American Food Historian Reviews UK Biscuits@TastingHistory
hello and welcome to another episode today is going to be a lot of fun because we’re going on a journey of the history of biscuits yep we’ve come all the way to La for a cup of tea and biscuits why cuz we’re joined by Max that was that was very natural CL number one we’re starting with the biscuit tin itself it’s a very British thing yeah my n’s got one and like it’s the one thing we do when we go to’s house teas biscuit tin and there’s every type of biscuit inside see in America biscuit
tins at your grandma’s house would usually be filled with sewing a coutal we have tins don’t you have cookie jars so yeah we have biscuit tins decorative and they kind of came popular in the uh 1850s when Britain was a huge supplier of tin so all of a sudden we had something that didn’t rust that could be airtight to keep our biscuits in around the same time as the printing press could actually print on tin which meant they could be hugely decorative and biscuit brands or grossers could take advantage of it and make them advertising
and marketing space for few biscuits I had no idea there was history behind a biscuit tin I thought was the most basic thing out more importantly what’s inside have you had these
you as the expert here it’s the American tea it’s the American tea it’s very acidic it’ll eat through anything but also I don’t mind it when it falls into the tea cuz it gives you a nice little surprise the bottom later on mhm you say nice I’m not so sure but yeah these are a sandwich biscuit uh traditionally would have had buttercream vanilla buttercream in the middle nowadays it’s kind of uh less likely to be butter but it’s still got that vanilla flavor and it was reminiscent of Bird’s custard powder in flavor which is why
it gets the name custard cream that makes sense cuz I was like there’s no way these were ever Custard in there right and the decorative design is barck in style it’s covered in Ferns and it was kind of aring back to Victorian times even though this was originated in 1908 and it hasn’t changed in design ever since I’ve never stopped to study a custard cream property but yeah that’s quite a design well Barack is uh the late 17th through mid 18th century and it just tends to be over-the-top ornamental lots of whites and Golds and
sometimes silver and a part of that also was the Roco era and that I believe had shell like a sea shell a SC shell yeah so you can tell if there’s a scalop shell in the in the art architecture or whatever that it’s Roc Co pineapple was also very popular but that was just a different the pineapple became a symbol of of of um higher class in fact the uh The Wimbledon tournament the tennis tournament the trophy has a pineapple on top of it cuz it was like the ultimate thing to win you wouldn’t actually
eat the pineapple you could you could rent them you could rent a pineapple went to pineapple and put it as a centerpiece on your table they were far too expensive to eat and it was it became such a status symol you make history so much more interesting than he does and this you think about the biscuit this is of an era 1908 this is kind of a little luxury in the UK tea and biscuits it was kind of suddenly sugar is much more accessible but even though it is the most basic of biscuits they wanted
that elegance and that that kind of style of Barack era you’re right on the dunking in a pole or a survey of British tea Drinkers and biscuit dunkers it was R ranked eighth that’s not great I think if we were part of that pole custard cream would be higher up the rankings that was biscuit number one would you like a second fourth actually I’ve already had three of those yeah we might Pace ourselves all yours lift the clush Eva bourbon biscuits B borbon biscuits oh but why is it called that B I haven’t got a
clue blue they look chocolatey but don’t taste it they’re like a hint of chocolate there’s not much flavor to them you’re really talking I love all about sweetness therefore you can just keep dunking keep eating and they just disappear I love a bbin biscuit but have a try Cheers Cheers or am I not supposed to dunk any biscuit can be dunked all right it’s really mild yeah it’s it has a slight chocolate bitterness in there it’s like it remembers what chocolate tastes like and it’s trying to explain it to me it’s more the flavor of
cocoa than chocolate yeah yeah yeah yeah oh they forgot the sugar it is another sandwich biscuit this one is chocolatey but lots of thoughts about where the name might come from one of which being is it French and was it made using the very best of the butter i. the butter that kind of Rises to the top of the cream the bbom I.E the best butter that was kind of understood to be a fallacy as was any link to American whiskey it was invented by a German guy who was working in Cadbury’s R&D Center and
