National biscuit day!

Did you know that 29th May is National Biscuit Day?! The perfect day to grab a biscuit (or two) alongside your cuppa and enjoy.

But where do biscuits come from?

Savoury biscuits have been eaten around the world since the ancient world of Roman, Greek and Egyptian empires, as a means of travelling out at sea with a food that can keep well for a long period of time. The process of drying out a food to prolong its life was advanced for the era and is something we still rely on heavily in our modern day foods.

The sweet biscuit has a slightly more modern history, but still dates back to the 7th Century. The Persians started experimenting with the savoury biscuits and crackers by adding extra ingredients. They were modern day food developers and technologists! Ingredients such as egg, butter were added to alter the texture, whilst sweet foods such as honey and fruit were also added. Sugar, in some of the forms we know today, was also being discovered around the same time in Persia, with discoveries of sugar cane and how to process the sweet elixir! Refined sugar came later but that is a tale for another day.

Since then biscuits have grown and grown in their variety, availability and complexity and are eaten around the globe. British people are said to eat the most biscuits vs any other nation, perhaps our love of tea has something to do with that!

Humble beginnings still ring true

Despite all the extra ingredients our modern biscuits still have, such as chocolate, jam, preservatives and beyond, their foundation and humble beginnings are still true. We may not need biscuits as something that will keep for a long time whilst we are out at sea, but biscuits do serve as something you can keep in the cupboard for a long time, thanks to the baking process drying them out. Biscuits are the reliable pick-me-up, for when you just need a little something. A focus of less about nutrition now though, and more about enjoyment.

The biscuit world of today offers us such choice. From classic shortbread and digestives (yes digestives do have a medical history behind them) to custard creams and chocolate chip cookies, the choices are endless. Then the choice of to dunk (risky!) or not to dunk. For me, a ginger nut dunked in my Nanna's cup of tea will be a food memory that always stay close to my heart

So this National biscuit day, what is your biscuit of choice?