Biscuits or Crackers?

[MarketStEl]

This isn't a discussion of how to prepare biscuits (spoon, rolled or beaten) or crackers (or flatbread or matzo...).

Rather, it's a usage discussion, prompted by an exchange in the "Aspiring Food Writers" topic over in Food Literature. But since topics like this one, food-related though they are, don't seem to fit neatly into any of the new boxes in the eGullet Forums hierarchy--a discussion of this type probably belongs as much in one of the Food Media & Arts groups as here--I'm starting the discussion here and hoping for guidance as well as conversation.

On to the subject:

What we in the United States call "crackers," the British still call "biscuits."

Yet there was a time when we called those thin, unleavened snack breads "biscuits" too. The former use of the word survives in attenuated form in the name of the country's leading cracker and cookie baker--Nabisco (nee the NAtional BIScuit COmpany). I think they even still manufacture the first mass-marketed snack cracker, the "Uneeda Biscuit," under that name.

Meanwhile, I don't think that across the pond, they have any sort of quick breads like the ones that often accompany breakfasts in the US--the baking-powder discs that are either flaky or crumbly and fluffier than English scones.

What I'd like to know is:

How did "biscuit" cease to be associated with saltines and their ilk in the US and come to refer only to those quick-rising soda breads?

And why don't these breads exist in Britain -- or do they? And how did the term "biscuit," meaning "cracker," persist there?

Take it away, folks...

[Carrot Top]

Here, Sandy - I found where it was posted, with a start to some answers.

Biscuits, Crackers, Hot Rolls and More

[rickster]

FYI, as is implied in the link to the other thread, the term biscuits in the UK is used more broadly and also covers the range of what we call cookies in the US.