When is a biscuit not a biscuit? (unravelling the mystery of the transitional biscuits ...)

To progress our understanding of biscuits and their significance in life we have to deal with some definitional issues; we need a framework to work within. When it comes to segmenting the biscuit market we are really most interested in market and economic definitions (well, I am anyway) but let's clear up some of the basics first.

The Word 'Biscuit' Itself
There is some rather dry enytmological ground we should cover here. Stick with me, I'll keep this as brief as I can and you'll be surprised how often you will be dropping this in to conversation!

biscuit = bis-cuit = twice-cooked. From Latin/Middle-French I think ... reasonably intuitively obvious; 'bi' as 'two' and 'cuit' as cooked (as in 'cuisine').

So why 'twice-cooked'? This apparently dates back to when biscuits (aka 'tack') were used as provisions for sailors and preservation depended on them being as dry as possible. So they were, well, cooked twice [I presume in practice this means 'cooked twice as long' as I can't see the benefit of two discrete oven sessions... maybe a follower might enlighten me?]. I did warn you this subject was a little (ahem) dry.

There is a tangent we could disappear on here about US terminology. Let's not. I think there is another Blessay in that subject if we get some US followers to this blog. Suffice to say, for the benefit of any American friends reading this blog, we are talking about what you rather quaintly refer to as 'cookies'. Bless.

Technical Definitions
As fans of the UK TV programme QI will be aware, during a prolonged European legal case around VAT (about which more later) the rather splendid definition which was concocted to define the difference between a biscuit and a cake was as follows: a biscuit is hard but goes soft when it is stale; a cake is soft but goes hard when it is stale.

I am neither qualified nor interested enough in the culinary arts to add value to a debate about ingredients and cooking times -- I'd much rather approach the debate from a market and economic perspective. So let's.

Market and Economic Perspective
Now things get interesting. If you have found your mind wandering over the last few paragraphs, now would be a good time to sip your coffee and nibble on a biscuit to ensure your brain is fully engaged; we have a lot to cover!

Retailers sell biscuits. A lot of biscuits. Over the years they have worked out how to organise their shelf space in a way that fits with how consumers think; so that strikes me as a great place to start. I assembled the rough montage below from camera phone shots I took of the biscuit fixture in my local co-operative store. [the efforts I go to ... ]

So is everything on this 'biscuit fixture' a biscuit? Are they twice-cooked? Do they go soft when stale? Let's agree we need a little more than those definitions if we are to usefully further our understanding of the biscuit category.

Nurse, I feel a Venn diagram coming on ...
This simplified Venn diagram should be sufficent to answer the question; let's take
each set in turn and consider the overlaps (the places where what I like to term 'the Transitional Biscuits' live);

• Biscuits for Cheese: almost (but not quite) 'savoury biscuits' (crackers, waterbiscuits, etc.). The overlap with Sweet Biscuits highlights our first Transitional Biscuit: the Digestive. (We could of course simply define sweet and savoury biscuits and avoid any overlap; but that's far less fun!)


• Cakes: this stuff is reasonably common knowledge now but just in case you've dozed off at the back of the class ... cakes don't have VAT charged on them, biscuits do. Are Jaffa Cakes a cake or a biscuit? From a fiscal perspective, a cake (no VAT); from our perspective (that of the well informed biscuit officianado) they are - you've guessed it - a Transitional Biscuit


• Confectionery: consider, if you will, that iron horse of the confectionery market .. the KitKat. We will talk at length about the KitKat ( which is essentially a chocolate coated wafer biscuit) in later posts but but as you will by know have guessed we consider this (in its two fingered form as least) to be a Transitional Biscuit. Another useful definition should be mentioned here: the Chocolate Biscuit Countline (or CBCL). The 'Countline' bit means you buy it in specified quantities (eg. packs of 7 or 14) unlike traditional (pure?) biscuits which are generally bought by weight.

To ensure you're all paying attention I have added a few biscuits to the diagram that often cause confusion; let's clear these up now;

• The Tea Cake: it's not a cake, it's a mallow-biscuit (more on these another time)
• The ShortCake: nobody thinks that could be a cake, right?
• The pink wafer: is a wafer a biscuit? Certainly -- in fact if we take the 'bis-cuit' view of the world we might argue that this dryest of all biscuits is possibly the closest thing we now have to 'pure' biscuit

So

When is a biscuit not a biscuit?

When it's a Transitional Biscuit. (I know that technically a transitional biscuit is still a biscuit; but I think you get my point).

What does this tell us about life?

Giving labels to things can provide the illusion of understanding them; but the more we truly understand the less comfortable we are likely to be with the labels commonly used.

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If you are wondering what its all about, see my initial blessay.