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Archive 1Archive 2

Why the reference to gingerbread?

Why does it say under the sub-heading "Biscuits for pleasure" "Main Article: Gingerbread"? Surely there are plenty of non-ginger biscuits (e.g. chocolate biscuits, jammy dodgers, custard creams, lemon puffs, garibaldis, nice biscuits) that are eaten for pleasure. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 10:32, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Probably because when the section is added much was copied from Gingerbread? I really don't know, I've removed it. I think it's inaccurate anyway, see [1] which doesn't even mention gingerbread. Dougweller (talk) 11:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
"A little bit of cookie history
The book Cookies and Crackers, Time/Life Books, 1982 (page 5) provides a history of cookies that is perfect for elementary gourmets:
"The art of making cookies and crackers is that of turning simple ingredients into wonderful things....Like cakes and pastries, cookies and crackers are the descendants of the earliest food cooked by man-- -grain-water-paste baked on hot stones by Neolithic farmers 10,000 years ago. The development of cookies and crackers from these primitive beginnings is a history of refinements inspired by two different impulses--one plan and practical, the other luxurious and pleasure-loving. Savory crackers represent the practical and may well have been the first convenience foods: A flour paste, cooked once, then cooked again to dry it thoroughly, becomes a hard, portable victual with an extraordinarily long storage life--perfect for traveling....For centuries, no ship left port without enough bone-hard, twice-cooked ship's biscuit--the word biscuit comes from the Old French biscoit, meaning twice cooked---to last for months, or even years. While sailors and other travelers chewed their way through unyielding biscuits, cooks of the ancient civilizations of the Middle East explored the culinary possibilities of sweetness and richness. These cooks lightened and enriched the paste mixtures with eggs, butter and cream and sweetened them with fruit, honey and finally--when the food became widely available in the late Middle Ages--with sugar... Luxurious cakes and pastries in large and small versions were well known in the Persian empire of the Seventh Century A.D. With the Muslim invasion of Spain, then the Crusades and the developing spice trade, the cooking techniques and ingredients of Arabia spread into Northern Europe. There the word cookies, distinguishing small confections, appeared: The word comes from the Dutch Koeptje [koekje], meaning small cake. By the end of the 14th Century, one could buy little filled wafers on the streets of Paris...Renaissance cookbooks were rich in cookie recipes, and by the 17th Century, cookies were common-place."
Technology of biscuits, crackers, and cookies By Duncan J. R. Manley p. 2" However, the term biscuits was applied originally to dried bread pieces. These were also sweetened and flavoured with spices. Other products like our modern biscuits were made but called by more cake-like names. For example, shortcake and shortbread, short dough types are very ancient. In 1605 there is reference to puff pastry made by placing butter between sheets of rolled out dough. 'Wafers' are probably the oldest types of biscuits; ancient records show that they were widely used in religious ritual. As a type of baked flour product they were introduced into Britain by the Normans from France (c. 1100). They were made on special wafer irons not only by bilkers but also by wafer makers and at home. The products must have been cake-like similar to the gaufres of France today and not the thin crisp sheets we call wafers now. Wafers are made from batters and the recipes, used at least in France, were often enriched with eggs, wine or cheese. In 1605 there is reference to rolled wafers, i.e. wafers with enough sugar in the recipe to allow them to be rolled off the baking plate after baking. They would have been similar to the brandy snaps and rolled wafers of today."
Dougweller (talk) 14:28, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Need a section devoted to soggy biscuits

Discuss. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.162.123.52 (talk) 06:55, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Who would be interested in soggy biscuits, other than "dunkers"? Dbfirs 12:28, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
Do you mean this kind of soggy biscuit? If so the answer is definitely no. And I'm not even going to go into whether dunkers would be interested in that! Graham87 14:27, 21 June 2012 (UTC)
I've never heard of your soggy biscuit game (and don't want to). I've also never heard of your Norwegian Hound, presumably with a capital "D", but one lives and learns, even if reluctantly. You are probably correct in your interpretation of 92.162.123.52's request, in which case I should have ignored it. Dbfirs 21:59, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Woefully Incomplete

This article mentions only 2 of the hundreds of varieties of biscuit; were this not a subject of which americans ignorant, there would probably be a Biscuit Portal here. Shamelessly amerigocentric, barely above stub status for such a culturally significant foodstuff. --2.223.240.211 (talk) 02:43, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

That's not helpful. Insults with no practical suggestions as to how to improve it. I'm not sure if what you want to add is already at List of cookies or if you are thinking along entirely different lines. And if it's incomplete, I'd say that's not because of the editors who have edited it but because of those who haven't edited it, including you. Dougweller (talk) 12:26, 1 March 2013 (UTC)
Perhaps the OP could tell us which types of biscuit are missing from the list. It is a redirect from List of biscuits, but perhaps we could make the existence of the listing more prominent in the article, rather than just at the end in "See also". I'll try adding a link in the lead. Will this satisfy the "Biscuit Portal" request. I think the article is appropriately international. Dbfirs 12:56, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Hardtack soaked in brine?

The article says that "To soften hardtack for eating, it was often dunked in brine, coffee, or some other liquid or cooked into a skillet meal." That sounds really, really weird. I suppose they might have soaked them in seawater, but that still would have required them to drink more fresh water than if they just dipped them in fresh water to start, right? (Assuming they drink any leftover water) In any case, if you mean seawater you should say seawater, because "brine" makes me think of something extra concentrated. Wnt (talk) 15:36, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Good point. I've added a Cn tag, since the sentence on the whole seems to be unsupported at the moment. Ibadibam (talk) 19:59, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

American usage

I do not think it is correct to say that there are "two distinct products in North America and the Commonwealth of Nations and Europe". Apart from the ambiguity of that wording, it is more accurate to say that in North America biscuit refers to a different product to that referred to in the rest of the world.Royalcourtier (talk) 20:11, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

I agree. The word has two different meanings. Lou Sander (talk) 07:05, 11 September 2014 (UTC)

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