"Food is your medicine and medicine your food", advocated Hippocrates more than 2,000 years back and so did his followers, setting a trend in practical medicine that was unfortunately abandoned when pharmaceutical companies developed food supplements. Until the seventeenth century, housekeeping manuals would give detailed instructions for homemade remedies largely based on plant extracts. Before 1900, cookbooks also offered a section with recipes for the diseased: infusions of herbs and not only, gruels, jellies, puddings, and light meals of boiled chicken that would faciliate recovery.
Meanwhile, physicians explored the relationship between diet and health. Observation would lead to discoveries that changed people's attitudes in general and their health in particular (medical experts prescribing, for instance, the daily consumption of apples & oranges). With time, instructions addressed to the general public became less versatile. Doctors would note down recipes -instead of prescriptions- for edible stuff that would not only cure or alleviate the symptoms of illness but also prevent it. Most healthfoods were developed in the nineteenth century. Granola or muesli and digestive biscuits are two such examples. The Graham cracker, another 'healthfood', was inspired by the teachings of a Presbyterian minister.
Digestive biscuits were launched by two Scottish physicians in 1839. Leavened with sodium bicarbonate and often enriched with malt, they were believed to aid digestion. The use of wholemeal flour two decades later also resulted in a healthier cookie. Digestive biscuit recipes were perfected by English and Scottish manufacturers and introduced to the U.S. by the end of the nineteenth century. McVitie's digestive was famously created in 1892 by Alexander Grant. Robert McVitie, the company's founder, had sold baked goods in Edinburgh since the 1830s but his son decided to focus on biscuits. The ingredients of the popular cookie remain a secret.
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| View of the City of Edinburgh - Alexander Nasmyth, ca. 1822 |
The first written recipe for Digestive biscuits used neither baking soda nor malt. It appeared outside Scotland, in Cassell's New Universal Cookery Book that was authored by Lizzie Heritage and published in 1894. This was a huge work, divided in two volumes, with recipes listed in alphabetical order, a comprehensive guide on invalid food (that you might actually enjoy while sick), and notes about the cost of each recipe. Here is an example: "Digestive Biscuits. - Required: a pound of finely-granulated, or if preferred, ordinary whole-meal, half a pound of white flour, a quarter of a pound of butter, a little salt, and an ounce or two of sugar, and some water. Cost, about 8d. Mix the dry ingredients, then melt the butter in a little water, and add when tepid, with more to make a paste; it should be very stiff, and may be beaten with the rolling-pin for a few minutes with advantage. Roll in thin sheets, and cut in shapes to taste, prick right through with a fork or 'biscuit-docker', and bake in moderate oven until crisp, and a pale brown. Note. -The sugar may be omitted, and the biscuits eaten with cheese, & c.; more salt is then wanted."
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