1567, weighs just 20 to 25 grams.
Q 18What is the characteristic herb of Franconian bratwurst?
Marjoram
The tiny Franconian city version is grilled over a beechwood fire and served six at a time on pewter.
Q 19A Bavarian saying holds that weisswurst must not be allowed to hear what?
The noon church bells
The unsmoked veal sausage spoils fast, so it is eaten between breakfast and lunch.
Q 20What are weisswürste made from?
Minced veal and pork fatback
They are flavoured with parsley, lemon, mace, onion, ginger and cardamom.
Q 24The word 'wiener' refers to which city?
Vienna
Oddly, in Austria the same sausage is usually called a Frankfurter Würstl.
Q 25Which Coney Island pieman had a cart built in 1867 to boil sausages and keep buns warm?
Charles Feltman
He leased land for a permanent restaurant there in 1871.
Q 26Which cartoonist is wrongly credited with coining 'hot dog' around 1900?
Tad Dorgan
His earliest documented use of the term is 1906, after it was already in print.
Q 27On what date is the Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest held each year?
July 4
It takes place at the original Coney Island stand at Surf and Stillwell Avenues.
Q 28Which Japanese eater won six straight Nathan's contests from 2001 to 2006?
Takeru Kobayashi
He was nicknamed 'The Tsunami' and has not competed since 2009 over a contract dispute.
Q 29What is the name of Oscar Mayer's hot-dog-shaped promotional vehicle, first built in 1936?
Wienermobile
It was briefly renamed the Frankmobile in 2023 before the old name returned.
Q 30Which sausages did the Mayer brothers sell at their Chicago meat market in 1883?
Bratwurst and liverwurst
The German-immigrant brothers served Chicago's German neighbourhoods.