Edible People Trivia Quiz

Answer: Beef Wellington

You can take your choice of three stories about the origin of Beef Wellington. One story has it that the winner of the Battle of Waterloo had impaired taste buds and always left it to his chef to decide what should be served for dinner. While a man may not be a hero to his valet, if you choose this story then it is clear that Wellington was a hero to his chef who concocted this delectable dish and named it in his employer's honour. A second story is that that the Duke's taste buds were quite intact and he loved this particular beef dish so much that he had it served at every formal dinner he gave, and his guests dubbed it Beef Wellington. The final story has to do with the fact that there are those who think that the shape of Beef Wellington resembles the other eponymous connection to Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington - the Wellington boot. Whatever its beginnings, it's a superb dish.

There really is a Washington Pie, by the way, named for George Washington, another famous general. Washington Pie, though, is not a pie at all, but a cake and contains no beef whatsoever.

Beef Stroganoff was created by Charles Briere, a French chef who was in the employ of the powerful Stroganoff family in St. Petersburg, Russia. Chef Briere concocted this chopped beef/sour cream/mushrooms/noodles dish because his employer, Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganoff, had no teeth and consequently couldn't chew anything. In 1891 Briere entered his recipe in the 1891 'L'Art Culinaire' competition and it won first place.

And finally, Bonaparte's Ribs is the name given to an early nineteenth century English boiled sweet (hard candy) that featured the colours of Napoleon's standard. It probably made English children feel very patriotic to be putting the bite on Boney!

Answer: Hamburger Soup - Ronald Reagan

Clearly, the occupant of the highest office in the land must not defend only the Constitution but the cuisine of the United States as well, and when Ronald Reagan professed a liking for French soups he found himself in the soup! Critics labelled Reagan an elitist (the same charge they levelled at Nancy when she bought the new china for the White House). The White House rallied quickly and published the recipe for good old American Hamburger Soup on March 11, 1986, just to prove, I suppose, that the Great Communicator had merely misspoken (that's a made-up White House word) himself.

Here's the recipe for Ronald Reagan's Hamburger Soup if you want to try it yourself. N.B.: FunTrivia members not based in the U.S. need to be aware that hominy is dried corn (maize to you) soaked or cooked in an alkali solution (FunTrivia member Idubose says lye water and FunTrivia member Mitzifaye says wood ash lye solution - either way, it sounds very unappetizing to me) until the hull and germ are removed. I assume that you make little lumps of hominy to make the dumplings. You can substitute dumplings of your own choice, or leave them out altogether if you choose. (Thank you Idubose and Mitzifaye for that information - and also to Maygrayuk for correcting my math in the conversions from US measures to metric - math was never my strong point!)

To make four quarts (or 3.75 litres) of hamburger soup you'll need:
2 lbs (908g) lean ground beef; 2 tbsp (30mL) butter; 2 c (.48L) diced onion; 2 gloves garlic, chopped; 1-1/2 c(.36L) sliced carrot; 1/4 tsp (1.25mL) ground black pepper; 10 oz (280g) canned hominy; 1 c (.24L) diced green pepper; 12 c (2.84L) beef broth; 1 lb (.454g) chopped tomato, canned or fresh; 2 c (.48L) sliced celery.

Melt butter in large saucepan or soup kettle. Brown the meat. Add onions, garlic, carrots, green pepper and celery. Cover and let simmer for 10 minutes. Add beef broth, chopped tomato and ground pepper and simmer over low heat for 35 minutes. Add hominy. Bring to boil and let soup boil for 10 minutes.

Serves four to six people.

I recommend good old American apple pie for dessert, especially if you occupy any elected office in the U.S.

Answer: Reuben Kolakofsky

Let's get rid of Reuben Schmidt and Gerald Reuben right away - neither one of them exists anywhere but in my head, as far as I know, and they certainly had no hand in the invention of the Reuben sandwich. Arnold Reuben is the other contender for the honour of creating the Reuben sandwich at his restaurant in New York - but that's a long way from being a grocer in Omaha.

Answer: Marquise de Pompadour

Jeanne Poisson, the Marquise de Pompadour was the mistress of King Louis XV of France from 1745 until her death in 1764 and has many dishes named for her. I've always enjoyed the irony of Sole Pompadour, since Poisson is, of course, the French word for fish! Madame P. also had a hairstyle named for her.

