Can You Guess The 12 Items On This Amish “Mystery Breakfast” Menu? (Updated with Answers)
A fun culinary event enjoyed by Amish youth at Belle Center, Ohio, is the “mystery supper”.
Participants receive a menu of creatively-named items to riddle through, and have a time limit in which to make their picks for each of three courses.
Guess poorly, and you can end up with, for example, only utensils and water for one of your courses.
A few years ago, Belle Center community member Mark Curtis shared with us the menu for one such mystery supper. It contained items with names like “Pig’s Disgrace“, “Fire Starter“, “Prickly Riser“, and “Point of Decision.” You can see that menu here, as well as the answer key.
Today Mark is back with the menu of another recent mystery meal–this time breakfast.
Here’s Mark’s father Don with some comments:
Mark said the supper was labeled “Mystery Supper – Breakfast Menu.”
Then there was a blank for the name and the date. Then the supper divided into three courses with four blanks per course.
The only thing provided was a divided styrofoam plate. Everything else had to be chosen from the list including water, utensils, food, etc. Everybody got the menu list and had to turn them over at the same time. They had three minutes to make their choices. They put the number of their choice on one of the blanks of the three courses.
Oh, all of the choices have something to do with deer or deer hunting:
1. buck scrape
2. food plot specialty
3. scent killer
4. bullets
5. whisker biscuit
6. deer tails
7. antlers
8. buck lure
9. brow tines
10. gut pile
11. white tail confusion
12. deer hide
Can you guess these breakfast meal items? How would you arrange your 3 courses of 4 items each?
First Course
x, x, x, x
Second Course
x, x, x, x
Third Course
x, x, x, x
Remember, most of the items above refer to common breakfast foods, while a few of them are utensils or other non-edibles.
Update: We’re back with your answer key. But first, here’s what Mark chose for his three courses:
First Course
12, 1, 3, 2
Second Course
7, 10, 8, 11
Third Course
5, 9, 6, 4
And the answers. Based on this, it looks like Mark did pretty well:
1. buck scrape – spoon
2. food plot specialty – fruit salad
3. scent killer – glass of water
4. bullets – sausage links
5. whisker biscuit – biscuit
6. deer tails – cherry strudel slice
7. antlers – fork
8. buck lure – coffee
9. brow tines – french toast sticks
10. gut pile – sausage gravy
11. white tail confusion – egg casserole
12. deer hide – napkin
Photo by vauvau/flickr
Glad to see you’ve posted a quiz again on Amish America, Erik. I always have enjoyed your various quizzes. I’ll have to think about this one awhile before I can make even one guess.
It seems like “Mystery Meals” are quite popular with many Amish people. In The Budget newspaper I read quite often news such as, “We had ten guests go with us last night to so-and-so’s house for the Mystery Meal they donated and we bought at our local Amish school auction held a few months ago.” I’ve been to several Amish school benefit auctions in different settlements and it seems like several “meal certificates” are usually auctioned off, such as Mystery Meals, Fish Frys, cookouts, etc.
Mystery Meals
Thanks Al, and I’ll pass thanks along to Mark and Don too for helping to arrange this post.
I wonder if these mystery meals are the same guessing-game format as what we’ve been sharing here, or if they’re a meal cooked for the buyer, who is simply unaware of the type of meal they’re buying? As in, surprise me with something good that I don’t have to cook myself? 🙂
The Mystery Meals I’ve read about that are reported in The Budget are in the same style as Don/Mark’s and they report what some of the menu items were along with the real names. Examples: hourly wage = bread; kindling = toothpicks; Granny’s elbow = macaroni & cheese; pick-me-up = coffee. But, I don’t think I’ve ever read of one with a deer hunting theme like the one in Mark’s community.
Mystery
I enjoyed last years mystery meal quiz. I think I got one right. This years is really difficult. I am thinking the Scent is gravy and the Gut pile is sausage. Brow tines is a fork or is that to obvious? Can’t wait for the answers.
I agree, this one was tougher Debbie.
Here are my guesses: 3. scent killer = orange juice; 11. white tail confusion = scrambled eggs; 12. deer hide = bacon.
I’d venture to guess that scent killer could possibly be tomato juice, but what do I know? All I can say is that attending these Mystery Meals on a regular basis would FINALLY be the diet I need to lose 50+ pounds!
Alice Mary
Just updated the post with the answer key 🙂
And btw, I have not had enough buck lure today, that is for sure 😉