Pagina principaleGruppiConversazioniAltroStatistiche
Cerca nel Sito
Questo sito utilizza i cookies per fornire i nostri servizi, per migliorare le prestazioni, per analisi, e (per gli utenti che accedono senza fare login) per la pubblicità. Usando LibraryThing confermi di aver letto e capito le nostre condizioni di servizio e la politica sulla privacy. Il tuo uso del sito e dei servizi è soggetto a tali politiche e condizioni.

Risultati da Google Ricerca Libri

Fai clic su di un'immagine per andare a Google Ricerca Libri.

The Biscuit: The History of a Very British…
Sto caricando le informazioni...

The Biscuit: The History of a Very British Indulgence (edizione 2020)

di Lizzie Collingham (Autore)

UtentiRecensioniPopolaritàMedia votiConversazioni
252913,174 (3)Nessuno
'Fascinating' - Prue Leith Bourbons. Custard Creams. Rich Tea. Jammie Dodgers. Chocolate Digestives. Shortbread. Ginger snaps. Which is your favourite? British people eat more biscuits than any other nation; they are as embedded in our culture as fish and chips or the Sunday roast. But biscuits are not only tasty treats to go with a cup of tea, the sustenance they afford is often emotional, evoking nostalgic memories of childhood. Lizzie Collingham begins in Roman times when biscuits - literally, 'twice-baked' bread - became the staple of the poor; she takes us to the Middle East, where the addition of sugar to the dough created the art of confectionery. Yet it was in Britain that bakers experimented to create the huge variety of biscuits which populate our world today. And when the Industrial Revolution led to their mass production, biscuits became integral to the British diet. We follow the humble biscuit's transformation from durable staple for sailors, explorers and colonists to sweet luxury for the middling classes to comfort food for an entire nation. Like an assorted tin of biscuits, this charming and beautifully illustrated book has something to offer for everyone, combining recipes for hardtack and macaroons, Shrewsbury biscuits and Garibaldis, with entertaining and eye-opening vignettes of social history.… (altro)
Nessuno
Sto caricando le informazioni...

Iscriviti per consentire a LibraryThing di scoprire se ti piacerà questo libro.

Attualmente non vi sono conversazioni su questo libro.

Mostra 2 di 2
A detailed and interesting if unstructured history of the biscuit. Too much of the book is focused on pre-industrial biscuits and their tradition in Europe and the Middle-east and not enough on the modern biscuit. The structure is also particularly unfocused. The author frequently ranges over wildly different eras in each chapter with many, many irrelevant anecdotes. The recipes are also a strange addition to a history book. ( )
  BriainC | Feb 14, 2024 |
I love biscuits and every time I opened this book I wanted to eat one. The Biscuit Book - The History of a Very British Indulgence by Lizzie Collingham is naturally full of biscuits, sponge fingers, biscotti, shortbread, macaroons, crackers, digestives, pretzels, rusks, scones, wafers, waffles and much much more.

This is a serious history book that focuses on the origin of particular biscuits, the production and manufacturing of biscuits, the distribution of biscuits, the effect of class and the conditions of workers employed in biscuit factories.

There's quite a lot on the history of sugar, and while you might assume this to be dry, Collingham provides many interesting sweet morsels like this one:

"During the seventeenth century, treacle replaced honey in gingerbread. Treacle is the English name for the molasses or sweet uncrystallised syrup that drains out during the production of sugar as it slowly crystallises into a solid mass. From the 1650s, raw brown muscovado sugar from Britain's new sugar colony in Barbados flooded the London sugar market, and by 1692 there were 38 sugar refineries in the capital, processing the brown sugar cones into white refined sugar. A by-product was plenty of cheap molasses." Page 58-59

To find out what they did with all of that molasses, you'll have to read the book.

Did you know that biscuits with aniseed and caraway seeds were thought to aid digestion and give the consumer fresh breath? Thankfully aniseed and caraway seeds fell out of favour with the French influence of citrus zest for flavourings and the author covers many more cases like this where various countries and cultures have influenced or adopted certain biscuit recipes. Collingham takes us beyond country or culture of origin to explain the how and why those particular items rose to favour in the first place.

