The Good Life
A biscuit called Marie
Pamela Vandyke Price
This is a list-making season. The mere act of arranging items in rows is calming and, albeit misleadingly, suggestive of accomplishment. There are lists of the wettest Thursdays, the most popular children's names, and that perennial stalwart, the umpteen most fascinating mysteries of history, will no doubt plonk itself upon some editorial pages anon.
Here, as in many other quarters, gastronomy is dreadfully neglected. I am utterly indifferent to the Man in the Iron Mask, the Marie Celeste, whatever galleon it was that went down wherever it did, Atlantis, and whether Queen Victoria was marred to the Duke of Monmouth or Lucy Walters to John Brown. But I should like to know whether Grimond de la Reyniere's fingers really were bitten off by a sow, the origin of Mayonnaise (Bayonne, Mahon, McMahon, etc.), and if Napoleon's cook put crayfish into the first Chicken Marengo.
And of many of these fascinating topics, I should like to know. how and from whence the classics
Spectator January 26, 1974 of British biscuitry got their names. Occasionally one can trace an origin — as with the Bath Oliver. And I suppose that the originator of the colloquially termed squashed fly might have clapped a few old currants between some fortuitously present hardtack and thereby composed the iron rations of the March on Rome — to wit, the Garibaldi. In her excellent study, Food and Drink in Britain (Constable E5), C. Anne Wilson points out that the twice-cooked bread (pc/Isis biscotus) of the Romans was used in mediaeval times to provision armies as well as navies; it Was put into the bread ovens to dry after the loaves had been taken out. The biscuit must, in fact, have existed from the first time that people tried to make something edible without a raising agent the Israelites' unleavened breau was an early biscuit, although this' in my view, swiftly assumes NO traits, just as the early Wafer becomes the petit four, and the sweet galette, in northern guise' veers into 'shortbreaderYe' Mediaeval cracknels and Puf,': have mostly died out, although tf: brandysnap is an example of modified former, and the sort 0' sweet biscuit that burst at Yolidr lips — I saw some today, bathe 'Lemon puffs' — of the latter. It is deplorable that there is n° history of the biscuit, especially ih Britain, whose biscuits are the grands crus of flour in short for whether sweet or savoury. Aetually, the British biscuit exemplifies many of the 11Wst puzzling — some might say coll. tradictory, even hypocritical characteristics of these isles. 1-0,_W 'rich' is 'rich tea'? Where is 'cream' in that imposter of the palate, the cream cracker? D°e,,s the Lincoln Cream truly CO from that town of that name, an,0 was the Osborne created on tils: iImslepliocfatWioinghot?f tWhehyspisontgheerei Thad; Nshitohrttcyarkeeim, tphrai nt t sb si soc ut hi ta tbiot sr dnearnieoe v might more properly be Berlier`e And how 'noir' is the average Ca;e Noir? All infringe that Traue Descriptions Act which is, Wieit at me when I attempt to say t" people should have ennuft between their ears to judge
themselves. As for the 'digestive,' that biscuit which, when not sweet, is so good with the matured British cheeses, what associations with health does its name not Portend — perchance an early version of the bulk requisite to the British bowel before the period When this was catered for by the cornflake?
There is the potential romance of the Nice biscuit (which alone explains its unexciting character) — does it rhyme with 'nalce,' 'niece' or even Nietzsche'? Possibly a code involved there. And Bourbon, that sought-after Chocolate lined sandwich of the assorted tin, does its name perpetuate the hope of Louis Philippe, gritting his teeth on the crustings of sugar, to return either to Prance, where the langue de chat, boudoir biscuit (quelle audace!), Palmier and gaufre (significantly the Americans made this into the waffle, the English into a frill requiring a goffering iron to pleat it) provided the acceptable between-times snack, or to Spain, Whence came that supposed aphrodisiac, chocolate? D'od sont les biscuits, not merely of history, but of our times?
I hope the Marie of biscuit fame Was more succulent than her farinaceous memorial. And was it the dryness of her character that Made it permissible — at least en famine — for those stuck with her 1,0 soften her heart in their unverages, whereas only filthy foreigners dip their bread in their Coffee? But codes of conduct, apropos des biscuits, are another topic.
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