50 Fun Facts About Biscuit

Which Tunnock's treat did the RAF ban from V-bomber cockpits in 1965 after one burst on an instrument panel?

The Teacake was a favourite ration of nuclear-deterrent crews until an unwrapped one expanded in the thin air and exploded; the RAF only lifted the ban in 2025 after altitude-chamber tests.

During the Second World War the major stones of the Crown Jewels were hidden in a tin that had held which biscuit?

A Bath Oliver tin was chosen so the gems could be grabbed and hidden fast if Germany invaded; the hard, dry biscuit itself was devised by physician William Oliver around 1750.

The Bourbon, the chocolate sandwich biscuit created by Peek Freans of Bermondsey, takes its name from what?

A dynasty of French kings, the House of Bourbon that also ruled Spain, lent the biscuit its name, not the American whiskey most people assume.

In the Armada year of 1588, a Royal Navy sailor's ration was a pound of ship's biscuit and a gallon of what?

Beer, a gallon a day, was safer than water on a long voyage, and the rock-hard biscuit was often softened by dunking it in whatever liquid was to hand.

Which currant-filled biscuit, launched by Peek Freans in 1861, is nicknamed the 'squashed fly' biscuit?

The Garibaldi honours an Italian general who visited Tyneside in 1854; its flattened currants, pressed between two thin layers of dough, look enough like flies to earn the nickname.

Jammie Dodgers, the jam-filled shortcake biscuits baked in Llantarnam, are named after a character from which comic?

The Beano's Roger the Dodger gave the biscuit its name; in 2009 it was Britain's top children's biscuit brand, yet adults ate 40% of them.

Wagon Wheels, the marshmallow sandwich biscuits of 1948, were named to cash in on which craze then filling the media?

The Wild West was everywhere in post-war films and comics, so Garry Weston's round biscuit became a 'Weston Wagon Wheel'; the recipe came from inventor William Peschardt, who sold him the patent.

Which oat biscuit did McVitie's launch in 1985, adding a chocolate-coated version two years later?

The Hobnob, a flapjack-digestive hybrid of rolled oats, sold so fast that the chocolate version followed in 1987; its ancestor was a Victorian bake called the Colchester Priory Biscuit.

The baroque swirls stamped on a custard cream are a Victorian-era depiction of which plant?

Ferns were a Victorian obsession, and the ornate pattern has outlived the craze; a 2007 poll of 7,000 Britons put the custard cream top as the nation's favourite biscuit.

In 1876 Huntley & Palmers advertised digestive biscuits for sale alongside indigestion powder in which kind of shop?

Chemists stocked them because the digestive was devised in 1839 by two Scottish doctors as a remedy; John Montgomerie of Scotland even won a US patent for one in 1890.

In 1996 United Biscuits took Asda to court over which own-label lookalike of its Penguin bar?

Puffin bars were ruled in 1997 to be passing themselves off as Penguins, though the judge found Asda had not infringed the trademark; every Penguin wrapper still carries a joke and a penguin fact.

Which Berkshire town, home of Huntley & Palmers, was nicknamed 'biscuit town', with its football team the 'biscuit men'?

Reading owed the nickname to a works that employed over 5,000 people and was the world's largest biscuit firm by 1900; the Palmer family gave the town Palmer Park.

McVitie's traces its name to a biscuit maker established in 1830 on Rose Street in which city?

Edinburgh's Rose Street shop grew into McVitie & Price, whose Gorgie works ran until 1969, when production moved to England.

The Jacob's biscuit factory in Dublin was among the buildings seized by rebels during which event of 1916?

The Easter Rising garrison held the biscuit works, one of several prominent buildings occupied; the firm had begun as a small bread and sea-biscuit bakery and first made cream crackers around 1885.

Which Jacob's bar ran the 1970s jingle 'If you like a lot of chocolate on your biscuit, join our…'?

Club started out as the Club Milk in Dublin just before the First World War, advertised with playing-card clubs, each bar wrapped in foil and then paper.

Bristol physicist Len Fisher's work on the best way to dunk a biscuit earned him which tongue-in-cheek award in 1999?

The Ig Nobel Prize for Physics went to Fisher, who was taken aback by the media frenzy and put journalists' interest in Washburn's equation down to a 'hunger for accessible science'.

Speculaas, the spiced Low Countries biscuit, is traditionally eaten around whose early-December feast day?

Saint Nicholas, Sinterklaas in Dutch, gives the season its name, and a speculaas 'suitor's doll' was once handed over as a declaration of love during the festivities.