because he was German the name came from the combination of bourneville where he developed the biscuit and bour in Germany so it was Bor Bon it was the place where he was born and the place where he developed the biscuit Bor Bon it was it was a German guy called Dr Hans zenock in German that literally means zenock 10 holes which is why B there are 10 holes on every bbon biscuit he’s making this up at this point no this is not how history works you can’t make it up he must have been full of
himself mustn’t he to name the bisc after the two places he grew up and his own name to put 10 holes in it if I ever invent a food I’m going to do that kind of same thing though yeah hidden code yeah yeah it’s all about me you’ll be glad to know it beats the custard cream in the ranking of dunked because it comes fifth wait so people prefer this to the custard cream apparently a better dunker yeah but the flavor is not better one last fun fact the bourbon biscuit was the first biscuit to
be eaten on the moon who what yep Buzz alren was the first person to eat a bbon biscuit rubbish i di in that I need I need photo photograph evidence where it didn’t happen I mean there are lots of conspiracy theories out there about the moon landing but I think that has undone everything it was all rubbish because that did not happen let’s move on to biscuit number three if you’re enjoying this there are some small things you can do that make a big difference to us like the video subscribe if you aren’t click the
notification Bell and select all thanks lift the CL on number three please please tell me you’ve had this before is this a Jammy dodg yes I have not actually had one I’ve seen them though I know what they look like I don’t love these they’re one of those things that you always look at oh they’re the first thing that catch your ey Cuz glisen little heart in middle but again I don’t feel like they’re punching very hard they’re they’re quite a bland biscuit again and even the jam isn’t that sweet yeah it makes it kind
of chewy M it’s a biscuit that feels like it’s aimed at kids but they’re always in my n’s biscuit draw I was going to say I feel like these are aimed at old ladies funny you should say that the Jammy Dodger was named in the very same 2009 biscuit survey as the UK children’s biscuit favorite so do you dunk these cuz it feels weird to dunk these right yeah it doesn’t feel right dunking not even mentioned they were the children’s favorite but in dunking criteria they’re not up there still pretty old introduced in 1960 and
since that very first day right up until today they’re still all made in the very same Factory in Wales uh which is part of the Burton Biscuit Company do you know why and how they get their name anything to do with the Artful Dodger off of Oliver Twist no oh oh then it’s the Los Angeles Dodgers of course big fans in Wales of American baseball surprise surprise not that either it’s it’s named after a character in the beino oh brilliant yes who who in the beo Roger the Dodger Roger the Dodger have you heard of
the bino no what is it who Dennis the Menace yeah he was from the magazine the beino so the beo is it’s a bit like the British version of Marvel oh full of a lot of characters with spin-offs yeah lots of characters the comic or magazine itself started in 1938 eight although this biscuit was named after Roger the Dodger who was constantly trying to dodge his homework and then he dodged the punishments that were given to him when he dodged his homework Roger the Dodger was very mischievous this is the Jammy Dodger in the US
is there like a a love for comics and that kind of vibe and like in that similar sort of era there are tons I mean there’s everything from Little Orphan Annie we have a freaking musical about her um the The Adams Family those were Comics yeah there were a lot of a lot of shows and movies that ended up becoming popular that were based on on Comics we used to call them the funny papers or the Funny Pages any biscuits that have been inspired by Comics or America not that I know of well there we
go not your favorite the chewy Jammy Dodger named after a comic character let’s move on to the next one biscuit number four possibly my favorite oh controversial ERS it looks nice is this Jaffer cake let’s be honest Falls absolutely in the biscuit category but is a cake never dunk them never to be dunked there’s a very very specific way you have to eat these bite around the edge and then no I if I’m I I rip off the the Jaffer and then pop it on the tongue let it melt away I’m just going to oh