I am not aware of any dishes named for la Marquise de Maintenon, who was never the mistress of the King of France, but the very religious and proper governess to his illegitimate children by the Marquise de Montespan. Madame de Maintenon had such a good, sobering influence on the flighty French court that the king came to value her highly. She became a confidante of the queen, Maria Theresa of Austria, and when the queen died in 1683, It was Madame de Maintenon who was at her bedside. Madame de Maintenon and Louis XIV were secretly married sometime during the winter of 1685-86. The marriage was morganatic since Madame de Maintenon was not nobly born and therefore could not be crowned Queen of France.

The Duchesse d'Etampes was the mistress of Francois I and is not remembered in food or drink, as far as I can ascertain, and the Duchesse d'Aubigny (who was also the Duchess of Portsmouth) was one of the many, many mistresses of King Charles II of England (he wasn't called the Merry Monarch for nothing). I am not aware of food/drinks named for her and if there were any, they'd probably taste bad since she was not a pleasant person by all accounts.

Answer: Rita Hayworth

There are almost as many stories about the origin of the Margarita as there are bars in Las Vegas! The only name on this list that applies, however, is Hayworth's, whose real name was Margarita Cansino. Enrique Bastate Gutierrez claims to have invented named the tequila-based cocktail for Hayworth in Tijuana sometime in the 1940s. Margarita Samas, a Dallas socialite, claimed that she first concocted the margarita in 1948 and named it for herself, while Carlos Herrera, owner of a Tijuana restaurant, always maintained he created the margarita in 1938/9 for American actress Marjorie King who was allergic to all forms of alcohol except tequila and didn't like drinking straight shots. Then again, a Nevada bartender named Red Hinton claimed the crown because he said that he invented the margarita in honour of his girlfriend Margarita Mendez.

If anyone named a drink of any kind after Greta Garbo, I'm not aware of it, and any drink named for Margaret O'Brien, child star of the '40s and '50s, would be more likely to have ingredients along the lines of a Shirley Temple. Rita Moreno does not seem to have been immortalized in food or drink, either.

However, when it comes to the margarita, you can seemingly pick an origin, any origin.

Answer: Lemuel Benedict

I doubt if anyone would name any dish after Benedict Arnold, who betrayed the American Revolutionary cause, and while St. Benedict may have enjoyed poached eggs in his cave in Subiaco, Italy, he certainly didn't have access to Canadian bacon (he lived in the 6th century, after all) or English muffins. Pope Benedict XVI has a variation of Eggs Benedict named for him, called, amazingly, Eggs Benedict XVI. In this version, rye bread and German sausage or sauerbraten replace the muffins and bacon.

So that leaves Lemuel Benedict, a New York stockbroker who staggered into the Waldorf Hotel one morning in 1894 seeking a cure for the mother of all hangovers. He decided that a breakfast of toast, bacon, and poached eggs with Hollandaise sauce on the side would do the trick. The maitre d' at the Waldorf added Mr. Benedict's hangover cure to the menu, but only after including truffles, changing the toast to English muffins (which are really nothing like English muffins, folks) and substituting Canadian bacon (called back bacon in Canada) for the bacon strips specified by the hungover Mr. B.

Answer: True

Absolutely true, and St. James the Great, the first apostle to be martyred (c 44CE) is the St. Jacques to whom the dish is dedicated (Jacques is the French version of James, you see, and coquille is the French word for scallop).

The scallop shell was the symbol used by mediaeval pilgrims visiting the shrine of Sant Iago (yes, that's Spanish for St. James) in Santiago de Compostela in Spain, one of the major magnets for pilgrims in those days. While there is no mention of it before the seventh century, the story was put around that James had brought the Gospel to Spain. Maybe it was the Spanish Tourist Board of the day that circulated that story in order to get the pilgrim trade.

I have absolutely no clue as to when Coquilles St. Jacques hit the world's menus, nor do I know who is responsible for creating this wonderful dish. I'm just grateful to whomever it was.

Answer: Fettucine Alfredo

According to the legend, an early-twentieth century chef who ran a restaurant in Rome created this dish for his wife somewhere between 1914 and 1920. His name was Alfredo di Lelio, and one wonders why he didn't name it for his wife rather than for himself. Anyway, despite Alf's ego, his pasta dish found favour with tourists and became popular in many other parts of the world. (There's another story that claims the dish was named for the Roman restaurant Alfredo all'Augusteo, where it was first served in the 1960s, but that seems somewhat late to me.)

