50 free Waffle trivia questions with answers — food & drink quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
40 free Waffle trivia questions with answers. Waffle trivia goes back further than most food quizzes: the Greeks were pressing flat cakes between hot metal plates, medieval guilds fought over who could make them, and the first written recipe is a 14th-century husband explaining the job to his wife. From there this quiz follows the waffle everywhere it went. The Brussels waffle and the one Americans call Belgian, which is really a brand name. The Liege pockets, the Hong Kong grid cake, the stroopwafel that is split apart while it is still hot. Then the industrial era: the 1869 patent that made the iron flippable, the frozen waffle invented in a San Jose plant in 1953, the chain that opened in Georgia in 1955, and the running shoe that started as ruined kitchen equipment. Difficulty runs from easy to expert and every answer is written against an encyclopaedic source with the sentence that proves it, so a waffle argument at breakfast can be settled properly.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The English word 'waffle' comes directly from which language?
Dutch
Behind it sits the Frankish word for honeycomb, which is exactly what the iron leaves behind.
Q 02The Frankish root of the word means what?
Honeycomb
The first English appearance of the word comes in an 18th-century recipe that begins 'Take flower, cream'.
Q 03In which year does the word first appear in English?
1725
By then the thing itself had been cooked in Europe for four centuries.
Q 04What did the ancient Greeks cook between hot metal plates?
Flat cakes
Those plates became the long-handled irons of medieval Europe, held over an open fire.
Q 05What was the medieval ancestor of the waffle called?
The oublie
In its earliest form it was flour and water only, exactly like a communion wafer.
Q 06In which year did the guild of medieval wafer-makers form?
1270
Its members went on to make the light pastries that turned into waffles.
Q 07What brought flavourings like orange blossom water into these wafers in the 11th century?
The Crusades
Before that, sweetness came from locally sourced honey, if it came at all.
Q 08The first known waffle recipe, from the late 14th century, was written by whom?
A husband instructing his young wife
His instructions end with the practical bit: grease the iron with an oiled cloth if the dough sticks.
Q 09Which 16th-century painter's work shows waffles in enough detail to count the grid?
Bruegel
The pattern counts out as a 12 by 7 grid with square sides, implying a thin batter much like a Brussels waffle.
Q 10Brussels waffles are easiest to tell from Liege waffles by what?
Their rectangular sides
They are leavened with egg white or ale yeast, which is what gives them the big open pockets.
Q 11Who formalised the Brussels waffle recipe in 1842?
Florian Dacher
He was a Swiss baker working in Ghent who had trained under pastry chefs in central Brussels.
Q 12Where does the term 'Belgian waffle' actually come from?
A brand called Bel-Gem
Maurice Vermersch, a vendor from Brussels, promoted it, and the thicker style caught on in America.
Q 13At which event was the thick Belgian style popularised in America?
The 1964 New York World's Fair
The tell is the iron: a Belgian waffle needs plates an inch and a half deep.
Q 21Where does the Eggo brand name come from?
An earlier mayonnaise
The same name later covered waffle mix and potato chips before the frozen waffle took over.
Q 22Which company bought Eggo in 1968?
Kellogg
Four years later Leo Burnett handed them the line 'L'eggo my Eggo', which has outlived several ad agencies.
Q 23Because the slogan sounded like a toy brand, the waffles were later made in the shape of what?
Lego bricks
The waffles were produced through a collaboration with The Lego Group in the later 2000s.
Q 14What leavens a standard American waffle?
Baking powder
They come out denser and thinner than the Belgian kind, and get treated as a sweet breakfast.
Q 15How is a Hong Kong 'grid cake' eaten?
Folded into a semicircle
Butter, peanut butter and sugar go on one side first, and street hawkers sell it warm.
Q 16Who patented the first stove-top waffle iron, in 1869?
Cornelius Swartwout
His improvement was a handle and a swivelling hinge, so the iron could be flipped without burns.
Q 17What did that 1869 patent add to the design?
A handle and swivelling hinge
Irons of a sort had existed since the 1400s, but flipping one over a fire was a good way to lose the waffle.
Q 18Which company introduced the first commercial waffle maker to run on mains power, in 1918?
General Electric
Waffles were moving indoors: by then only 29 professional oublieurs were left working in Paris.
Q 19How many professional waffle craftsmen remained in Paris by the early 20th century?
29
The trade had collapsed into home cooking, helped along by boxed mixes in the 1930s.
Q 20Who invented the frozen Eggo waffle, in 1953?
Frank Dorsa
He worked out how to cook, freeze and package the things at scale, which nobody had managed before.
Q 24At the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, what did Ernest Hamwi curl into an ice cream holder?
A waffle cookie
An ice cream vendor beside him had run out of paper cups, and the modern cone was the improvisation.
Q 25Chicken and waffles began as part of which culinary tradition?
Pennsylvania Dutch cooking
That original version is plain waffle, pulled stewed chicken and gravy, no syrup anywhere.
Q 26Which 1938 Harlem establishment popularised the soul food version?
Wells Supper Club
That version keeps the waffle as breakfast, with butter and syrup, and puts fried chicken beside it.
Q 27Before chicken, which food did hotels outside Philadelphia serve with waffles in the early 1800s?
Fried catfish
The fish was seasonal, so the kitchens switched to a bird that was available all year.
Q 28Pouring rubber into a kitchen iron produced which running-shoe innovation?
The Nike waffle sole
Bill Bowerman wrecked his wife's Belgian waffle iron doing it, around 1970 or 1971.
Q 29Whose waffle iron did the Nike co-founder destroy in the experiment?
His wife's
He had already designed the Nike Cortez, which stayed in production for decades.
Q 30Where did the first Waffle House open, in 1955?
Avondale Estates, Georgia
It opened over Labor Day weekend and the original building is now a museum.