Biscuit

A biscuit is a flour-based baked food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. Savoury biscuits are called crackers.

Types of biscuit include biscotti, sandwich biscuits (such as custard creams), digestive biscuits, ginger biscuits, shortbread biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, Anzac biscuits, and speculaas.

The term "biscuit" is used in many English-speaking countries. In the United States and parts of Canada, sweet biscuits are nearly always called "cookies" and savoury biscuits are called "crackers".

Small, hard, flour-based baked products are known in many English speaking countries as biscuits. In the United States and sometimes Canada, this word refers to a quick bread that is like a scone, but with a fluffier texture (see biscuit (bread)), and what are known in many English speaking countries are called either a cookie or cracker. Canadians sometimes distinguish the quick bread with the name "tea biscuit". In the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and Ireland, cookie refers to a single type of biscuit: the sweeter baked dough typically containing chocolate chips or raisins. In Scotland, cookie is also used to refer to some specific types of biscuits or breads. Historically in the United Kingdom, quick breads were known as biscuits. This practice has ended in England, although it has remained in Scotland and Guernsey.

The word biscuit comes from the Old French word bescuit, which was derived from the Latin words bis ('twice') and coquere, coctus ('to cook', 'cooked'), and, hence, means 'twice-cooked'. This is because biscuits were originally cooked in a twofold process: first baked, and then dried out in a slow oven.

The need for nutritious, easy-to-store, easy-to-carry, and long-lasting foods on long journeys, in particular at sea, was initially solved by taking livestock along with a butcher/cook. However, this took up additional space on what were either horse-powered treks or small ships, reducing the time of travel before additional food was required. This resulted in early armies' adopting the style of hunter-foraging.

The introduction of the baking of processed cereals, including the creation of flour, provided a more reliable source of food. Egyptian sailors carried a flat, brittle loaf of millet bread called dhourra cake while the Romans had a biscuit called buccellum. Roman cookbook Apicius describes: "a thick paste of fine wheat flour was boiled and spread out on a plate. When it had dried and hardened, it was cut up and then fried until crisp, then served with honey and pepper."

Many early physicians believed that most medicinal problems were associated with digestion. Hence, for both sustenance and avoidance of illness, a daily consumption of a biscuit was considered good for health.