what is difference between a cookie and a biscuit ?

@GlassDog How knowledgeable. I think they might have to do with a form of food rations for soldiers once called hard tack. Food meant not to spoil when all else would. Or am I mistaking?

@DrSunnyTheSkeptic Nope, you're right, and before it was hard tack, it was a navy thing called ship's biscuit. All the more useful in the navy when you're out at sea and can't restock with anything fresh. They didn't get sweet for ages because sugar was a proper luxury a few hundred years ago.

@GlassDog Navy eh? Can't but think of the great vitamin C deficiency in sailors. How did they solve that problem? Pickled cabbage?

@DrSunnyTheSkeptic Never heard the pickled cabbage story, but it'd keep. History records that it was limes, but I think it was organges and lemons that they mostly used at first.

@GlassDog Could be that different sea fairing nations had different remedies for this. Some sort of preservable vit C containing food. I googled it and 100g of cabbage contains 36mg of vit C so I guess it was true somewhere.

@DrSunnyTheSkeptic I think we were a bit late to the pickling party. The rest of Europe was already doing it but we were boiling fruit and making jam and stuff instead!

@GlassDog I presume you're talking about the UK? If you are tho, lemons oranges those are heat loving plants, the very fact that there was access to them is amazing.

@DrSunnyTheSkeptic Yeah, and we'd never grow them ourselves back then, not when we could get the oranges from Spain and the lemons from Italy. Although I bet they were rancid by the time they were eaten!

@GlassDog Makes us appreciate all the exotic things we have at our fingertips, coming in so fast they dont have time to rot.

@DrSunnyTheSkeptic Yeah, I had Australian root beer the other day. That would have taken six months once!