Digestive biscuit

Early 20th century McVitie & Price's Digestive tin box, located in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

In 1839, digestives were developed in the United Kingdom by two Scottish doctors to aid digestion.[5][9] In an 1851 issue of The Lancet, London's advertising section offered brown meal digestive biscuits.[10] At the time, it was asserted that grain millers knew only of bran and endosperm.[11] After 10% of the whole grain's coarser outer-bran coat was removed, and because the innermost 70% of pure endosperm was reserved for other uses, brown meal, representing only 20% of the whole grain, remained, consisting of about 15% fine bran and 85% white flour.[12] By 1912, it was more widely known that brown meal included the germ, which lent a characteristic sweetness.[13]

Digestives featured in advertisements for the Berkshire-based biscuit company Huntley & Palmers in 1876, with digestives sold by chemists alongside indigestion powder.[14] Rival biscuit company, Edinburgh-based McVitie's, has Golden-baked their best-selling digestives to a secret recipe developed by Sir Alexander Grant since 1892.[14] A recipe was given in Cassell's "New Universal Cookery Book" of 1894. In 1889, John Montgomerie of Scotland filed a U.S. patent application, which was granted in 1890. This patent asserted a prior patent existed in England dated 1886. The U.S. patent, titled "Making Malted Bread", included instructions for the manufacture of digestive biscuits. Montgomerie claimed this saccharification process would make "nourishing food for people of weak digestion".[15] Despite rumours that it is illegal for them to be sold under their usual name in the US,[16] they are, in fact, widely available in the imported food sections of grocery stores and by mail order.[17][18][19]

The typical digestive biscuit contains coarse brown wheat flour (which gives it its distinctive texture and flavour), sugar, malt extract, vegetable oil, wholemeal, raising agents (usually sodium bicarbonate, tartaric acid and malic acid), and salt.[20] Some varieties also contain dried whey, oatmeal, cultured skimmed milk, and emulsifiers such as DATEM.

A digestive biscuit averages around 70 calories, although this sometimes varies according to the factors involved in its production.

Plain digestive biscuits with tea, jam and cakes on a serving tray.

Digestive biscuits are frequently eaten with tea or coffee. Sometimes, the biscuit is dunked into the tea and eaten quickly due to the biscuit's tendency to disintegrate when wet. Digestive biscuits are one of the top 10 biscuits in the UK for dunking in tea.[5] The digestive biscuit is also used as a cracker with cheeses, and is often included in "cracker selection" packets.

In the UK, McVitie's digestive is the best selling biscuit, with 80 million packs sold annually,[1] though there are many other popular brands (such as Cadbury’s) as well as supermarkets' own versions.[8] Digestives are also popular in food preparation for making into bases for cheesecakes and similar desserts.[21]

The coated side of a McVitie's milk chocolate digestive biscuit

Digestive biscuits with a chocolate coating on one side are also available. The coating can consist of dark, white, or milk chocolate, although white chocolate digestives are quite rare. This was originally produced by McVitie's in 1925 as the Chocolate Homewheat Digestive. Other varieties include the basic biscuit with chocolate shavings throughout (chocolate "chips" in the biscuit mix) or a layer of caramel, mint chocolate, orange-flavoured chocolate,[22] or plain chocolate. They are manufactured at McVitie's Harlesden factory in London.[23] American travel writer Bill Bryson described the chocolate digestive as "a British masterpiece".[24]

In 2009, the McVitie's chocolate digestive was named as the most popular biscuit in the UK to dunk into tea.[5] The chocolate variant from McVitie's is routinely ranked the UK's favourite snack.[6][7][8] A YouGov poll saw Cadbury’s digestive ranked the second most popular biscuit in the UK after McVitie's.[8]

McVitie's digestive biscuits have become known among fans of the rock group The Beatles because they were the cause of an argument between George Harrison and John Lennon during a recording session for the group's 1969 album Abbey Road. The incident was recounted by recording engineer Geoff Emerick in his book Here, There, and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles.[25] According to Emerick, Lennon's wife Yoko Ono was in the recording studio and at one point helped herself to Harrison's box of McVitie's while the Beatles were in the control room listening to a playback of the song they had just recorded. Harrison became angry at Ono, and his subsequent outburst caused Lennon to lose his temper in response.[26]

Chocolate digestives were part of the technical challenge to the bakers in series 13, episode 6 of The Great British Bake Off. They were also the technical challenge to the bakers in episode 2, season 2 of The Great Canadian Baking Show.[27]

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• Emerick, Geoff; Massey, Howard (2006). Here, There and Everywhere My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles. New York: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-1-59240-179-6.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Digestive biscuits.

• Digestive Biscuits at www.foodsofengland.co.uk