by Joe Brooks

Created on: April 09, 2009   Last Updated: April 10, 2009

Discussing the biscuit, and other historical remarks.

If this was an O'Reilly publication there might be a picture of a biscuit on the cover, or maybe a pilgrim. But it's not. It's an article about biscuits, sort of, by me.

Now I know a little something about the biscut, having been baking them almost as long as I've been eating them. I have been reading lately some commentary about biscuits, so consider myself pretty up to date on the subject.

I also offered to write an article about the history of the biscuit for an emerging online magazine. I was scorned, utterly scorned. Do you know what that editor said to me? He said approximately this:

"Biscuits? Do you mean those fluffyish baked goods that you eat with jam? Just how would printing an article on biscuits bring the readers back next month?"

Well of course I ended the discussion right there. A man of such limited discernment does not deserve to read my words, much less earn the right to publish them. Besides all that, who would want to be associated with a publication that is obviously doomed before the first edition? But clearly, printing an article about biscuits would bring them back next month for the pancakes.

But let's think about history. How long ago was the beginning of the biscuit? Who made the first biscuit? You say the Pilgrims, maybe? Not likely.

A biscuit to them would have been sailor's hard tack, so hard you couldn't eat it without soaking it in your grog ration, and probably weevily and maggoty as well. If they saw a modern biscuit they'd have called it a scone, and anyway they probably lacked the stuff to make a biscuit, like wheat flour, and ovens, and women.

Well of course they had to have women to do any real cooking, and they were running drastically low on women, having used up most of the ones they brought with them.

And you couldn't expect men to do any real cooking, could you? The men would be busy doing real man's work, like hunting, and fishing, and drinking. They did have beer. They made sure of that, no matter what other valuable commodities they might be doing without.

So it was after that some time, then, and who knows when? Most probably when they got some wheat grown, got a mill ready to grind it, got some cows to supply milk, and brought in some more women to cook for 'em.

So passing by the pilgrims, which I'm glad to do, they not being really my kind of folks, we move on to the evolution of real biscuitry. In the fourteenth century the scone was known, and even celebrated by a Scottish poet. But that was a griddle cake, and made of oats, not that there's anything wrong with that.

In eighteen-hundred-and-something there became available commercial baking powders. So I'm thinking that our common biscuit became reality about then. But before that you could have had a sourdough biscuit, or a yeast-raised biscuit. So it's all very confusing. And anyway, who cares? Maybe that editor was right.

No, he wasn't. Biscuits are interesting. There's a lot you can do with 'em. They have interesting names, like "cat head". Did you know that the squirrel heads referenced in the old time song "Squirrel Heads and Gravy" were not the heads of arboreal rodents, but indeed were small biscuits? Bet you didn't, either. For homework, pursue the following activities, and report when we meet again:

* Make some biscuits. Look on the web. There's a recipe. * Research The Stone of Scone. * Compose a song titled "In the Fourteenth Century the Scone Was Known". * Learn to play the dulcimer, so that you can accompany yourself as you sing the song.

Have fun while you're at it. And I'll see you next time.

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