Q 01/05

The idiom 'eat humble pie' comes from 'umble pie', a low-status dish made from what?

A) Stale bread

B) Deer innards

C) Boiled mutton

D) Salted herring

Answer · why

B) Deer innards

Deer innards, called umbles, filled umble pie, considered low-class food; with the h of 'humble' then silent, the two similar-sounding words merged in...

Q 02/05

What did medieval cooks call a pie's thick, sturdy pastry case, using a word that then simply meant a box or basket?

A) Coffins

B) Cradles

C) Barrels

D) Lanterns

Answer · why

A) Coffins

Coffins were pastry before they were burial boxes: the pie-crust sense dates from the late 14th century, the funeral one only from the 1520s, and the ...

Q 03/05

A 1549 Italian cookbook gave a recipe for pies containing what, a between-courses amusement for 16th-century diners?

A) Gold coins

B) Hidden rings

C) Live birds

D) Live frogs

Answer · why

C) Live birds

Live birds flew out when the crust was cut, a banquet stunt of the kind remembered in the 'four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie' of Sing a Song o...

Q 04/05

Which penny-dreadful villain's victims were baked into meat pies by his partner in crime, Mrs Lovett?

A) Varney the Vampire

B) Spring-heeled Jack

C) Dick Turpin

D) Sweeney Todd

Answer · why

D) Sweeney Todd

Sweeney Todd first appeared in The String of Pearls, serialised in 1846–47, where a lever on his barber's chair tips customers backward through a trap...

Q 05/05

Which jam-filled German pastry powers the urban legend that JFK called himself a doughnut in a 1963 speech?

A) Stollen

B) Lebkuchen

C) Berliner

D) Bienenstich

Answer · why

C) Berliner

Berliner is the jelly doughnut's name across much of Germany, but the idea that 'Ich bin ein Berliner' meant 'I am a doughnut' only emerged two decade...