These were first introduced in 1588 to the rations of ships and found their way into the New World by the 1700s at the latest.

The Victorians invented birthday cakes, Swiss Roll and Victoria Sponge — named for Queen Victoria herself — and many biscuits that remain firm favourites were also created during this era. Garibaldi biscuits were invented in 1861, and Cream Crackers came along in 1885.

According to a tell-all biography of Victoria composed by “a member of the Royal household”, she was particularly fond of “chocolate sponges, plain sponges, wafers of two or three different shapes, langues de chat, biscuits and drop cakes of all kinds, tablets, petit fours, princess and rice cakes, pralines, almond …

British

The classic chocolate digestive is officially the nation’s favourite biscuit.

THE biscuit crunching capital of Britain has been revealed. New research out yesterday revealed 96 per cent of people from Manchester cannot resist a daily biscuit. It compares to 93 per cent of people across the country who munch a biscuit every day.

The survey: Which British biscuits are the most popular?

• Chocolate Digestives.
• Shortbread.
• Chocolate fingers.
• Jaffa Cakes.
• Chocolate Hobnobs.

The largest biscuit measured 754 m² (8,120 ft²) and was made by the Immaculate Baking Company (USA) in Flat Rock, North Carolina, USA on 17 May 2003. The chocolate chip cookie weighed 18 tonnes (40,000 lb) and had a diameter of 30.7 m (101 ft).

Aberffraw biscuit

The word biscuit derives from the Latin bis, meaning twice, and coctus, meaning cooked. The term came into use in 14th century England to describe a confection that is baked and then dried out, to produce a hard, flat item that goes soft over time and delicious when dipped in a cup of tea.

People often wonder why the English called a cookie a biscuit (or a sweet biscuit) and why we, in America call the same sort of thing a cookie. New York became such an important city that the word cookie, which we got from the Dutch, became the standard word for all such baked goods.

Preserves (another kind of sweet preserved fruit product) is also made from whole fruit, like jam, but preserves keep the shape of the original fruit near intact, and in jam, the fruits are cut into pieces and cooked down so that the shape is no longer apparent. Americans call jelly ‘jelly’ and they call jam ‘jam’.

Cookies are pretty much all-American. Biscuits are what we have. The term has been coined by manufacturers to describe an American style biscuit and called it a cookie to differentiate.

There are a number of slang usages of the term “cookie”. The slang use of “cookie” to mean a person, “especially an attractive woman” is attested to in print since 1920.

Pizzelles