ORIGIN OF COOKIES - Did India contribute?

COOKIES!

Yummy-Creamy-Buttery, majorly "sweet" and as most of our Indian households now prefer -sometimes "salty"; delightful charms satiating our sudden cravings, and serving as one of the best premium eatables to gift since ages.

Hey, does it not feel like an American or English bakery stuff to have?

Well, I bet it does!

But do you know that it's origin is not totally from an American or English background, and even India did a major contribution in bringing these yummy delights into the show?

The Cookie, such a small little treat, but surprisingly has a very long history and is loved by millions.

Let's have the insight -

Lavish cakes were well-known in the Persian Empire. According to some sources, the earliest cookie-style cakes are thought to date back to Persia (modern Iran) in the 7th century C.E., toward the end of its glory.

While Europeans had honey, due to the ancient migration of bees, sugar came much later. It originated in the lowlands of Bengal and some other places in Southeast Asia, and was brought to Persia and cultivated there, spreading to the eastern Mediterranean. Bakers made luxurious cakes and pastries for the wealthy. With the Muslim invasion of Iberia in the 8th century, followed by the Crusades (1095 to 1291) and the developing spice trade, the cooking techniques and ingredients of Arabia spread to Northern Europe. Cookbooks of the Renaissance, which began in Italy in the 14th century and spread to the rest of Europe, are filled with cookie recipes. By the end of the 14th century, one could buy little filled wafers on the streets of Paris. But during the centuries before, while cakes of were being baked to the delight of all, what has evolved into our cookie was not originally made to please the sweet tooth.

 

According to culinary historians, the first historic record of cookies was used as test cakes. A small amount of cake batter was dropped onto baking pans to test the temperature of the oven before the cake was baked (remember, early ovens didn’t have thermostats like ours do, and were fueled by burning wood). Each language has its own word for cookie. In The Netherlands, the little test cake was called a koekje, “little cake” in Dutch (a cake is koek). The concept evolved to small, individual portions, which were baked to create the dry, hard-textured cookies we know today. With the moisture removed, they stayed fresh much longer than cake. The British word for cookie, biscuit, comes from the Latin bis coctum, meaning “twice baked” (also the origin of the Italian biscotti). According to The Oxford Companion to Food, the term “cookie” first appeared in print around 1703.

With war and exploration eventually sugar was introduced to the Mediterranean area and European countries and so were cookies. And by the end of the 14th century, cookies were common place in European cities. The earliest cooking books from the Renaissance were chockful of cookie recipes.

One popular type of cookie in Elizabethan England was a square short-cookie made with egg yolks and spices and baked on parchment paper.

After the Industrial Revolution, improvements in technology led to more variety of cookies be available commercially. The base for all cookies were the same though: wheat flour, sugar and fats like butter and oil.

How did America enter the scene?

Of course when the Europeans arrived in the Americas, they brought their cookie recipes with them. Soon they adapted the old recipes to fit the New World. American butter cookies are a close relative to the English teacake and the Scottish shortbread.

In the Southern colonies, every housewife knew how to bake tea cakes that had no extra flavoring except butter and sometimes a couple drops of rose water.

The first American cookies that showed up in cook books had creative names like Jumbles, Plunkets and Cry Babies which gave no clue to what was inside the cookie. As the expansion of technology grew in the United States, new ingredients started to show up in cookie recipes. For instance with the railroad, more people could purchase fruits and nuts like coconuts and oranges. Even cereal started showing up in cookie recipes after the Kellogg brothers invented cornflakes in the late 1800s. Then when electric refrigerators became available in the 1930s, icebox cookies also became popular.

Isn't that interesting?

We at Mom's Baked Delight, love to bridge this gap between cultures, breaking-through the shocking but existing stereotypical perception of treating these delicious bakies as some representation of any single civilization or culture.

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