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[Middle English bisquit, from Old French biscuit, from Medieval Latin bis coctus : Latin bis, twice + Latin coctus, past participle of coquere, to cook.]
A baked flour confectionery dried down to low moisture content. The name is derived from the Latin bis coctus, meaning cooked twice. A 100-g portion provides 400-500 kcal (1680-2100 kJ). Known as cookie in the USA, where ‘biscuit’ means a small cake-like bun.
[BIHS-kiht] 1. In America, biscuits refer to small quick breads, which often use leaveners like baking powder or baking soda. Biscuits are generally savory (but can be sweet), and the texture should be tender and light. 2. In the British Isles, the term "biscuit" usually refers to a flat, thin cookie or cracker. 3. The word biscuit comes from the French bis cuit ("twice cooked"), which is what the original sea biscuits aboard ship had to be in order to remain crisp.
Firing bakes, or stages (referred to as low, medium, and high), during the fusing of dental porcelain preceding the final, or glaze, bake.
The word "biscuit" is derived from the Latin panis biscoctus, "twice-baked bread." From the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, forms of the word included besquite and bisket. Similar forms are noted in many European languages. "Biscuit" covers a wide range of flour baked products, though it is generally an unleavened cake or bread, crisp and dry in nature, and in a small, thin, and flat shape. It has a number of cultural meanings. In the United States, a biscuit is a soft, thick scone product or a small roll similar to a muffin. The British biscuit is equivalent to the American cookie and cracker. These latter terms are relatively modern. "Cookie" comes from the eighteenth-century Dutch word koekje, a diminutive of koek (cake). "Cracker" is a North American term that also came into use in the eighteenth century, connoting the sound of the wafer as it was chewed or broken (at this time, "cracker" was also used to mean a firecracker or a noisy person or object).
Biscuits have evolved from different aspects of baking practices such as tarts, pastries, short cakes, and sugar confectionery. They have given rise to the wafer, macaroon, cracker, sandwich, snap, gingerbread, honey cake, rusk, and water biscuit. Some, like the wafer, were baked in the Middle Ages; others are of more recent origin, such as the "fancy biscuit," an early-nineteenth-century invention of British bakers that led to the development of a biscuit industry, which was later exported throughout the world. Biscuits are divided into two main groups. The first are plain or have a savory flavoring. The second type are sweet or semi-sweet in character.
Biscuits are made from a number of ingredients. Flour is the most basic and important. Different types give a range of textures and crispness. Wholemeal wheat flour is used in the "digestive," "sweetmeal," or "wheat-meal" type of biscuits. Oatmeal forms the basis of oatmeal biscuits. Rice flour and corn flour add flavor. Fats give the biscuits their "shortness." Butter and lard are the main fats, though these are augmented by vegetable and other refined fats. For fancy biscuits, sugar is an important ingredient, and introduces a range of tastes. It is added in several forms: processed as caster and Demerara sugars, syrups, honey, and malt extract. These have a range of consistencies and may help to bind together other ingredients. Aerating and raising ingredients, such as baking powder (bicarbonate of soda and tartaric acid), make the biscuit light. Flavorings are also added. These include dried fruit, nuts, chocolate (powder or chips), spices, herbs, and flavoring essences such as vanilla. The dry ingredients are bound together with eggs and milk (fresh, condensed, or dried) or water. Biscuits have a high energy content, ranging from 420 to 510 kcal per 100 g.
The mechanized process of biscuit-making is rapid and continuous. The ingredients are mixed into a dough that is then kneaded and rolled to a uniform thickness. Biscuit shapes are cut from it, and placed in a traveling oven. Some biscuits require special preparation and cooking techniques. Biscuit-making has become increasingly and highly mechanized since the early nineteenth century, when technological aids were limited and it was highly labor-intensive. They can be baked commercially or in the home.
Most biscuits are distinguished by their appearance: round, square, oblong, finger-shaped, or fancifully impressed with designs. Plain biscuits are normally punched with a cutter or docker, to increase crispness during baking. Fancy biscuits can be covered with sugar, icing, or coated (fully or partially) with chocolate. Each type of biscuit also has its own commercial name, which refers to ingredients, a designation (sandwich, wafer, macaroon, or cracker), texture, eating qualities, and the time when it was to be eaten. The range of biscuits has increased over the past 150 years. Huntley & Palmers, of Reading, England, a world leader in biscuit production, sold around 130 varieties in 1870; by 1898, this increased to over four hundred. Some became well established and have a long history. For example, the "Abernethy biscuit," a proprietary biscuit based on the captain biscuit, was devised by Dr. John Abernethy (1764–1831), chief surgeon at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, London. Some biscuits have been eaten in large quantities. The Digestive (or Wholemeal) and Rich Tea became market leaders in Britain from 1949 onward. Other sorts fell out of favor, but new varieties are being continually developed as a result of consumer demand, changing tastes, and innovations in production techniques. Chocolate-coated biscuits started to become popular in the first decade of the twentieth century.