I love it I love the texture yeah super super super soft it is definitely more cake like what is the filling so it’s a very thin layer of Jaffa as in Jaffa orange jelly so it is an orange jelly it’s dark chocolate and it is a cake base there is a big debate around these about between are they cakes are they biscuits they are cakes because if you leave them out they do go stale that is to my understanding a definition of a cake now no if you leave a biscuit out they they go limp
don’t they whereas a cake goes hard so Jaffer cakes are from mcvities so started by Robert mcvi in 1809 at the age of 30 he bought a store in Edinburgh and it was Provisions in general but actually the biscuits really took off because biscuits traveled better so he kind of doubled down on biscuits did really well on those and then got the Royal seal of approval when he was asked to bake the royal wedding cake which was pretty much crumb coated in digestive biscuits wait who whose Royal Wedding was it 1893 would have been Queen
Mary and King George the Mary was very into sending tins with biscuits and other things to the soldiers in World War I and she actually had her her face on them and then later they had her their daughter’s face uh the princess as well on the biscuit no on the tins you can still find them online if you want to spend a few thousand pounds well because they’re 11 years old and you mentioned the debate of cake and biscuit I’m going to read this verbatim so that I don’t get into any legal trouble under UK
law that on cakes and biscuits is set at 0% however crucially the law states that if a biscuit is partially or wholly covered in chocolate then it is to be taxed at the standard rate and therefore mvi fought to prove that these are cakes and not biscuits it’s the same thing with short one one of the theories of why they continued to call it bread even after it was no longer bread was because bread was not taxed the way that Confections do you want one more Scottish biscuit treat let’s do it was that Scottish I
don’t know let’s do it that was better that now this is a special treat these are very rarely in aend purely because they go so quickly so feels fluffy I’m not usually a marshmallow kind of guy but since it’s just the fluff it really works oh it’s very sweet in a good way yep it’s the ton of teacake so it’s still a family-owned business and it is one of those stories that has many generations of Bakers behind it so Thomas tanuk originally bought and opened a bakery in Scotland he then had a son who went
to war when that son returned from war unfortunately his father had passed away but his dad’s dying wishes was to reopen the bakery and for his son to do that so his son carried on the B Bakery in his father’s name or their family name he married and had two sons and one of those Sons Boyd was challenged to come up with something completely new and he took inspiration from Italian merang and put it on top of a biscuit wrapped in chocolate and that was the tonic teacake that makes sense I get the Italian mering
now it’s like really shiny yeah soft I didn’t realize it was Scottish it doesn’t look Scottish it’s not weing k is it it’s quite light and dainty what’s amazing is that Boyd who invented this in 1956 has recently been kned for his services to business and charity and biscuits because the queen absolutely loved a tanuk teacake and in 2019 he became sir Boyd tanuk who knew you could come a sir from inventing a biscuit yeah is it a biscuit we started with the sand swi biscuit which had biscuit with something else sandwich between this is
an enrobed biscuit I.E it’s coated in chocolate with something on top and since it’s enrobed with chocolate it’s going to be taxed at that higher rate see I have learned something to something about the tax code of the UK I don’t know if this is true or not isn’t there a story about these not being allowed to go in Planes yep because it’s in robed and therefore it has complete sealed in that marshmallow middle marshmallow is a lot of air these are the only biscuits to be banned from RAF cockpits because once one exploded at
altitude the air bubbles expanded the chocolate went pop and the last thing you want is a sticky messy cockpit Max we fed you a lot of biscuits do you have a favorite I’m going to go all the way back to the very first one yeah I really really liked it it was one of the most simple but especially with the dunking perfect custard creams take the win custard cream simple and elegant as a biscuit barck and style what’s not to love over to you guys comment down below which of those five biscuits would be your
favorite and we’ve also asked Max to dive into the history of the cousin of the biscuit cookies that’ll be over on his channel and we’ll link to it down below oh
