Food Language Trivia Quiz

The expression is 'apple of my eye', meaning a person who holds a special place in someone's heart. 'Apple' used to be synonymous with the pupil of the eye. Shakespeare used the word in this sense in the plays "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Love's Labour's Lost".

It also occurs in five places in the King James Version of the Bible from 1611 (such as at Deuteronomy 31:10). More recently Welsh rock group Badfinger had a song of that title in their 1973 album "Ass" and there was the 2017 movie of that name about a miniature horse called Apple being trained to be a seeing guide.

The expression 'to have a bun in the oven' is a euphemism for being pregnant or expecting a child. A euphemism is a type of idiom usually used for a potentially sensitive topic. Talking about pregnancy in public used to be considered impolite and using phrases like 'bun in the oven' was a way around this.

The expression's modern popularity has been linked to the 1951 novel "The Cruel Sea" by Nicholas Monsarrat in which the expression is used.

Two food-related expressions in one question. The breadwinner in the family is the person who provides the primary support for the family. The expression hinted at by the cured meat clue is 'bring home the bacon', which means the same thing in essence as breadwinner. The modern meaning of the expression dates to the early 20th century.

The origin of the bacon version is said to be the Dunmow flitch, a tradition starting in Little Dunmow in Essex where a married couple who could swear not to regret getting married after a year and a day could claim a side of bacon. Chaucer referred to it in his poem "Piers Plowman" however the tradition died out in Little Dunmow after 1751.

That wedge of cheese in the image points to the expression 'the big cheese' generally meaning the most important person in that field or place, at least in North America. The cheese (no 'big' was originally necessary) used to be a synonym for quality in the 19th century. Camden Hotten's "A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words" (1863) supports this.

The source could well be "chiz" (meaning 'thing'), a loanword from Hindi or Urdu languages from the time of British India. Nothing to do with the dairy product.

When something is a 'hot potato', it normally refers to an issue that is difficult to handle and typically passed on to someone else to deal with in an effort to avoid responsibility or blame for the issue. The expression appears to be a literal reference to the bare-handed handling of a potato that is hot, which is uncomfortable or painful.

There are other origin stories such as the children's game of the same name and the hotchpotatoe theory based on an 1817 Thomas Jefferson letter.

The expression is 'cool as a cucumber' and means someone calm and composed under pressure. The 'cool' in this sense means imperturbable rather than having a low temperature, although a play on these word meanings is at the heart of the expression. Being mostly made of water, cucumbers are cool to touch. An early written example can be found in the 1732 "Poems, New Song on Similes" by John Gay.

This metaphor can be seen expressed as 'a hard nut to crack' or 'a tough nut to crack'. It can refer to a tough problem to solve or a difficult person to understand or deal with. It is an allusion to the difficulty in opening some nuts. In-shell macadamias, almonds and black walnuts come to mind.

'Full of beans' can mean energetic or in high spirits. It can also mean exaggerate, perhaps incorrectly or untruthfully. The source of the metaphor comes from the observation that a bean-fed horse is often frisky and full of energy.

The idiom is a 'piece of cake', meaning a task which is or was particularly easy to complete. A 'slice of cake' can means the same thing. One origin story is that the expression comes from the 19th century dance competitions on plantations in which Afro-Americans performed mocking ostentatious dances, with the winner receiving a cake as a prize from the plantation owner.

This gave rise to the name, the cakewalk dance, which migrated to minstrel shows. It was the fluid and graceful nature of the dance itself which may have given rise to the idiom.

The idiom got an early mention in Ogden Nash's "Primrose Path" (1936).

The phrase 'to butter someone up', meaning the verbal flattery of someone, has been around for centuries. One origin story is traced to India where there was said to be a Hindu tradition to offer (or throw) balls of clarified butter (or ghee) at statues of gods as a way of seeking favour. While butter is important in Hindu religion and this makes for an interesting story, it does not appear to have any basis in fact.

The 'butter up' phrase may simply a reference to the 'slippery' nature of butter, working on someone with a heart of butter (a yielding nature), or making bread more tasty by spreading butter on it.