Say "CHEESE"! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Prunes

In the late 1800s, a small, tight mouth was the height of elegance. Wide, toothy grins were considered "low-class" or even a bit scandalous. Therefore, to create what was known as a "rosebud mouth", photographers urged their customers to say the word "prunes" which forced the lips to pucker a bit and remain small.

In the early 1900s, Kodak released the Brownie camera. It was cheap and portable and changed the way people viewed photography. People started taking snapshots of birthdays, picnics, and holidays. These were happy occasions, and a "prune" face looked out of place. The word "cheese" was introduced by politicians and public figures who needed to look approachable. "CH" grinds the teeth together, setting the jaw. "EE" pulls the corners of the lips back and up toward the ears. Finally, "Z" holds the position just long enough for the shutter to click.

Answer: Salvador Dali

It is a common misconception that Salvador Dalí's most famous painting, "The Persistence of Memory" was inspired by Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Actually, the painting of melting watch faces was inspired by gooey leftover cheese.

Dalí had a headache and decided to stay home while his wife, Gala, went out with friends. After eating a particularly pungent and creamy piece of leftover Camembert, he sat in his studio looking at a landscape he had already started painting. He began to envision that the hard, metallic pocket watches he had seen earlier were softening and melting like the cheese on his plate. Just as cheese decays over time, Dalí wanted to show that time itself is not rigid or reliable, but fluid like the melty Camembert.

Answer: Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson was the 7th president of the United States and served from 1829 to 1837. In 1835, a dairy farmer from New York named Colonel Thomas S. Meacham decided to show his patriotic devotion to Jackson by creating a truly massive wheel of cheddar cheese. It was four feet (1.2 m) in diameter, two feet (.6 m) thick, and weighed around 1400 pounds (635 kg). A band on it stated that "The Union, it must be preserved."

Jackson was grateful and he kept the wheel in the entrance hall of the White House for two years, where it aged (and aged...and aged...) In 1837, Jackson was leaving office and knew he could not take the (now quite odorous) cheese with him. On February 22 of that year, Jackson held an open house and invited the public to come and help themselves. Over 10,000 people showed up and the cheese was gone in two hours. It was said the smell of that cheddar stayed around for several months.

Answer: Fortune telling

Tyromancy is the ancient art of telling the future using cheese. Heavily used between the 1100s-1400s AD, it was used to predict everything from the weather to upcoming luck. A tyromancer would go to the site where the cheese was made and would observe the way milk curdled. The shapes, speed, and patterns of the separating curds were "read" like tea leaves.

People also brought their cheese to the tyromancer. In Swiss cheese, the number, size, and distribution of the holes were seen as omens. Many holes might suggest a period of abundance, while a cheese with no holes could mean bad luck. In blue cheeses, the direction and density of the mold veins were interpreted as paths in a person's life. The way a hard cheese sweated or cracked in a cellar was used to predict coming storms or droughts.

Answer: Uruguay

The Guerra Grande (the "Great War") was an incredibly long and exhausting conflict for Uruguay, lasting for nearly 13 years, officially spanning from 1839 to 1851. It was technically between two political parties but soon involved other countries. It was in 1841 that the Uruguayan fleet, captained by John Coe, was engaged with the Argentine Navy and the flagship ran completely out of traditional iron cannonballs.

Coe and his crew realized they had a cargo of Edam-style Dutch cheeses in the hold. These cheeses were extremely hard from being in storage for a long time and they were round. They were the perfect size for the cannons. When the cheese balls hit the Argentine ship's sails and rigging, the brittle, aged cheese shattered into thousands of sharp, jagged shards (acting like shrapnel). The enemy actually retreated, thinking the Uruguayans had developed a new, terrifying secret weapon.

Answer: False

The fact that mice adore cheese is actually a misconception. Mice are primarily granivores. Their natural diet consists of seeds, grains, and fruits-things high in sugar and complex carbohydrates. That is why professional exterminators use high-energy, sweet foods like peanut butter, chocolate, or dried fruit as bait instead of cheese.

The myth came from the years before modern food refrigeration. At the time, meat was hung high up or salted. Grain was kept in heavy, sealed bins. Cheese, however, was often left out on a shelf or on a counter top to "breathe" and age. Because it was the most accessible food source in a medieval or Victorian pantry, mice would nibble on it out of necessity. When people saw teeth marks in the cheese, they assumed the mice loved it, when really, it was just the only thing the mice could access.

Answer: The moon

The phrase that "the moon was made of green cheese" first became popular in the mid-16th century (appearing in the works of writers like John Heywood in 1546) as a proverb. It was used to describe someone so foolish that they would believe anything. Also, "green", in this phrase, referred not to the color of the cheese, but to the fact it was new cheese where the whey hadn't been fully pressed out.

The myth was further cemented in 1678 when La Fontaine wrote the fable "The Wolf and the Fox in the Well". In the story, the fox tricks the wolf into looking at the reflection of the full moon in a well and tells the wolf that the reflection is actually a giant wheel of cheese at the bottom of the water. The greedy wolf jumps into the well to get the cheese and gets stuck, while the fox escapes. On April 1, 2002, NASA decided to have some April Fools' fun and released a spoof "discovery" stating that they had confirmed the moon was indeed made of green cheese.

Answer: Turophobia

Turophobia (from the Greek words "tyros" for cheese and "phobos" for fear) is a genuine anxiety disorder where the mere sight, smell, or even the thought of cheese can trigger a physical reaction. Psychologists name some specific triggers that make cheese frightening to some people. Many turophobes associate it with decay, mold, and filth since cheese is "spoiled milk". Some cheeses contain the same compounds found in body odor. And traumatic childhood events around meal times and cheese can trigger the phobia.

There are some famous people who have this phobia. This includes the singer Lorde, who has said in several interviews that she has a deep-seated revulsion toward cheese and cannot even look at a cheese board. The legendary director Alfred Hitchcock was famously terrified of eggs, but he also had a deep-seated revulsion toward cheese as well. He found the smell and "visceral" nature of it repulsive.

Answer: Roman

Along with grain and wine, cheese was one of the three pillars of the Roman military diet. It was so vital that it was often listed in official military records as a primary ration. Because Roman soldiers were expected to march about 20 miles (32 km) a day carrying heavy gear, they needed high-calorie, portable non-spoiling protein. Hard, salted cheeses like pecorino perfectly fit the need.

The Roman army is actually responsible for spreading cheesemaking techniques across Europe. Many of the famous European cheeses eaten today, like cheddar or swiss, have roots in the methods taught to locals by retiring Roman soldiers who settled in those provinces. In archaeological digs across former Roman territories, researchers often find ceramic cheese strainers and cheese presses.

Answer: Donkey

Pule is made from the milk of Balkan donkeys at the Zasavica Special Nature Reserve in Serbia and there are only about 200 of these endangered donkeys in the world. While a cow can produce up to 60 liters (15.8 gallons) of milk a day, a female donkey produces only about 2 liters (.5 gallons). It takes 25 liters (6.6 gallons) of donkey milk to produce just one kilogram (2.2 lbs) of cheese.

Every single donkey must be milked by hand, three times a day. This milk is naturally low in fat and protein solids, which usually makes it impossible to turn into cheese. The founder of the reserve, Slobodan Simić, spent years perfecting a "top-secret" recipe to allow curds to form. The result of this rare and expensive treat is a small, white crumbly cheese with an earthy and nutty flavor.