Which Indian biscuit did a 2011 Nielsen survey rank the world's best-selling biscuit brand?

Parle-G came out of the Mumbai suburb of Vile Parle, where Parle Products started baking biscuits in 1939; the G stood for glucose until a later slogan recast it as 'Genius'.

The Malted Milk biscuit, first baked by Elkes of Uttoxeter in 1924, usually carries an embossed picture of which animal?

A cow, often flanked by two milk churns, advertises the milk in the recipe; the biscuit also comes chocolate-coated and as a vanilla cream sandwich.

The rows of tiny holes punched into a Bourbon biscuit are there to do what while it bakes?

The holes let steam escape so the thin chocolate biscuit does not crack or break in the oven; the biscuit was created by Peek Freans of Bermondsey.

The Empire biscuit, Scottish jam-filled shortbread under icing, shed which nationality from its name in the Great War?

German biscuit became an awkward name after 1914, so bakers rebranded it for the Empire; it descends from the Austrian Linzer Augen, which has cut-out 'eyes' in the top layer instead of icing.

New Zealand's Afghan biscuit, iced with chocolate and topped with half a walnut, gets its crunch from which cereal?

Cornflakes in a butter-rich, low-sugar cocoa dough provide the crunch; an identical 'Chocolate Cornflakes' recipe ran in the Timaru Herald a year before the name Afghan appeared in 1934.

In the United States the word 'biscuit' means a fluffy quick bread closest to which British bake?

A scone is the nearest British match, which is why Americans say 'cookie' and 'cracker' for what Britain calls biscuits; Canadians sometimes call the bread a 'tea biscuit' to tell them apart.

Carr's of Carlisle lost which honour for its water biscuits in 2012, put down to 'changing tastes' at the palace?

Its royal warrant had been on the packaging since Jonathan Dodgson Carr won one in 1841, so the firm promptly swapped the royal arms for the coat of arms of Carlisle.

Which rival, sued by McVitie's in 1991 over lemon-and-lime Jaffa Cakes, then lent experts to McVitie's VAT tribunal?

Burton's won the packaging case, since the only distinctive element was the McVitie's logo it had not copied, then months later helped prove to the taxman that Jaffa Cakes are cakes.

In 2017 McVitie's shrank a standard pack of Jaffa Cakes from 12 to how many?

Ten per pack became the standard, with 20, 30 and 40 sizes alongside; each cake is three layers, a Genoise sponge base, orange jam and a chocolate top, about 54 mm across.

Roughly how many packets of McVitie's chocolate digestives are eaten in the UK each year, by the company's own count?

Over 71 million packets a year works out at 52 biscuits every second; the chocolate version dates from 1925, when it launched as the Chocolate Homewheat Digestive.

Fox's Biscuits, maker of Party Rings and Rocky bars, began in 1853 in a terraced house in which Yorkshire town?

Batley baker Michael Spedding sold 'eatables' at northern feasts and fairs from 17 Whitaker Street; the firm that grew from his bakehouse was bought by Ferrero for £246 million in 2020.

Arnott's, the Australian firm behind Tim Tams, opened its original bakery in 1865 in which New South Wales city?

Newcastle's 1865 bakery grew into a company that still bakes almost everything in Australia; Pepperidge Farm began importing Tim Tams to the US in 2008 under the slogan 'Australia's Favorite Cookie'.

In Spain, which plain biscuit is traditionally laid on top of a bowl of natillas custard?

A Marie biscuit, round and embossed with its own name, is also eaten in South Africa sandwiched with Marmite or condensed milk, a habit dating from Bakers Biscuits taking it up in 1898.

In 1891 a London salesman persuaded McVitie's to make which plain biscuit smaller to suit southern tastes?

Rich Tea has carried the McVitie's name since that year, after a London salesman argued Londoners wanted a daintier round; Fox's now makes a cream-sandwich version.

In Scottish tradition a decorated shortbread known as 'dreaming bread' was broken over whose head?

A new bride had the infar-cake broken over her as she stepped into her new home; shortbread was once so dear it was kept for weddings, Christmas and Hogmanay.

The Abernethy biscuit, a surgeon's digestive aid, is flavoured with which seed prized for fighting flatulence?

Caraway seeds were picked for their carminative reputation by John Abernethy, who blamed most disease on poor digestion; the biscuit is otherwise a captain's biscuit with sugar added for energy.

Joseph Huntley started packing his biscuits in metal tins in the 1820s to stop them breaking on which form of transport?

