Hanukkah Treats Trivia Quiz

Answer: Latkes

While all of these foods are likely to form part of the food consumed during the eight-day Festival of Light, latkes are the only one made from shredded potatoes (although kugel, traditionally made with noodles, could be made with sliced potatoes, but it is baked rather than fried). Latkes are usually made from grated potato, with egg to hold the shredded bits together. Grated onion is a common addition to savory latkes. If potato is not available, latkes can be made from a range of other foods such as legumes, taro, yams, and carrots. Obviously, there are latke traditions that predate the arrival of the potato from the New World in the 16th century. The word latke is Yiddish, and comes from a Russian/Ukrainian word meaning patch.

Hanukkah is called the Feast of Dedication because it honors the rededication of the Second Temple during the Maccabean Revolt in the 2nd century BCE. It is also called the Festival of Light because it commemorates the miracle by which a single day's worth of oil was kept alight for the eight days needed to produce more sacred oil. This Miracle of Oil is used to justify any and all decadent fried food over the eight days of Hanukkah.

Answer: Sour cream

As well as fried foods, the traditional foods of Hanukkah emphasise dairy products. This is to recall the story of Judith and Holofernes, in which she fed him salty cheese in order to make him so thirsty that he drank enough wine to be stupefied. She was then able to cut off his head, and send the invading Assyrians into retreat.

As the image in the question shows, applesauce is another popular topping for latkes, although not specifically related to Hanukkah traditions - the photo shows two latkes glued together by applesauce, and the stack topped with sour cream.

Answer: Blintz

A blintz is a thin pancake, like a crepe, that is served either folded up with a topping, or wrapped around a filling. Blintzes can have all kinds of fillings, sweet and savory, but at Hanukkah you are likely to find them stuffed with cottage cheese (or feta, or some similar crumbly cheese), because of the significance of dairy products in this celebration.

Although Wikipedia suggests that blini and blintzes are pretty much the same thing, they are not. Blini are made from leavened dough, while blintzes are unleavened.

Answer: Bagel

Bagels are traditionally eaten with cream cheese and lox (smoked salmon), but I am happy to go with just the cream cheese. I also like more than a smear (which is a thin layer) - I like my cream cheese to be as thick as you can manage - delicious as the chewy bagel is, it is really only a mechanism for getting the cream cheese into my mouth, IMHO.

The bagel originated in Poland in the 16th century. While the basic bagel contains only flour, yeast, salt and water, there are many variants, including sweet ones with raisins, chocolate chips or other sweet ingredients. Toppings can also be added - poppy and sesame seeds are traditional for savory bagels.

Answer: Gefilte fish

Nowadays it is common for the fish mixture to be cooked up as small spheres or patties. For a special occasion, however, the cook may choose to revert to the old-fashioned presentation in which the flesh is carefully removed from the skin of an appropriate fish (traditionally a white-fleshed fish such as carp, but salmon is also popular), minced and mixed with the other ingredients.

The mixture is then used to stuff the skin of the fish, before the whole thing is poached. As the image in the question showed, boiled eggs may be inserted, so that when the fish is sliced into individual servings, each of them includes a slice of egg.

The picture also shows a traditional side dish, a pickle made from horseradish and beetroot.

Answer: Blue and white

The colors associated with Hanukkah are blue and white, although this association is only traditional within the last century or so. It is often said that the reason for the color choice is that these are the colors used on the flag of Israel, but a little thought will make it clear that the colors must have a meaning which led to their selection for that flag (since Israel has only existed since 1948). White as a symbol of purity is probably a suitable explanation for both the flag and the holiday. Blue can be traced to the use of blue dye in the tallit (prayer shawl) as described in the Book of Numbers - the fringe is to have a mixture of white and tekhelet blue threads, tekhelet blue being (at the time) a very expensive dye.

Including that blue acknowledged the value of the item. Using the same blue could be considered to indicate a similar reverential attitude.

Some authorities also attribute the choice of blue as being a reference to the blue sky - blue is the color of the heavens and of divine inspiration.

Answer: Sufganiyah

All of these types of doughnut are related to the sufganiyah (plural sufganiyot). 'Sfenj' is an Arabic word to describe a small spherical fried doughnut, often served soaked in honey, popular in the Maghreb region of northern Africa, where local Jews devour them during Hanukkah. 'Ponchke' is a Yiddish word for a type of Polish doughnut made with a rich dough, and usually filled with fruit preserves and dusted in sugar. A berliner is a German doughnut made from placing jam between two circles of sweet yeast dough and pressing the edges together before deep frying. In Israel, the European and African traditions came together to produce sufganiyot.

Traditional sufganiyah preparation is similar to the method described for a berliner, but modern methods, especially for commercial production, are more likely to be based on deep frying balls of dough, then injecting the filling afterwards. Jam, especially strawberry, is the traditional sweet filling, but there are many variations - you can have a different flavor each day of the eight-day festival. Custard, whipped cream, chocolate cream, dulce de leche, coffee cream, hazelnut spread, and a range of fruit fillings are readily prepared (or bought, if you don't have the time to prepare them from scratch, but you'll miss out on the joys of hot freshly-fried sufganiyot).

Answer: Cheesecake

Specifically, blueberry cheesecake was shown, for the touch of blue in keeping with Hanukkah colors. When blueberry is mixed with the cream cheese filling, the mixture turns more purple than blue, so just placing them on top creates a blue and white color scheme, especially if you include a layer of whipped cream. Of course, any type of cheesecake is delicious and appropriate - baked or unbaked, topped with any kind of fruit or none at all, it's all good!

Answer: Dreidel

The dreidel is a four-sided top used for a gambling game traditionally played during Hanukkah. The game is usually played for chocolate coins (or other sweet treats), although some play for real ones. To make a dreidel cookie, you can make a basic tree shape (an acute isosceles triangle with a small rectangular trunk attached to the short side), then decorate it with one of the four symbols drawn on the sides of the dreidel - the Hebrew letters Nun, Gimel, Hay and Shin (if you are outside of Israel) or Pei (if you are in Israel for the celebration).

Answer: Gelt

The Yiddish word 'gelt' literally translates into English as money, but the term is most commonly used to describe chocolate coins used as the playing tokens when spinning a dreidel. Coins are linked to the Hanukkah tradition by the story of the Maccabees minting coins to celebrate their victory over the Greeks.

The tradition of giving children coins, real or chocolate, developed in Eastern Europe in the 18th century, and was brought to the United States by immigrants. There, Hanukkah coins had enough popularity for manufacturers to start commercial production during the 1920s, although much is also still produced in traditional European chocolate-producing countries. Hanukkah coins usually have symbols such as a menorah or a Star of David on them, and they are usually wrapped in foil which is gold or silver in color, resembling the colors of real coins, although it is also possible to purchase other colors - blue has grown in popularity to make the coins fit the season's color scheme.