A.These were mainly bulwarks against winter, the hoarded dregs of more…
2023
A.These were mainly bulwarks against winter, the hoarded dregs of more plentiful seasons.
B.The first were the earliest mince pies, which saw cooked, shredded meat, dried fruits, alcohol with its preservative qualities and perhaps a few spices or herbs, all encased in large pies.
C.Subsequently, people baked this into a kind of pie, adding bread-crumbs for bulk, eggs to bind it, and upping the dried fruits and called it 'plum pudding'.
D.The pudding seems to have had two principal forerunners.
E.The second main pudding was a pottage or soup called frumenty, a fast dish involving cracked wheat, currants and almonds which was ladled out at the start of a meal.
- A.
ECDAB
- B.
BAECD
- C.
DACEB
- D.
DBAEC
Attempted by 1 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: D
Concept: Sentence-rearrangement (para-jumble) items are solved by first identifying the stand-alone, topic-introducing sentence that needs no antecedent, then tracing every other sentence's built-in link — a demonstrative pronoun (‘these’/‘this’), an ordinal keyword (‘first’/‘second’), or a transition word (‘Subsequently’) — back to the specific sentence that satisfies it; a sentence whose link is not yet satisfied can never open the passage or immediately follow the wrong antecedent.
Application:
The sentence beginning “The pudding seems to have had two principal forerunners” stands alone — it introduces the general topic (two forerunner puddings) without referring back to anything, so it must open the passage.
The sentence beginning “The first were the earliest mince pies…” uses the ordinal keyword “first,” whose only possible antecedent is the “two principal forerunners” just announced — so it must come directly after the topic sentence.
The sentence beginning “These were mainly bulwarks against winter…” opens with the demonstrative “These,” pointing back to the mince pies and their preserved ingredients (shredded meat, dried fruits, alcohol) just described in the previous sentence — so it must directly follow that sentence.
The sentence beginning “The second main pudding was a pottage or soup called frumenty…” uses the ordinal keyword “second,” again anchored to the “two principal forerunners” opening line, and naturally follows once the first pudding has been fully described.
The sentence beginning “Subsequently, people baked this into a kind of pie…” opens with the transition word “Subsequently” and the pronoun “this,” both of which point to the frumenty just introduced — so it must close the passage, right after the frumenty sentence.
Cross-check: Reading the passage straight through in this order confirms every marker is satisfied at the point it appears: “first” follows the two-forerunners opening, “these” follows the mince-pies sentence it points back to, “second” follows the first pudding's full description, and “Subsequently…this” follows the pottage it refers to. Moving any sentence earlier leaves its keyword or pronoun without an antecedent already on the page.
Why the other arrangements don't work:
Opening with the sentence about the second, pottage-style pudding: the keyword “second” has no “first” pudding established yet at that point, so nothing anchors it.
Opening with the mince-pies sentence: the keyword “first” has no “two forerunners” announced yet, so the ordinal has nothing to count against.
Placing the “These were mainly bulwarks…” sentence directly after the two-forerunners opening line: the demonstrative “These” has nothing to point back to at that position — the mince-pies sentence with its ingredients hasn't appeared yet.