Biscuits

A biscuit is a small baked product; the exact meaning varies markedly in different parts of the world. The origin of the word "biscuit" is from Latin via Middle French and means "cooked twice", hence biscotti in Medieval Italian (similar to the German Zwieback). In modern Italian usage the term biscotti is used to refer to any type of cookie or cracker. Some of the original biscuits were British naval hard tack. That was passed down to American culture, and hard tack (biscuits) was made through the 19th century. Throughout most of the world, the term biscuit relates to a hard, crisp, brittle, baked food, except in the USA and Canada, where it relates to a soft bread product that is only once baked.

A biscuit is a hard baked sweet or savory product like a small, flat cake, which in North America may be called a "cookie" or "cracker". The term biscuit also applies to sandwich-type biscuits, where a layer of 'cream' or icing is sandwiched between two biscuits. In the UK, "cookie" is usually only used in the phrase "chocolate chip cookie" or to refer to larger, softer American style cookies. Referring to the Sesame Street character the Cookie Monster, British author Chris Roberts quipped that he prefers the word cookies over biscuits "as a character called Biscuit Monster would never have worked".

American biscuits can be prepared for baking in several ways. The dough can be rolled out flat and cut into rounds, which expand when baked into flaky-layered cylinders. If extra liquid is added, the dough's texture changes to resemble stiff pancake batter so that small spoonfuls can be dropped into the baking sheet to produce "drop biscuits", which are more amorphous in texture and shape. Large drop biscuits, because of their size and rough exterior texture, are sometimes referred to as "cat head biscuits". Pre-shaped ready-to-bake biscuits can also be purchased in supermarkets, in the form of small refrigerated cylindrical segments of dough encased in a cardboard can.

Beaten biscuits date from the 1800s and are a Southern U.S. food. They differ from a regular biscuit in that they are more like hardtack instead of soft because the dough is beaten with a hard object or against a hard surface for at least a half hour. They are also pricked with a fork prior to baking and are usually smaller than a regular biscuit. These are the biscuits traditionally used in "ham biscuits", also known as hog cakes, a traditional Southern canapé, which are simply tiny sandwiches of these bite-sized biscuits sliced horizontally, spread with butter, jelly, mustard, filled with pieces of country ham, or sopped up with gravy or syrup.