Food Tales Trivia Quiz

Answer: A queen of Italy

Margherita of Savoy was queen of Italy from 1878 to 1900. On a visit to Naples, a local pizzamaker wanted to honor her by creating a special pizza with the colors of the Italian flag, green basil, white mozzarella and red tomatoes. The queen liked the pizza, "and the rest is history".

Answer: Pain perdu

Pain perdu means "lost bread". This is because it was a way of using stale bread, that otherwise would have been thrown away, or "lost".

Answer: A general

The Viscount of Chateaubriand (1768-1848), was Napoleon's ambassador to Prussia and is considered the creator of French Romanticism in literature, besides being a gourmet. His personal chef, Montmireil, created this decadent dish for him. There are slightly different versions of it, but my favorite is Chateaubriand for two: beef filet, served with Bearnaise sauce and seven different vegetables.

Answer: Chicken Marengo

On June 14, 1800, Napoleon defeated the Austrians after a bloody battle at Marengo, a village in northern Italy. After the battle, the army cook fed the hungry soldiers a dish created with the ingredients he found in the village - chicken, tomatoes, black olives and wine.
The story goes that Napoleon,being superstitious, from then on requested the same dish before every battle. Does anybody know what he ate at Waterloo?

Answer: A restaurant owner

This salad was invented in 1937 by Robert. H. Cobb, owner of the famous restaurant - the Brown Derby in Hollywood. One evening after all employees had left, he was asked to provide dinner for Sid Grauman of Grauman Chinese Theater. So he raided the pantry and refrigerator, where he found lettuce, chicken. ham, tomatoes, hard boiled eggs, blue cheese and avocado, and combined them in a salad. He was so pleased with the result that he added it to the restaurant's menu.

Answer: A missionary

Clementines are an accidental hybrid of a tangerine and a Seville orange, which is bitter. They were discovered by a French missionary in Algeria, in the garden of an orphanage in Misserghin, near Oran, in the early 1900s. Later on, clementines were introduced in the US.

Answer: True

The German chocolate cake that we know did not originate in Germany, but in the US. In 1852 the American Sam German created a type of baking chocolate that was named Baker's German's Sweet Chocolate in his honor. In the 1950s a recipe for German's chocolate cake appeared, which became very popular. Later on, the s from the possessive form disappeared and it became simply German chocolate cake, creating the false idea that it had originated in Germany.

Answer: A maitre d'

This is another serendipitous creation by Ignacio (Nacho) Anaya, who put together this appetizer on the spur of the moment for a group of hungry US military wives who were visiting his restaurant, Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico. He topped some fried tortillas with Cheddar cheese and jalapeno peppers and called it Nacho's Especiales.

Answer: A painter

It was invented in the '30s by Giuseppe Cipriani, owner of Harry';s Bar in Venice, who named it after the 15th century Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini, because of the rosy color he used in his paintings.
The cocktail is made with prosecco or champagne and peach puree. It has become a specialty of the bar that in the past was frequented by the likes of Hemingway and Orson Welles. The drink is a good alternative to Mimosa.

Answer: They do not exist there

They are an American invention, but there is a controversy whether they were created by David Jung, a Chinese immigrant in Los Angeles in 1918, or by a Japanese immigrant, Makoto Hagiwara in San Francisco in 1914. The cookies became popular in Chinese restaurants after WWII, in order to offer American customers something sweet at the end of the meal, since desserts are not traditional in Chinese cuisine.