4th grade reading test
CTB/McGraw-Hill
2000
District: na
State: NY

If you think you know the answer to this question, try looking up pretzelin the encyclopedia. I found one sentence that might be termed historical in my old cookbook A World of Breads by Dolores Casella (David White 1966): “Old-time pretzel makers dipped the pretzels into a lye solution.”

I’m sure if you read the New York Times food section every Wednesday, eventually they’ll do pretzels. But in the last 30 days, the only time the word pretzel has appeared in the New York Tiemes is mention of a coming “Auntie Anne’s pretzel shop.

On December 31, 2003, a Times writer noted, “It wouldn’t be Philadelphia without soft pretzels.” But the article was about bagels.

On October 22, 2003, movie critic A. O. Scott used this mixed metaphor, which doesn’t seem historic: “The story turns out to be fairly conventional, with an end that is a stale pretzel bowl of surprise twists, and the psychology of the characters can be frustratingly obscure, but there are nonetheless images and ideas that stick like splinters under your skin.”

After reading a passage about how pretzels are made, 4th graders are asked:

The best source of information about the history of pretzels would probably be

a) a cookbook

b) an almanac

c) an encyclopedia

d) a daily newspaper