Some biscuits have become cultural markers. The snickerdoodle, flavored with nutmeg, nuts, and raisins, is a speciality of the Pennsylvania Dutch. The gingersnap, a thin ginger biscuit, is popular in Sweden. Povorone is a Spanish and Mexican biscuit of pastry dough flavored with nuts or cinnamon, rolled in icing sugar after baking. Shortbread, a rich, short biscuit that is a speciality of Scotland, is exported throughout the world. Traditionally, it was a festive food eaten at Hogmanay (the eve of New Year's Day), though it is now eaten on everyday occasions.
Biscuits are sold in several distinctive ways. They are marketed either as a single variety or as an assortment. Some of these, such as Victoria Assortment, are well-known in England and Canada. Originally, fancy biscuits were sold as novelties. They were kept in highly decorated tins, which are still sold, but have been largely replaced by other forms of packaging. The earliest tins held 228 g; later ones extended to 4.5 kg. They were sold in tens of thousands, especially at Christmastime. Biscuit tins have become something of a cultural phenomenon quite separate from the biscuits themselves, since the empty tins are commonly reused as household furniture, for storage, or as decoration.
The role of the biscuit in the diet has also changed. In the early nineteenth century, the fancy biscuit was an expensive novelty, eaten only by the upper classes, and played a relatively minor role in popular diet. Only when the time of meals altered did the role of biscuits increase, being eaten at luncheon and afternoon tea. However, it was not until the 1960s that quality biscuits were within the range of most family incomes, especially in Britain. Biscuits have adapted to a range of uses. They have become health foods (sold in pharmacies), as well as slimming or digestive aids. They are now accompaniments to hot drinks, alcoholic beverages, courses of a meal (usually with cheese), snacks, or substitutes for bread, like the old ship's biscuit, eaten by men on long sea journeys. Biscuits have also assumed a place in popular folklore, for they surface in such expressions as "take the biscuit," which in Britain means the most surprising thing that could have occurred.
The American Biscuit—a Divergent Tradition
In Britain and most of Europe, the biscuit follows a direct lineal descent from the Latin panis biscoctus (literally twice-baked bread), but in North America broad inconsistencies have emerged in the way this term is used in advertising and in common speech. For light baked goods with a crisp, brittle texture, two terms are in common use: "cracker" and "cookie." Historically Americans also used the word "biscuit" like their British cousins, as in the case of the ship biscuits or water biscuits of the early 1800s. Both of these foods are called crackers in the United States.
The old water biscuit of the nineteenth century has become the oyster cracker of seafood restaurants and oyster houses. The ship biscuit, with its light sprinkling of salt, has become the boxed cracker of the supermarket. Nabisco Saltines were one of the first of this type marketed commercially on a national scale.
However, Americans call the soft crackers of Maryland's Chesapeake Bay area "beaten biscuits." This is a cracker made with high-gluten flour and water that is beaten (the technical term is "broken") until the dough becomes soft and spongy. When baked, the biscuits are tender and fluffy as though made with yeast. Out of this species of cracker evolved the fluffy raised biscuits made with baking powder that are popular in the South. These soda biscuits, as they were once called, represent a type of bread substitute served with gravies and various fricasseed foods. In the American South they are almost universally eaten at breakfast.
Two common denominators unite all types of American crackers. The first is that they are not sweet, and therefore they are not considered dessert foods. The second is that they are "docked," the baking term for punching tiny holes into the dough so they become light and brittle once they are baked. Docking prevents the dough from shrinking and becoming tough. The old baker's tool used for making the holes was called a biscuit dock, normally a wooden handle attached to a stamp featuring numerous spikes arranged in whatever pattern the baker wanted for his or her crackers. Many docks featured the baker's initials or a simple pattern, such as a ship's anchor for a ship's biscuit.
When sugar is added to these simple recipes, American terminology changes. The crackers become wafers, and if fat of any kind enters into the recipe, the wafers graduate to cookies. The term "cookie" was borrowed from the Dutch, who settled in New York in the early 1600s. The word simply means a little cake, and "little cake" is what most cookies were called in early American cookbooks, just as they were in England. By the 1790s, however, the New York term began to show up in many places outside of that state.