This includes describing the origin of biscuit names as they arise in the text, and explaining the continental confusion between biscuits, crackers and cookies:

"What confuses us today is terminology: what the English would now call biscuits, the Americans call crackers or cookies; what the English think of as scones, southern Americans call biscuits. This confusion can be unravelled by tracing the introduction of Dutch bakery traditions into the Americas." Page 86

Further on, the author goes on to explain that:
"the American use of the terms cracker and cookie are the result of a far more straightforward Americanisation of Dutch words." Page 91

Collingham also provides a detailed and thorough history on the evolution of ship's biscuits and hardtack and outlines just how crucial they were to explorers, travellers, traders and of course the war effort. The twentieth century production of biscuits during the two world wars and the produce shortages that preceded and followed them are also covered in great detail, but I'll admit finding these sections somewhat hard going.

Bakers, cooks and home chefs will appreciate the many recipes included throughout, and I was astounded (okay, that's probably the wrong word, perhaps horrified?) to read that many of the original biscuit recipes required hours of whisking.

"But it was the invention of the metal whisk to replace the bundle of twigs used to beat confections in the still room that marked a big step forward in biscuit making. Seventeenth-century instructions specified that at each stage of the process the biscuit dough had to be beaten for at least two hours. In the 1760s, [Elizabeth] Raffald suggested that a mere half an hour with the far more efficient metal whisk was sufficient for each stage, thus reducing the beating time from 6 to 1 1/2 hours." Page 102

Imagine being the person whisking away for hours and if you're a servant, not even being able to taste the fruits of your labour. A detailed history of production, design and distribution of the biscuit tin was fascinating and reading about the many uses for them around the world was an eye opener.

I will say The Biscuit Book - The History of a Very British Indulgence is heavily focussed on war and the effect on biscuits and vice versa, and when I learned the author had published The Taste of War: World War II and The Battle for Food and The Hungry Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World, it became clear that this is the author's area of specialist interest and expertise.

Those looking for a brief history on some of their favourite biccies (Australian slang) like Jaffa Cakes, Kit Kats, Jammie Dodgers, Wagon Wheels, Ryvita and Marie biscuits will find it here, however be prepared to learn way more than anticipated along the way.

The Biscuit Book is recommended for history buffs and biscuit lovers while other readers may find this a little dry and stale. ( )
1 vota Carpe_Librum | Jul 9, 2022 |
Mostra 2 di 2
nessuna recensione | aggiungi una recensione
Devi effettuare l'accesso per contribuire alle Informazioni generali.
Per maggiori spiegazioni, vedi la pagina di aiuto delle informazioni generali.
Titolo canonico
Titolo originale
Titoli alternativi
Data della prima edizione
Personaggi
Luoghi significativi
Eventi significativi
Film correlati
Epigrafe
Dedica
Incipit
Citazioni
Ultime parole
Nota di disambiguazione
Redattore editoriale
Elogi
Lingua originale
DDC/MDS Canonico
LCC canonico

Risorse esterne che parlano di questo libro

Wikipedia in inglese

Nessuno

'Fascinating' - Prue Leith Bourbons. Custard Creams. Rich Tea. Jammie Dodgers. Chocolate Digestives. Shortbread. Ginger snaps. Which is your favourite? British people eat more biscuits than any other nation; they are as embedded in our culture as fish and chips or the Sunday roast. But biscuits are not only tasty treats to go with a cup of tea, the sustenance they afford is often emotional, evoking nostalgic memories of childhood. Lizzie Collingham begins in Roman times when biscuits - literally, 'twice-baked' bread - became the staple of the poor; she takes us to the Middle East, where the addition of sugar to the dough created the art of confectionery. Yet it was in Britain that bakers experimented to create the huge variety of biscuits which populate our world today. And when the Industrial Revolution led to their mass production, biscuits became integral to the British diet. We follow the humble biscuit's transformation from durable staple for sailors, explorers and colonists to sweet luxury for the middling classes to comfort food for an entire nation. Like an assorted tin of biscuits, this charming and beautifully illustrated book has something to offer for everyone, combining recipes for hardtack and macaroons, Shrewsbury biscuits and Garibaldis, with entertaining and eye-opening vignettes of social history.

Non sono state trovate descrizioni di biblioteche

Descrizione del libro
Riassunto haiku

Discussioni correnti

Nessuno

Copertine popolari

Link rapidi

Voto

Media: (3)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5
3 2
3.5
4
4.5
5

Sei tu?

Diventa un autore di LibraryThing.

 

A proposito di | Contatto | LibraryThing.com | Privacy/Condizioni d'uso | Guida/FAQ | Blog | Negozio | APIs | TinyCat | Biblioteche di personaggi celebri | Recensori in anteprima | Informazioni generali | 203,239,311 libri! | Barra superiore: Sempre visibile