Macaroni Lucullus is named for Lucius Licinius Lucullus Ponticus (c. 105-56 BCE), a retired Roman general who has the distinction of being the world's first recorded gastronome. After retiring from the battlefield, Lucullus settled down on his estates near Rome to pursue his passion for gardening and cuisine and is famous for his Lucullan feasts (a term which has come to mean any dinner party with a menu that features extravagant dishes). He used only the most expensive ingredients for the dishes for his dinner parties - truffles, foie gras (both of which are required for Macaroni Lucullus), cock'scombs, sweetbreads, artichoke hearts, asparagus tips, peacock's tongues, fine wines like Madeira and so on.

As for the others, Pasta Primavera is merely pasta served with a garnish of fresh spring vegetables (primavera is the Italian word for spring), and I made up Tortellini Angela.

Answer: Carpaccio

Vittorio Carpaccio (1450-1525) was a Venetian artist of the High Renaissance period. According to Arrigo Cipriani, son of Harry's Bar founder Giuseppe Cipriani, his father created Carpaccio for a regular customer, the Countess Amalia Nani Mocenigo. Her doctor had told her to avoid cooked meat, so Giuseppe came up with Carpaccio for her - thin slices of raw beef, pounded to make them even thinner and dressed with a mustard sauce. Giuseppe named it Carpaccio because the colour of the meat reminded him of the particular shades of red favoured by the artist in his paintings.

Carpaccio has become a staple on the Harry's Bar menu, but if you feel inclined to ogle the famous habitues of Harry's Bar (you're too late for Orson Welles, Ernest Hemingway and Truman Capote, but you might catch a glimpse of Woody Allen or Nicole Kidman, among others) be sure to stuff your wallet! A single serving of Carpaccio will set you back approximately $75.00 American (or close to forty pounds in British currency).

Harry's Bar doesn't serve beef dishes named for the other three Venetian painters listed, but you can enjoy one of their hallmark Bellinis. The Bellini is a Mimosa-like drink made with peach nectar and Prosecco, an Italian sparkling white wine, named for Giovanni Bellini, the High Renaissance Venetian painter who like to use peach tones in his paintings.

Answer: Dom Perignon

Pierre Perignon was born c. 1638 at Saint-Menehould in the Champagne region of France. When he was 19, he became a Benedictine monk at the Abbey of Saint-Vannes in Verdun. In 1668 he transferred to the Abbey of Hautvilliers in Epernay where he served as cellarmaster until his death in 1715. His knowledge of wine-making led to the improvement of the quality of the wines produced by the Abbey. Under his aegis the Abbey doubled the size of its vineyards and its wines became a byword for excellence. Out of respect for his good stewardship, he was referred to as Dom (short for Dominus/a, the Latin for master/mistress, the title usually reserved for Benedictine abbots and abbesses only), and when he died at age 77 he was buried in the section of the Abbey of Hautvilliers set aside for abbots.

One of the myths surrounding Dom Perignon is that he invented champagne. He didn't, but his rules for wine-making (which were published in 1718 by Canon Godinot) were instrumental in making it the premier wine of France. Dom Perignon believed that this fine wine should be made only from Pinot-Noir (on the basis that white grapes are too likely to enter refermentation which was the ruin of good wine in Perignon's view), that vines should be regularly pruned so that they would grow no higher than three feet, that harvesting should be carried out only when weather conditions were cool and damp (Perignon recommended early morning before the dew disappeared), that bruised or broken grapes should be discarded, along with rotten or over-large grapes, and that wine presses were to be used instead of treading in order to reduce the length of time required for maceration. Dom Perignon was a pioneer of organic wine-making, eschewing additives of any kind.

Another myth was that Dom Perignon was blind. There's no truth in that, either, and the idea seems to have arisen from Dom Perignon's habit of tasting the grapes before blending, without knowing from which vineyard they came (blind taste-testing, as it were). Nor did Dom Perignon introduce the concept of blending Champagne wines; he advocated the blending of the grapes before sending them to the wine-presses.

The first bottle of Dom Perignon champagne was produced by Moet et Chandon in 1936.