What can possibly make a cream cracker taste better? Dunk it in a cup of tea, we say. Come to think of it, the pleasure of dipping a biscuit into your cuppa is actually an arcane art form that can be learnt in a moment but would take you years to master it. With subtle nuances and carefully calculated moves, you can enhance the taste of any baked goody simply by plunging it into a hot beverage. For many of us, it’s an act of happiness and fulfilment that we unwittingly practise every day, counting it among the small joys of life.
But there’s more to this than meets the eye. Over centuries, dunking has had numerous cultural references that are quirky as much as they are interesting. ‘Tea sucking’ is the name given to the practice of dunking in Australia. Britons, on the other hand, took things a notch higher when they went ahead and got a special day assigned to it - ‘National Biscuit Dunking Day’. Cut to the origin of dunking, it is believed that in ancient Rome, people used to dip hard unleavened wafers in wine in order to moisten it a bit.
The story behind modern-day dunking, however, is more intriguing. In the 16th Century, when Royal Navy ships set out on a voyage in the high seas, boxes of ‘hardtack’ (inexpensive and long-lasting biscuits) used to be carried for the British sailors onboard. Made using flour, water and salt, these crackers were so hard that they were often referred to as ‘tooth dullers’ or ‘molar breakers’. Thus, the sailors had no way out but to dunk the biscuits in beer first and then eat them. More than the naval history, it’s the rising of the famous afternoon tea culture during the early Victorian era that saw the dunking practice in full bloom. It is said that Queen Victoria herself enjoyed dipping biscuits in her cup of tea. Given the popularity of tea around the world, it didn’t take very long for the dunking act to spread across cultures.
Notably, this is also one of the reasons biscuits are traditionally served with hot beverages around the world - crunchy biscotti is preferred with cappuccinos in Italy, while McVitie’s chocolate digestive is a popular choice in the UK and dunking chocolate chip cookies and oreos into milk is considered heavenly in the US. In India, though, we love the taste of the sweet-and-salty Osmania biscuits plunged into our chai, just as much as we love to dip the popular Parle-G biscuits, Britannia Milk Bikis and rusks.
Did you know, dunking also finds a mention in Marcel Proust’s 1922 book - titled In Search of Lost Time - where one of the narrator’s childhood memories begins while enjoying madeleine dunked into tea? Again in the 2011 film, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Dame Judi Dench’s character Evelyn Greenslade describes the act of dunking to her new employer during an interview. But despite being part of the popular culture, there are instances when dunking a biscuit into tea was dismissed by the elite in Britain as a lowly act seen among the working class, and not on a par with the style and etiquette involved in high tea.
Is there a science behind dipping cookies into a hot beverage? Apparently, there is. If you are a regular dunker, you would know that the recommended time for a ‘conventional biscuit dunk’ is somewhere between 3.5 seconds and 5 seconds. A lot depends on the porosity of the biscuit and the beverage’s surface tension. When dipped in hot tea, coffee or milk, the ‘capillary action draws the liquid into the interstices between the crumbs’.
In an effort to better understand the nuances of dunking, Australian scientist and writer Dr Len Fisher carried out a study with his colleagues at the Physics Department of Bristol University. This research took place in the late 1990s. Dr Fisher reportedly said, “One biscuit dunk in every 5 ends in disaster, with the dunker fishing around in the bottom of the cup for the soggy remains. The problem for serious biscuit dunkers is that hot tea or coffee dissolves the sugar, melts the fat and swells and softens the starch grains in the biscuit. The wetted biscuit eventually collapses under its own weight.”
Following a study in 2012, Michelin-star English restaurateur Heston Blumenthal declared that dunking chocolate biscuits into tea can improve their taste. More recently, Suzy Garraghan - a leading tea taster with Yorkshire Tea in the UK - said that Ginger Nut, Digestives and Tim Tam are the best biscuits for dunking in tea.
Whatever the reason, dunking biscuits into tea is an experience that brings unparalleled joy.