Stagecoaches stopped at the Crown Inn opposite his shop, so he sold to the passengers; the tins spawned a second firm, Huntley, Boorne and Stevens, run by his younger son.

Tunnock's, maker of the red-and-gold foil Caramel Wafer, has been based since 1890 in which Lanarkshire town?

Uddingston is where Thomas Tunnock bought a baker's shop in Lorne Place in 1890; the firm is still in family hands, and in 2022 it wrapped the local rugby posts like Caramel Wafers.

Cream crackers, the plain square biscuits eaten with cheese, contain no cream, so what does the name refer to?

Creaming the mixture during manufacture gave the name; Joseph Haughton devised the cracker at home in Dublin and William Jacob put it into production around 1885.

Bahlsen's Leibniz butter biscuit is named after a philosopher whose only link to it was living in which city?

Hanover is Bahlsen's home town and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was its most famous resident; the biscuit's frame of 52 'teeth' was Hermann Bahlsen's original 1891 design.

LU's Petit-Beurre has four corners, 52 teeth and 24 holes, read as the seasons, the weeks of the year and what?

Hours in a day explains the 24 holes on a biscuit Louis Lefèvre-Utile first cut out in Nantes in 1886; eight stacked biscuits equal one biscuit's width, so they pack as a cube.

Which American travel writer, long settled in Britain, called the chocolate digestive 'a British masterpiece'?

Bill Bryson's verdict suits a biscuit that tops UK dunking polls: a 2009 ranking put the plain digestive fourth and the chocolate one first.

Jammie Dodgers turned up repeatedly in Doctor Who during the era of which Doctor?

The Eleventh Doctor's run made the biscuit a running gag; off screen it is a linzer-style shortcake that Australia's Arnott's echoes with its Raspberry Shortcake.

Victorian Royal Navy hardtack, machine-made at Gosport, was stamped out about sixty to a sheet in which shape?

Hexagonal biscuits came off dough sheets two yards by one, each stamped with the Queen's mark and the number of the oven that baked it; tinned beef joined naval rations in 1847.

Walkers Shortbread, sold worldwide in tartan boxes, has been baked since 1898 in which Speyside village?

Aberlour's village bakery, opened by Joseph Walker in 1898, grew into one of Scotland's biggest food exporters, and a 50% jump in butter prices in 2018 cut its operating profit by 60%.

Which prime minister admitted in 1924 that McVitie's boss Alexander Grant had given him a Daimler and £30,000 of shares?

Ramsay MacDonald, Grant's childhood friend, made him a baronet shortly afterwards; Grant, hired from Forres in 1887, also gave £100,000 towards the National Library of Scotland.

McVitie's bakes its chocolate digestives at the UK's largest biscuit factory, opened in 1902 in which London district?

Harlesden took over when Scottish production ended in 1969; a Manchester plant followed in 1914, and five McVitie's factories now each bake different lines.

Crawford's, self-styled as Britain's oldest biscuit firm, began in 1813 baking ship's biscuits in a pub in which port?

Leith's bakery on The Shore was bought by William Crawford in 1856, and the firm later built big factories there and in Liverpool; United Biscuits paid £6 million for it in 1962.

Huntley & Palmers ordered a decorated biscuit tin in 1868, to a design by Owen Jones, from which London printer?

De La Rue's tin came before offset lithography, patented in 1877, let makers print multicoloured designs straight onto tinplate and shape tins like baskets and objets d'art.

Len Fisher's dunking maths leaned on Washburn's equation, which describes which process in porous materials?

Capillary flow is how tea climbs into a biscuit's pores, and a 2022 comparative study found an oat-based biscuit keeps its integrity longest after dunking.

United Biscuits was formed in 1948 when McVitie & Price merged with which other Scottish family baker?

Macfarlane Lang's Victoria Biscuit Works in Glasgow still bakes McVitie's lines; the merged group bought America's Keebler for $53 million in 1974 and sold it for $500 million in 1995.

In Dickens's The Pickwick Papers, lawyer Solomon Pell lunches in court on an Abernethy biscuit and what?

A saveloy and the plain digestive biscuit made up his 'cold collation'; John Abernethy, a surgeon, designed it on the belief that most disease began with bad digestion.

Which Scottish university had a Tunnock's Caramel Wafer Appreciation Society from 1982 until it disbanded in 2016?

St Andrews students kept the society going for 34 years; the bar, officially the Milk Chocolate Coated Caramel Wafer Biscuit, has been served around six million times on one airline's routes.