Talk:Cookie

"Biscuit" and "cookie"

Question from an Italian: if "biscuit" (British English) and "cookie" (American English) are, practically, the same thing, why are there two different pages, biscuit and this one (cookie)? JacktheBrown (talk) 15:05, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

As I understand it, "biscuit" is a larger term that is used in some countries, where the word "cookie" is not common, to describe what is in some places called cookies. — Alien  3
3 3 14:52, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

Cookies from Persia

The sources provided to justify this are topical webpages and blogs and do not provide any citations to academic sources. They leap from 327 BC to the 14th century AD, without any explanation. They don't even speak about what these ancient Persian cookies were composed of or how they were made. The most detailed source cited:

7th Century A.D. – The earliest cookie-style cakes are thought to date back to 7th century Persia A.D. (now Iran), one of the first countries to cultivate sugar (luxurious cakes and pastries in large and small versions were well known in the Persian empire). According to historians, sugar originated either in the lowlands of Bengal or elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Sugar spread to Persia and then to the Eastern Mediterranean. With the Muslim invasion of Spain, then the Crusades and the developing spice trade, the cooking techniques and ingredients of Arabia spread into Northern Europe.

From the web site, How Sweet It Was: Cane Sugar from the Ancient World to the Elizabethian Period, by Brandy and Courtney Powers:

In 510 BC , hungry soldiers of the Emperor Darius were near the river Indus, when they discovered some “reeds which produce honey without bees.” Evidently this early contact with the Asian sources of sugar cane made no great impression, so it was left to be re-discovered in 327 BC by Alexander the Great, who spread it’s culture through Persia and introduced it in the Mediterranean. This was the beginning of one of the best documented products of the Middle Ages.

By the end of the 14th century, one could buy little filled wafers on the streets of Paris. Renaissance cookbooks were rich in cookie recipes.

They cite a website called "How Sweet It Was" with not even a link to the website. I can't find this website. A Google search locates only a vintage clothing shop, and other circular references to this blog post. Suffice it to say, they do not provide a shred of evidence that cookies existed in ancient Persia, let alone that ancient Persian cookies were transmitted from Persia to the Muslim empire, from the Muslim empire to North Africa, from North Africa to Spain, and from Spain to France. That journey is certainly plausible, but there's no evidence provided to support it.

It's at least equally plausible that the notion of baking bread with sugar was picked up by crusaders in the Middle Ages. That's a more parsimonious explanation, as it requires fewer steps without evidence. And for that matter, it could simply be indigenous to Europe. Putting sugar in bread is really not that complicated an idea to think of. We already know the ancient Romans put sweet fruit in bread, among many other things. A better question might be, when Europeans gained access to sugar cane, why wouldn't they put it in bread?

And it's not like these are generally reliable sources. These are basically blogs. Anyone can put their opinions on a website. If these were mainstream media articles, I could see some argument for leaving these claims, as we can at least reasonably hope that journalistic standards probably ensured that the author got the ideas from a credentialed expert and simply forgot to cite the source. But these websites have no journalistic standards. GlacialHorizon (talk) 21:45, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

And I should also point out that these websites are slippery in their language and more modest in their direct claims. They don't even seem to expressly claim that cookies were brought from ancient Persia to Europe. They just obliquely reference findings that sugar originated in Southeast Asia, and plausibly assume that it must have spread west from there, and then claim that baking with sugar spread into Northern Europe. The subject of the sentences changes from "cookie-style cakes" to "sugar" to "cooking techniques and ingredients" back to "reeds which produce honey without bees" (sugar cane) and then to "little filled wafers" and then "cookie recipes."

This last part is also highly suspect, because there's no evidence the "little filled wafers" contained any sugar cane. "Little filled wafers" is most probably a reference to wafers filled with jelly, which, although filled with added sugars today, was historically a dehydrated fruit product. Several fruits are indigenous to Europe. Of all the cookie recipes we could find earliest in Europe, "little filled wafers" are the least in need of a foreign explanation. Even so, I'm open to entertaining the possibility that these came from Spain. But the sources provide no evidence of that.

The "How Sweet It Was" story actually contradicts the first story. If Alexander the Great introduced baking with sugar to the Mediterranean, then how did the Muslims and the Crusaders introduce it to Spain? Both of these stories seem like theorycrafting. Someone vaguely familiar with history, assuming sugar originated in Southeast Asia, could then look for plausible routes to Europe by just brainstorming historical contacts between Europe and Southeast Asia. GlacialHorizon (talk) 21:54, 5 March 2025 (UTC)