BRITISH BISCUITS

A Britain’s long and rich biscuit history is unusual in that they were manufactured in quantity from quite early on, with the Victorians baking cheap biccies for all by the waggon-load.

Seaborne trade, cheap ingredients, the industrial revolution and the relative prosperity of customers made this possible. Some of Britain’s early know-how in mass-producing processed foods may be thanks to the Royal Navy, and the tonnes of ship’s biscuits (‘hard tack’) that they made.

Mass production gave us a legacy of generic biscuits. Many ‘classics’, such as Custard Creams, Bourbons and Rich Tea, are made by lots of manufacturers and are all similar, if not identical.

Company trademarks, branding and logos are legally protected, but it’s very hard to patent a recipe, especially a simple one, and even those that do exist eventually lapse. There have been occasional lawsuits, such as in the 1990s whenUnited Biscuits (UB) took supermarket Asda to court claiming that the latter’s Puffin brand biscuits were being ‘passed off’ as UB’smore famous Penguins. But this was about the brand.

Some recipes were created by large companies, such as Peek Frean’s Garibaldis (1861). Others, such as digestives, originated as ‘health foods’. Some biscuits are kitchen-table creations. Legend has it that the Rich Tea was invented in 17th-century Yorkshire by a cook working for Charles I’s minister Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford.

By Eugene Byrne in "BBC History Magazine" UK, May 2017, issue 05, excerpt p. 93. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted bay Leopoldo Costa.