The question consists of five statements labelled A, B, C, D and E which when…
2025
The question consists of five statements labelled A, B, C, D and E which when logically ordered form a coherent passage. Choose the option that represents the most logical order.
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
Para-jumble (sentence-rearrangement) questions test whether you can rebuild a coherent passage from its discourse markers: find the sentence that introduces the topic without leaning on anything earlier, then trace every later sentence back to the one before it through referential words (this, these, it), ordinal/sequence markers (first, second, subsequently), and topical continuity.
D opens the passage: "The pudding seems to have had two principal forerunners" introduces the topic (two earlier dishes) without depending on any other sentence.
B follows D: the ordinal word “first” in “The first were the earliest mince pies…” directly answers D’s promise of “two principal forerunners” by naming the first one.
A follows B: the demonstrative “these” in “These were mainly bulwarks against winter” refers back to the mince pies (and the preserved ingredients packed into them) that B has just described, continuing that description.
E follows A: the ordinal word “second” in “The second main pudding was a pottage or soup called frumenty…” supplies the second forerunner that D promised.
C follows E: the demonstrative “this” in “Subsequently, people baked this into a kind of pie… and called it ‘plum pudding’” refers back to the frumenty (the pottage/soup) that E has just introduced, describing how it evolved into plum pudding.
An order that opens with the sentence naming “the second main pudding” cannot work as an opening line, because “second” presupposes that a first pudding has already been named.
An order that opens with the sentence naming “the first” pudding also fails to open the passage, because “the first” has no antecedent until some sentence has established that there are multiple forerunners to count.
An order that places the “these” sentence directly after the topic-introducing sentence breaks down too, because the mince pies (and their contents) that “these” points to are described only in the sentence about the first pudding — so that sentence must come between them.
Following the reference chain step by step gives the sequence D → B → A → E → C — DBAEC — as the only order that keeps every reference intact.