You may already know what the “dick” in “spotted dick” or the “nog” in “eggnog” refers to.
Both are callbacks to historical words and practices ― in fact that’s why we still call ginger beer “beer” even when it has 0% alcohol.
But what about the other ginger-based mystery ― ginger nuts?
The biscuits, which usually use flour, fat, sugar or molasses, and the fiery spice to achieve their signature snap, don’t contain any nuts at all.
Perhaps, I wondered, the nonsensical name has a historical meaning.
It seems to.
According to Oxford’s An A-Z Of Food And Drink by lexicographer John Ayto, the term is older than you might think ― and used to be completely different.
“In the eighteenth century, sweet ginger-flavoured biscuits were known as gingerbread nuts (‘We beg the receipt of your gingerbread nuts,’ wrote Joseph Jekyll in a letter dated 1775),” the author shared.
It became “ginger nut” in the 19th century ― and even appeared in the world of Charles Dickens.
“The element nut presumably refers to the biscuits’ smallness and roundness (ginger nuts seem originally to have been smaller than their twentieth-century descendants),” Ayto explains.
“It also appears in spice nut, a now obsolete synonym for ginger nut (‘to induce you to purchase half a pound of the real spice nuts,’ Charles Dickens, Sketches by Boz, 1836), and of course in doughnut.”
Pepper nuts, too, are another name for a small type of gingerbread.
I can’t believe I’d never made that ginger nut/doughnut connection before...
A lot of biscuits rely on raising agents like baking powder (which was only invented in the mid-1800s) to cook properly.
So you might think biccies are a post-Victorian treat ― but you’d be wrong.
English Heritage writes that “The earliest foods which we might call biscuits were probably baked on stones in the Neolithic era.”
They add that “The term biscuit comes to English from the French biscuit (bis-qui), which itself has a Latin root: panis biscotus refers to bread twice-cooked.”
Indeed Ancient Romans do seem to have had access to biscuits (but probably not ginger nuts).
