[TAG] Work In Progress

[Kat Tanaka]

[gee, I can't get online for a few days and a food discussion breaks out 
in TAG]

On Wed, Nov 09, 2005 at 03:46:11PM -0800, Mike Orr wrote:
> On 11/9/05, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> > Quoting Jimmy O'Regan (jimregan at o2.ie):
> >
> > > Oh! Biscuit == scone, gotcha.
> >
> > Close.  'Merkin biscuits are in general and a lot smaller.  If they were
> > sweet, they'd be classified as "cookies".  What are called "saltine
> > crackers" are a fairly typical subcategory of American biscuits,
> 
> Er, biscuits are leavened, crackers are unleavened.
> Cookies can be either (if compact cookies like ginger snaps and
> digestive cookies are truly unleavened).  Cookies are sweeter than
> biscuits, but 'Merkin scones are also sweeter than biscuits, but not
> as sweet as cookies.  The word "biscuit" is sometimes imported to
> refer to to a British food ("digestive biscuits"), the way "football"
> is sometimes imported for soccer.

...?!  

American biscuits are a type of bread.

I would say that scones are best described as a sort of leavened 
shortbread. You can have savory scones, although they're not very 
traditional.

A cookie in American culinary terms is any quick-baking sweet that isn't a 
piecrust, bread or cake. (Brownies and blondies skirt the edge between 
cookie and cake, in my estimation.) I don't know where you get this 
"cookies are soft and chewy" idea, Mike -- surely this is your own 
preference on this, since it excludes things like Oreos?

 
> There are also "Australian toaster biscuits", which look almost like
> English muffins but taste different.
> According to the links below, they're similar to a crumpet, a food we
> don't otherwise have.

Crumpets are usually confined to areas of the U.S. with either a high 
British expat or foodie contingent. (For those who are still unclear on 
"what's an English muffin" (being neither English nor a muffin) -- they're 
a sort of chewy bread that's split and toasted until they're rough on the 
toasted side).


> Muffin
> http://www.ghalad.com/upload/files/muffin.jpg
> (sweeter than a scone, not as sweet as a cookie)

Muffins are just cakes baked in small containers.

 
> Foster's used to run a series of ads that ended with: "Foster's. 
> Australian for beer."  I told this to an Australian friend and he
> laughed, saying Foster's was just one beer among many in Australia.


My Aussie friends are evidently ruder than yours, and say "Foster's is 
Australian for piss."

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