The Way the Cookie Crumbles

Gastropod

Cynthia Graber and Nicola Twilley

Arts, Science, History, Food

4.7 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2022

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you’ve baked up a batch of chocolate chip cookies, enjoyed a nice cup of tea and biscuits, or somehow scarfed a sleeve of Oreos, you will know that cookies—or biscuits, as they were known for most of their existence, and still are in much of the Anglophone world—are one of humanity's greatest inventions. But you probably won't know that they started their illustrious career, more than four thousand years ago, as a kind of beer bouillon cube! This episode, we explore how this food of soldiers and sailors was transformed as it spread all over the world, fueling trade and empire, becoming the world's first industrial food, and shaping culture and language along the way. Featuring cookies as preventative medicine, the biscuit feud that followed the Oreo, and the true story of where the chocolate chip cookie really came from—you'll want to pour yourself a nice tall glass of milk for this one! Or, you know, put on the kettle for a cuppa... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	They have been described as very things like tauntlets, cakes, cookies, pretzels, and all sorts
0:11.6	of names because they really look like the snacks that we enjoy nowadays.
0:16.1	It's remarkable that they're actually from the 8th century so they're over a thousand
0:19.4	years old, but they look remarkably fresh.
0:22.2	So let's take a look.
0:25.8	There is no way cookies would ever last more than a thousand years anywhere near me.
0:32.0	But apparently the British Museum staff has a little more self-control.
0:35.8	Yes, we really did see cookies that old and they were beautiful and almost modern looking
0:40.6	and not crumbly at all, amazing in so many different ways.
0:44.4	And as you may be have guessed by now, that's what this episode is all about.
0:48.6	The amazing cookie.
0:50.9	For biscuit, as it's known in my homeland, I am Nicola Twilly, British transplant to the
0:55.8	US.
0:56.8	And I'm Cynthia Graber, and this is Gastropod, the podcast that looks at food through
1:00.2	the lens of science and history.
1:01.7	And I'm the American.
1:02.7	It was always called them cookies.
1:04.7	But that transatlantic linguistic variation is just a tiny part of the cookies contribution
1:10.4	to the English language.
1:12.2	Cracker barrels, slush funds, they're all cookie related.
1:16.0	As is the British term for the verbodlian scousers.
1:19.2	The stories behind all these words will be revealed, as well as why the earliest biscuits
	...

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