Chocolate Cookies are Here... What is Actually Cookies.....

Dec. 11, 2009 - PRLog -- For Cookies…

Who doesn’t love a cookie? Just think: Without ovens, we wouldn’t have these delightful treats. In fact, the cookie was invented in the days before thermostats, as a test to see if primitive ovens were the right temperature to bake cakes. Rather than ruin an entire cake, a “little cake,” or cookie, was tested first. At the time, no one thought the “test cake” would become a treat with charms of its own. This is Page 1 of a three-page article. Click on the black links below to visit other pages.


In America, a cookie is described as a thin, sweet, usually small cake. By definition, a cookie can be any of a variety of hand-held, flour-based sweet cakes, either crisp or soft. Each country has its own word for "cookie." What we know as cookies are called biscuits in England and Australia, in Spain they're galletas, Germans call them keks or Plätzchen for Christmas cookies, and in Italy there are several names to identify various forms of cookies including amaretti and biscotti, and so on. The name cookie is derived from the Dutch word koekje, meaning "small or little cake." Biscuit comes from the Latin word bis coctum, which means, “twice baked.” According to culinary historians, the first historic record of cookies was their use as test cakes. A small amount of cake batter was baked to test the oven temperature.

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.

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Cookies are small, sweet, flat, dry cakes—single-serving finger food. They are generally flour based, but they can be flourless—made from egg whites and/or almonds like macaroons, for example—or made from gluten-free flour, like rice flour. Cookies can be soft, chewy or crisp. They can be big or small, plain or fancy. They can be simple—butter and sugar—or complex, with a multitude of ingredients, or fashioned into cookie sandwiches, two layers and filling. But they started out long ago, not as a treat or a comfort food, but as an oven regulator!

Origin Of The Cookie

As people started to explore the globe, biscuits (hardtack) became the ideal traveling food, because they stayed fresh for long periods Hardtack proved a portable food that had a long storage life and was perfect for traveling. For centuries, a ship's biscuit, an iron-like cracker, was aboard any ship that left port because it could last for months (even years under the right conditions).

During the 17th and 18th centuries in Europe, baking was a carefully controlled profession, managed through a series of Guilds or professional associations. To become a baker, people had to complete years of an apprenticeship - working through the ranks of apprentice, journeyman, and finally master baker. By having guilds, authorities could easily regulate the amount and quality of goods baked. As technology improved during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, so did the ability of bakers to make a wide range of sweet and savory biscuits for commercial consumption. Despite more varieties becoming available, the essential ingredients of biscuits didn't change. These ingredients are 'soft' wheat flour, which contains less protein than the flour used to bake bread, sugar, and fats, such as butter and oil.

Lavish cakes were well-known in the Persian Empire. According to What’s Cooking America, a food history website, 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.*

*Begun around 550 B.C.E., Islam's former territorial unity, Persia was conquered numerous times, most famously when Alexander the Great defeated Darius III at Gaugamela (331 B.C.E.). But in 913 C.E., conquered by the Buwayhid from the shores of the Caspian Sea, the united Muslim empire was destroyed and Iran became one nation in an increasingly diverse Islamic world.

While Europeans had honey, due to the ancient migration of bees, sugar came much later. It originated in the lowlands of Bengal or elsewhere 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).

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