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October 19, 2010
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| Word of the
Week--"biscuit"
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Definition----a small cake of
bread leavened with baking powder
or soda. British, a small crisp sweet cake; the North American
equivalent of a cookie.
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Discussion--What a biscuit
is depends on where you live.
For the U.S. and most English-speaking North American countries, a
biscuit is often a dinner roll,
made primarily of flour, water, and shortening. The test of a cook is
whether his or her biscuits
are light, airy, and flaky as desired or are the consistency of the
proverbial hockey puck. In Great
Britan, biscuit refers to a sweetened, crisp cake; what U.S. residents
call cookies or shortbread. Apparently,
the British lack an equivalent term for the U.S. biscuit. I suspect they
just use the more general term roll.
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| Etymology--Biscuit comes
from the Medieval Latin biscoctus, which means twice baked.
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The terms for biscuit in other
languages mostly come this Latin root
or from the term for cake. |
Foreign
Translations
| German: |
Keks (m) |
| Dutch: |
koekje (het) |
| French: |
biscuit (m) |
| Italian: |
biscotto |
| Spanish: |
galleta |
Jane Ellis
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