Looking back at Britain's love affair with the biscuit

It’s very rare that a day goes by that you don’t have a biscuit. Biscuits are an essential part of the British diet and usually linked to relaxation.

Like cake and chocolate, they are also comfort foods and we need plenty of those throughout these days when there’s not much else to do but stuff our faces. Shall we have ‘a nice cup of tea and a biscuit’ you can hear yourself say. When someone called, at one time, that is, you offered them ‘a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.’ Woe betide any household who hadn’t got a stash of biscuits in their cupboard when visitors arrived.

No matter what the fashion may be in cakes, like carrot cake or cupcakes, or for coffee houses or vintage tea rooms, it’s the biscuit that takes the biscuit, as it were.

Biscuits can be sweet or savoury, but it is the sweet ones that are most popular, and everyone seems to have their favourites.

I love a good ‘dunking’ biscuit. Ginger nuts are good for that as are Hobnobs, although you must be careful that you don’t get them too soggy so that they fall into your cuppa.

Mind you, in the 2004 ‘Dunk for Britain’ campaign, the Chocolate Caramel Digestive biscuit won, and I don’t think it’s been around all that long.

My excuse, if I must have one, is that biscuits are good for you. I read that early Physicians believed that most medical problems stemmed from the digestive system and therefore a daily biscuit or two was good for health. I won’t argue with that.

Biscuits were originally made for sailors and called ‘ships biscuits’

Even as early as the Spanish Amada in 1588 all Royal Navy seamen were entitled to one pound of biscuits and one gallon of beer.

They were made from flour and water at first and only much later had eggs added.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, sponge finger biscuits were passed round after dinner in the homes of the well-heeled, to be dipped into glasses of sweet wine.

During World War 1, McVities were called on by the government to use their knowledge to produce ‘Iron Ration biscuits’ and so they opened a bakery in Manchester to meet the demand.

We are reassuringly faithful to our biscuits here in the UK and can eat a staggering amount of our favourites each year.

People’s favourite biscuits can be for life and even if they try new ones, they always drift back to the old favourites.

A survey made around National Biscuit Day on 29th May in 2019, showed that 83 per cent of those surveyed said that they would rather eat biscuits than go on a date. There must be some sad people out there, but I suppose a biscuit never lets you down and certainly this year, dates must be few and far between.

The poll also suggested that lovers of digestives are fun loving, fruit shortcake, charming, Jaffa cakes cheeky, ginger nuts feisty, rich tea, shy, and hob nobs funny.

Hob nobs are by far my favourite, so I wonder if I am ‘Funny peculiar or funny ha ha’ which was a phrase first used by British playwright Ian Hay in ‘The Housemaster’ in 1936.

Britain’s bestselling biscuit is the McVities Digestive. First made in 1892 by Sir Alexander Grant de Forres, it was invented to boost the digestive system and with a recipe still used today, although I can’t be the only person who has noticed that their taste has altered. It seems that they have reduced saturated fat in the original recipe, and it just does not taste as good, even though it is better for you.

One of Sir Alexander’s relatives is Strictly Come Dancing contestant Jamie Laing. I wonder if he could attribute his dancing prowess to the family biscuit.

The Rich Tea biscuit was first made as a light snack for the upper classes and indeed a wedding cake produced for Prince William and his bride Kate Middleton, by McVities Price, contained 1,700 Rich Tea biscuits with 17kg of chocolate.

They had made one for Princess Elizabeth and Lieutenant Phillip Mountbatten in 1947, which was over 2.5 metres high but due to rationing restrictions had asked for ingredients to be sent from overseas countries as wedding gifts.

Rich Tea, first made in Yorkshire in the 17th century was described by Sir Terry Wogan as ‘Lord of all biscuits’ as they were his firm favourites.

Many of our favourite biscuits have quite exotic names. The Garibaldi, named after the Italian general in 1861, seven years after he visited London, and the Bourbon after the European Royal House of Bourbon who ruled France in the 16th century.

In 2001, a biscuit from the Titanic was sold at auction in London for £3,525. There is no record of the type it was, and I don’t think it could have looked particularly enticing.

Biscuits can come with a health warning and I don’t mean obesity. It seems that half of the UK population has been scalded by a hot cup of tea when dunking.

In 2009, Simon Berry from Sheffield, entered the Guinness Book of Records when he successfully completed a plummet of 70 metres to dunk a chocolate hob nob biscuit. I think I might have wanted something a little stronger after that.