Questions of taste: a culinary quiz

1 Which British crime writer ate the same thing for virtually every meal: bacon and fried eggs, then sat on her bed enjoying cigarettes, coffee and a doughnut, her intention “to avoid any sense of discipline and make the act of writing as pleasurable as possible”?
a) Agatha Christie
b) Patricia Highsmith
c) Dorothy L Sayers

2 The world’s oldest noodles were unearthed during an archaeological dig on China’s Yellow River in 2005. The 50cm-long yellow strands, made with grains from millet grass, were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood. How old are they?
a) 1,000 years
b) 2,500 years
c) 4,000 years

3 Around 200,000 people in the UK and more than 2m in the US suffer from anosmia, causing many to lose interest in food. What is anosmia?
a) Loss of the sense of smell
b) Loss of the sense of taste
c) Loss of appetite

4 Which Greek-American diner at 2880 Broadway in Manhattan is linked with both the TV series Seinfeld (a shot of its exterior featured regularly in the sitcom) and a 1982 song by Suzanne Vega?
a) Joe’s Diner
b) Tom’s Restaurant
c) Mark’s Café

5 William Buckland, the Victorian geologist and palaeontologist (1784–1856), was famed not just for digging up dinosaurs but also for the weird things he ate, including bluebottles, moles and mice on toast. According to one witness, he once ate part of a mummified human heart. To which historical VIP did it reportedly belong?
a) Louis XIV of France
b) Tutankhamun
c) Joan of Arc

6 The second-most expensive thing you can eat, after gold leaf, is an Alba white truffle. In 2010, Macau billionaire Stanley Ho bought a pair of these valuable fungi, weighing 1,300g. How much did he pay for them?
a) $110,000
b) $330,000
c) $550,000

7 Ming, a very old mahogany clam (Arctica islandica), was dredged off the coast of Iceland in 2006. The clam had to be killed in order to determine its age. Which monarch was on the English throne when it began its life?
a) Edgar the Peaceful (959–975)
b) Henry VII (1485-1509)
c) Victoria (1837–1901)

8 Which fruit contains a tiny amount of radioactive potassium and is sometimes used to measure radiation exposure? (One Harvard doctor puts the number you’d have to eat in order to die of radiation poisoning at 10m.)
a) Apple
b) Banana
c) Apricot

9 French entertainer Michel Lotito, aka Monsieur Mangetout (1950–2007), was known for eating shopping carts, TVs, bicycles and, most famously, an entire Cessna plane. How much metal did he claim to have ingested over a 40-year career?
a) 3 tons
b) 9 tons
c) 13 tons

10 Which French author reportedly drank as many as 50 cups of coffee a day and also dabbled with “a horrible, rather brutal method” which involved eating pure coffee grounds on an empty stomach? (This same author wrote 91 long and short works of fiction in the space of just 16 years.)
a) Victor Hugo
b) Colette
c) Honoré de Balzac

11 An anaphrodisiac is a substance that dampens lust. Few are proven to be effective, though one root has been shown to decrease libido. What is it?
a) Ginger
b) Ginseng
c) Liquorice

12 Hákarl is an Icelandic delicacy. The creature in question is gutted and beheaded, buried for up to 12 weeks, then hung for another few months. What is it?
a) A shark
b) A reindeer
c) A puffin

13 Which rock band’s tour rider (a list of backstage food and drink requirements) in the 1980s demanded local AA meeting schedules, a sub-machine gun, a 12ft boa constrictor and a jar of Grey Poupon mustard?
a) Guns N’ Roses
b) L7
c) Mötley Crüe

14 Four scoops of ice cream and six chocolate-chip cookies. This was the last meal of which famous American, who died in 1977?
a) Elvis Presley
b) Joan Crawford
c) Groucho Marx

15 Which late, great poet wrote two cookbooks including Great Food, All Day Long (2010), which focused on savoury meals “as good to eat at 8.30am as they were at 8.30pm”?
a) Seamus Heaney
b) John Ashbery
c) Maya Angelou

Answers

1b; 2c; 3a; 4b; 5a; 6b; 7b; 8b; 9b; 10c; 11c, 12a; 13c; 14a; 15c

The Gannet’s Gastronomic Miscellany by Killian Fox is published on 5 October by Mitchell Beazley at £11.99. To order a copy for £10.19, go to bookshop.theguardian.com