The Great British Breakfast Trivia Quiz

Answer: Square

"In Germany there's a sausage on every corner, while in Scotland there's a corner on every sausage." (Anon)

Lorne sausage, square sausage, sliced sausage or simply "slice", is very popular in Scotland. Often an alarming pink colour, the mixture of pork/beef, rusk and spices is packed into an oblong tin and sliced into thicknesses of about 1 cm before cooking.

Answer: Seaweed

Laver seaweed (pronounced LAY-VER) occurs commonly on the coast of Wales, and is similar to Nori, the seaweed used in making sushi. The seaweed is boiled for several hours until it forms a gloopy gelatinous paste, the laverbread. This paste can be served as it is, or coated in oatmeal and fried, and it has a salty, savoury flavour.

In 2017, laverbread was given the prestigious European Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status which means only laver seaweed harvested and prepared in Wales can take the name laverbread.

Answer: Boxty

Boxty on the griddle;
boxty on the pan.
If you can't make boxty,
you'll never get a man!

The Irish Boxty is one of several potato cakes or breads that you might be served with your Irish breakfast. It is often made with a mixture of cooked, mashed potato and grated raw potato, but can be made with only raw potato. The potato is mixed with flour, baking soda and buttermilk and then formed into cakes which are fried on a pan or griddle. It's thought that the name might come from the Irish "arán bocht tí", meaning "poor-house bread".

Latkes, rösti and Reibekuchen are all different types of potato pancake from around the world.

Answer: Blood

Black pudding is a British blood sausage made from pork blood mixed with pork or beef fat, oats or barley and seasonings. The mixture was traditionally piled into beef intestines to make a fat sausage, and then boiled. Nowadays synthetic casings are more often used. Seasonings vary by region, but might include pennyroyal, marjoram, thyme, mint, cumin, rue or parsley.

White pudding follows a similar recipe, but omits the blood which gives it a much paler colour. White pudding is most often found in Scotland, Ireland and Northumberland.

Answer: Fruit pudding

Combining sweet and savoury before "salted caramel" was even invented, the fruit pudding is a slightly unexpected addition to the breakfast plate, but nevertheless combines well with the more familiar elements of the British breakfast. The recipe is actually very similar to that of the clootie dumpling, which is sweetened with sugar or golden syrup and is wrapped in a cloth before boiling.

This gives it a rounded shape like the traditional British Christmas pudding.

Answer: Glamorgan Sausage

The Glamorgan sausage is made from a mixture of cheese, leeks and breadcrumbs. Originally they would have been made with Glamorgan cheese, but this variety is now sadly extinct due to the rarity of the Glamorgan cattle from whose milk it was made. Nowadays the type of cheese varies, but a crumbly Welsh Caerphilly is normally used as this is the nearest style to the original Glamorgan.

The town of Caerphilly is situated in South Wales, a few miles North of Cardiff. It would have been on the eastern border of the historic county of Glamorgan, which stretched beyond Swansea to the Gower peninsula in the West.

Answer: Devon and Cornwall

Much like the cream tea, there is a certain rivalry between Devon and Cornwall over who the hog's pudding belongs to! Like the white puddings found in other parts of the country, the hog's pudding is made from meat, fat and barley or oatmeal. Some versions contain a lot of offal, whereas others have a higher proportion of barley or oat "groats" (the kernels of the grains).

A hog's pudding is generally spicier than other types of white pudding as it contains a lot of pepper and can also contain nutmeg, mace and cayenne.

Answer: Bicarbonate of soda

Bicarbonate of soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate or baking soda, can be used in bread making as an alternative raising agent to yeast. The advantage of using baking soda is that you don't need to wait for the bread to rise, you can just mix it up and cook it straight away. Soda breads tend to have a much denser crumb than yeast breads. The recipes normally contain buttermilk, and it is the lactic acid in the buttermilk which reacts with the alkaline sodium bicarbonate to form bubbles of carbon dioxide within the bread dough.

To make soda farls, the dough is formed into a round about half an inch thick, which is then divided into quarters. These are cooked on a griddle over a medium heat for about 15 minutes until the outside is golden brown and the centre is cooked through.

Answer: Cockles

Most people have heard of "cockles and mussels alive alive-o", but few know a lot about this delicate morsel encased in a pair of small ribbed shells. Removed from their shells and gently fried or steamed, cockles make a great pairing with the salty seaside taste of laverbread, which together reflect the seaside traditions of Wales. Cockles are commonly found on the Welsh coast and you can even pick your own, though legally the quantity is limited to 5 kg for personal use. Cockles be bought fresh or in tins or jars, preserved in either brine or vinegar.

Answer: Kippers

Other traditional Victorian breakfast dishes included bone marrow and kedgeree - a rice dish cooked with smoked fish, hard-boiled eggs, butter, curry powder and parsley. A kipper is the name for a whole smoked herring, and while it would be rare these days for one to be served up on a plate with bacon, sausage, eggs etc it is still frequently served in various eating establishments as a stand-alone breakfast dish, sometimes accompanied by a poached egg.