The popularity of the term increased because of its connection with the fashionable New York New Year's cookies, highly ornamented stamped cookies served during New Year's Day entertainments. The word moved into American cookbook literature and eventually came to encompass any crisp, sweet finger food. But one further distinction has developed. "Cookie" is applied to foods of this kind that are either homemade or intrinsically American. How is this known? Chinese fortune cookies were invented in the United States in the 1840s under the name of motto cookies. They are not foreign. By this same rule, imported French champagne biscuits are not called cookies. Likewise the Italian biscotti served at nearly every coffee bar would never be characterized as cookies. Cookies are comfort food. Cookies are what children are allowed to eat. The word separates what is recognizable and American from all the rest.
William Woys Weaver
Bibliography
Adam, James S. A Fell Fine Baker: The Story of United Biscuits: A Jubilee Account of the Men and the Companies Who Pioneered One of Britain's Most Celebrated Industries. London: Hutchinson Benham, 1974.
Brown, Catherine. Scottish Cookery. Edinburgh: Mercat Press, 1999.
Corley, T. A. B. "Nutrition, Technology and the Growth of the British Biscuit Industry 1820–1900." In The Making of the Modern British Diet, edited by Derek J. Oddy and Derek S. Miller. London: Croom Helm, 1976.
Corley, T. A. B. Quaker Enterprise in Biscuits: Huntley & Palmers of Reading 1822–1972. London: Hutchinson, 1972.
Manley, D. J. R. Biscuit Packaging and Storage: Packaging Materials, Wrapping Operations, Biscuit Storage, Troubleshooting Tips. Cambridge, U.K.: Woodhead, 1998.
Wolf-Cohen, Elizabeth. The Complete Biscuit & Cookie Book: Creative and Delicious Ideas for Making and Decorating Biscuits. London: Apple, 1994.
—Heather Holmes
In dogs, a grayish-yellow coat color.
I had a biscuit with my eggs for breakfast this morning.
A biscuit (IPA: /bɪs.kɪt/) is a small baked bread;
the exact meaning varies markedly in different parts of the world. The origin of the word
"biscuit" is from Latin via Middle French and means "twice
cooked". Some of the original biscuits were British naval hard tack. That was passed down to
American culture, and hard tack (biscuits) was made through the 19th century.
A biscuit is a hard baked product like a small flat cake which in North America may be called a "cookie" or "cracker". The term biscuit also applies to sandwich type biscuits, where a layer of 'cream' or icing is sandwiched between two biscuits. It should be noted, however, that it has become increasingly more common within the UK for "cookie" to be used to differentiate between the softer, more chewy "cookie" and the harder, more brittle "biscuit."[citation needed] In this respect the British usage of the word biscuit was defined in the defence of a tax judgement found in favour of McVitie's and their product Jaffa Cakes which Her Majesty's Customs and Excise claimed was a biscuit and was therefore liable to value added tax. The successful defence rested on the fact that 'biscuits go soft when stale, whereas cakes go hard when stale.'
In Britain, the digestive biscuit has a strong cultural identity as the traditional accompaniment to a cup of tea, and is regularly eaten as such. Many tea drinkers "dunk" their biscuits in tea, allowing them to absorb liquid and soften slightly before consumption.
Although there are many regional varieties, both sweet and savoury, "biscuit" is generally used to describe the sweet version. Sweet biscuits are commonly eaten as a snack and may contain chocolate, fruit, jam, nuts or even be used to sandwich other fillings. Savoury biscuits, more often called crackers or crispbreads, are plainer and commonly eaten with cheese following a meal.
Generally, Australians and New Zealanders use the British meaning of "biscuit" (colloquially referred to as bickie or biccie or bikkie) for the sweet biscuit. Two famous Australasian biscuit varieties are the Anzac biscuit and the Tim Tam.
Despite the difference, this sense is at the root of the name of the United States' most prominent maker of cookies and crackers, the National Biscuit Company (now called Nabisco).
In American English, a "biscuit" is a small form of bread made with baking powder or baking soda as a leavening agent rather than yeast. (Biscuits, soda breads, and corn bread, among others, are sometimes referred to collectively as "quick breads" to indicate that they do not need time to rise before baking.)
Biscuits are extremely soft and similar to scones; in fact, many recipes are identical. In the United States, there is a growing tendency to refer to sweet variations as "scone" and to the savory as a "biscuit", though there are exceptions for both (such as the cheese scone). A sweet biscuit served with a topping of fruit and juice is called shortcake. In Canada, both sweet and savoury are referred to as "biscuits", "baking powder biscuits" or "tea biscuits", although "scone" is also starting to be used.
