The great delicious. food and drink Christmas quiz

So the turkey’s been gobbled, and the last of the roasties devoured? Instead of reaching for the remote, revive the grey matter: get the scorepad out, appoint a quizmaster and pit your wits against one another. Winner gets an extra Christmas cracker…

Take a look at our other after-dinner quiz too – you could even combine them both and go for an even longer quiz!

Print off the PDF version and hand it out to friends and family – don’t forget to remove the answers from the bottom of the page though!

1.What name is given 
to the square sausage 
served in traditional 
Scottish breakfasts?

2. Which jazz musician would often sign his letters ‘Red Beans and Ricely Yours’?

3. What is 
poitín?

4. What is 
poutine?

5. Approximately how 
many packets of 
biscuits does a British household get through 
every year?

6. Which biscuit containing currants is named after an 18th-century Italian general?

7.  What are the spices in Chinese five-spice powder?

8. The remains of the earliest cultivated potato date to 2500BC. In which modern country were they found?

9. How many bottles 
are in a Nebuchadnezzar 
of champagne?

10. Which popular snack 
item can be used to 
make dynamite?

11. Which tinned fruit was one of the first food items to be eaten on the moon?

12. What do gel manicures and jelly beans have in common?

13. Alan Shepard famously took a peanut to the moon. What did John Young take into space in 1965?

14. Which common 
condiment used to 
be known as black gold?

15. In the Raymond Briggs book The Snowman, what does James use to make the snowman’s nose?

16. Italian ‘tipo 00’ flour 
is recommended for making pasta, but what does the ‘00’ actually mean?

17. What is 
mageirocophobia?

18. Which Christmas spice can cause hallucinations if consumed to excess?

19. What is carmine red food colouring made from?

20. Which love-it-or-
loathe-it spread 
was first produced in 1902?

21. If you were to receive 
all the gifts listed in 
“The 12 Days of Christmas”, 
how many presents would 
you have?

22. Which Australian 
opera singer was immortalised by having a dessert named after him/her?

23. What’s the most 
popular tipple left 
out by children for Santa 
on Christmas Eve?

24. Brevibacterium epidermidis is used to make limberger cheese. The same bacteria is also found 
in what part of the body?

25. In which year was Coca-Cola invented?

26. In which 1987 foodie 
film was ‘savarin 
au rum avec des figues 
et fruit glacée’ served 
as the dessert?

27. James Bond likened drinking which 1953 vintage champagne above 38°F to “listening to The Beatles without ear muffs”?

28. What was the colour 
of Booker T and 
The MGs’ onions?

29. What is 
injera?

30. What is SPAM 
short for?

Answers: 1. Lorne  2. Louis Armstrong  3. A pot-distilled Irish spirit  4. A dish from Quebec of chips, gravy and cheese  5. 106  6. Garibaldi  7. Fennel, cloves, cinnamon, star anise and sichuan pepper  8. Peru  9. 20 10. Peanuts  11. Peaches (as well as bacon, cookies, fruit juice and coffee)  12. They use shellac (made using insect secretions)  13. A corned beef sandwich  14. Pepper  15. A tangerine  16. It has a licence to kill…? No, that it’s the most finely ground  17. A fear of cooking  18. Nutmeg  19. Crushed cochineal insects  20. Marmite 21. 364  22. Dame Nellie Melba  23. Beer ( followed by whisky and sherry)  24. The feet  25. 1886  26. Babette’s Feast  27. Dom Pérignon 28. Green 29.  Ethiopian flatbread  30. Spiced ham

Bonus questions 

1.  Who wafted in, not from paradise, but from Luton Airport in a 1970s Campari tv commercial? Watch the advert.
Lorraine Chase

2. Which Christmas song opens the 1987 American action comedy film Lethal Weapon? Watch the film.
Jinglebell Rock

3. In the 2005 American Christmas comedy Elf, the characer Buddy names the four elf food groups. What are they? Watch the film.
Candy, candy cane, candy corn and syrup

4. Bowls of nuts are a popular Christmas snack. But which character said “This is me in a nutshell” in 1997’s grooviest film? Watch the film.
Austin Powers

5. What’s the name of the carrot who saves Christmas in Aldi’s 2017 Christmas tv commercial? Watch the advert.
Kevin