Biscuits are a common feature of Southern U.S. cuisine and are often made with buttermilk. They are traditionally served as a side dish with a meal, especially in the morning. As a breakfast item they are often eaten with butter and a sweet condiment such as molasses, light sugarcane syrup, sorghum syrup, honey, or fruit jam or jelly. With other meals they are usually eaten with butter or gravy instead of sweet condiments. However, biscuits and gravy (biscuits covered in country gravy) are usually served for breakfast, sometimes as the main course.
A common variation on basic biscuits is "cheese biscuits", made by adding grated Cheddar or American cheese to the basic recipe.
Large drop biscuits, because of their size and rough exterior texture, are sometimes referred to as "cat head biscuits".
Biscuits are now ubiquitous throughout the U.S. and feature prominently in many fast food breakfast sandwiches. The biscuit sandwich burst onto the scene primarily through the Hardee's chain of restaurants as an answer to the McDonald's Egg McMuffin.[citation needed] Along with the traditional country ham, Hardee's added sausage, cheese, eggs, steak, and even chicken to the breakfast bread. Breakfast biscuits are much bigger than ham biscuits, most as big or bigger than a typical fast food hamburger. In addition, biscuits are commonly found as a side dish at fried chicken restaurants such as Kentucky Fried Chicken, Bojangles', Church's Chicken, and Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits.
Beaten biscuits date from the 1800s [1] and are a Southern U.S. food. They differ from a regular biscuit in that they are more like hardtack instead of soft because the dough is beaten with a hard object or against a hard surface for at least a half hour. They are also pricked with a fork prior to baking and are usually smaller than a regular biscuit. These are the biscuits traditionally used in "ham biscuits", a traditional Southern canapé, which are simply tiny sandwiches of these bite-sized biscuits sliced horizontally, spread with butter, jelly, mustard, filled with pieces of country ham, or sopped up with gravy or syrup.
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Dansk (Danish)
n. - kikssmåkage
idioms:
Nederlands (Dutch)
koekje, biscuit, lichtbruine kleur, wafel, ongeglazuurd porselein
Français (French)
n. - (GB) biscuit, petit gâteau sec, (US) biscuit sec
idioms:
Deutsch (German)
n. - Keks, Biskuit
idioms:
Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - μπισκότο, κρακεράκι, γαλέτα, αστίλβωτο κεραμικό (πρώτης όπτησης) (κν. μπισκουί), καστανοκίτρινη απόχρωση
idioms:
Português (Portuguese)
n. - pãozinho (m) feito com fermento em pó (EUA), bolacha (f) (Ingl.)
idioms:
Русский (Russian)
печенье, бисквит
idioms:
Español (Spanish)
n. - galleta, bizcocho
idioms:
Svenska (Swedish)
n. - kex, skorpa, slät bulle
中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
饼干, 小点心
idioms:
中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 餅乾, 小點心
idioms:
한국어 (Korean)
n. - 소형 식빵, 비스켓, 담갈색
idioms:
日本語 (Japanese)
n. - ビスケット, 小型パン, 薄茶色, きつね色, 素焼き
idioms:
العربيه (Arabic)
(الاسم) بسكويت
עברית (Hebrew)
n. - עוגיה, מרקוע, תופין, אפיפית, ביסקוויט, חום-בהיר, כלי חרס שרופים לא-מזוגגים, חתיכת פלסטיק גולמית לייצור תקליט
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Some good "biscuit" pages on the web:
 American Sign Language commtechlab.msu.edu |
| Whisker Biscuit Reviews | godiva chocolate biscuit |
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Food and Nutrition. A Dictionary of Food and Nutrition. Copyright © 1995, 2003, 2005 by A. E. Bender and D. A. Bender. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Food Lover's Companion. Food Lover's Companion. Copyright © 2001 by Barron's Educational Series, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Dental Dictionary. Mosby's Dental Dictionary. Copyright © 2004 by Elsevier, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Food & Culture Encyclopedia. Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. Copyright © 2003 by The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Veterinary Dictionary. Saunders Comprehensive Veterinary Dictionary 3rd Edition. Copyright © 2007 by D.C. Blood, V.P. Studdert and C.C. Gay, Elsevier. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Word Tutor. Copyright © 2004-present by eSpindle Learning, a 501(c) nonprofit organization. All rights reserved. eSpindle provides personalized spelling and vocabulary tutoring online; free trial. Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Biscuit". Read more |
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