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Cookies! Cookies! Cookies! · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles W Chuck Bryant over there, and this
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Speaker 1: is Stuff you should Know. The Delicia Dish, the Delicia Dish.
0:21
Speaker 1: If you hear my dog's barking, I'm sorry, they will
0:23
Speaker 1: not shut up. I really don't hear them. Well, I
0:27
Speaker 1: can't see them either. I no, I canna hear them always.
0:31
Speaker 1: You're very barky. That's the shell tea and them. Yeah,
0:36
Speaker 1: we we house at our friend's dog, you know, Scotty.
0:39
Speaker 1: Scotty's dog, Benny, came over for two weeks. Friend. Uh,
0:45
Speaker 1: you know Benny. They kind of just coexist. We kind
0:50
Speaker 1: of joked that he didn't know how to be a dog,
0:51
Speaker 1: but he learned how to be a dog while he
0:53
Speaker 1: was here a little bit being around our guys for
0:56
Speaker 1: two weeks. But Scotty got married, by the way, So
0:58
Speaker 1: congratulations Scotty and little it's congratulations Goddie. I gotta send
1:02
Speaker 1: him like an ice cream maker or something. And I
1:05
Speaker 1: got to aficiate my first wedding, which was fun. What
1:08
Speaker 1: is going on? Yeah, it was really really enjoyed it
1:12
Speaker 1: quite an honor. So that explains why you went through Catechism,
1:16
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, so they got married, went on their
1:20
Speaker 1: honeymoon for two weeks. We had Benny, but I don't
1:23
Speaker 1: know why I started with that. Oh, Benny doesn't bark,
1:24
Speaker 1: because Benny does know how to be a dog. But
1:27
Speaker 1: he learned how to bark while he was here. Man,
1:28
Speaker 1: that's not something you want your dog to learn, because
1:31
Speaker 1: I have the barking his dogs of all time. He said, Oh,
1:35
Speaker 1: that's that's that. Okay, I've heard of that before. That's fascinating.
1:39
Speaker 1: Let me try. But there's nothing to do with cookies. No,
1:43
Speaker 1: but everything henceforth in this episode we'll have to do
1:46
Speaker 1: with cookies. Yeah, and I'm baking cookies tonight, by the way,
1:49
Speaker 1: thank you. I yes. Restarting researching this, I was like,
1:52
Speaker 1: I'm baking cookies too. And I want to give a
1:55
Speaker 1: huge shout out to uh Sally's baking addiction. Who is
2:00
Speaker 1: brown butter chocolate chip cookie recipe is hands down the
2:04
Speaker 1: finest example of a chocolate chip cookie I've ever encountered
2:07
Speaker 1: in my life. Yes, I mean, like days later, still chewy,
2:15
Speaker 1: amazing stuff and it's worth the little extra effort and
2:18
Speaker 1: making brown butter just totally worth it. I can't overstate
2:22
Speaker 1: how good that recipe is, so you're not one of
2:24
Speaker 1: those weirdos. It likes a good crisp chocolate chip cookie.
2:28
Speaker 1: It's a little bit crisp beyond the edges, a little
2:30
Speaker 1: bit chewy in the middle. It's it's a balance of everything.
2:33
Speaker 1: But I can go either way. It's pretty. It's got
2:36
Speaker 1: to be like a pretty lousy chocolate chip cookie for
2:39
Speaker 1: me to not want it. You know, Yeah, I'll take
2:42
Speaker 1: a crispy one. But boy, that the fresh out of
2:44
Speaker 1: the oven kind that like folds down like a hot
2:47
Speaker 1: slice of New York pizza. Yes, dude, I actually went
2:50
Speaker 1: and purchased actual cow's milk to drink with while I
2:54
Speaker 1: ate these cookies. They were it was that special whole milk. Yeah, okay, Yeah,
3:00
Speaker 1: there were like chunks of fat just knocking around at
3:02
Speaker 1: the top of the milk bottle. Uh. There's We're gonna
3:07
Speaker 1: talk a lot about the cookies we like and don't
3:08
Speaker 1: like in here, and what makes certain cookies great, of course,
3:11
Speaker 1: but I guess we should just go a little bit
3:14
Speaker 1: with the history and that the fact that a cookie
3:19
Speaker 1: is you know, it's sort of like a cake, but
3:22
Speaker 1: the ratio of ingredients is different, and that with a
3:25
Speaker 1: cake you end up with what's called batter, and with
3:29
Speaker 1: cookie you end up with what's called dough because of
3:31
Speaker 1: the ratio of your ingredients. Yeah, and also sometimes the
3:36
Speaker 1: ingredients themselves can differ. But if there's any other baked
3:39
Speaker 1: good that a cookie resembles most closely, it's probably a cake.
3:43
Speaker 1: In fact, I think the Cambridge and Collins dictionaries both
3:47
Speaker 1: defined cookies as sweet usually round, flat cakes, which it
3:51
Speaker 1: seems sensible, but when you really dig into it, you're like,
3:55
Speaker 1: this actually doesn't fully hold up. Yeah, the cookies a cookie, Yeah,
3:58
Speaker 1: because the cake, if you want to get you know,
4:01
Speaker 1: jiggy with it. A cookie um is its own thing.
4:04
Speaker 1: You hold a cookie with you eat it with your hand.
4:06
Speaker 1: It's a self contained thing. A cookie is just one cookie,
4:09
Speaker 1: and you can eat multiple cookies. But a cake is
4:12
Speaker 1: like one big unit that you cut into subunits called
4:15
Speaker 1: slices and usually eat it with a fork. So a
4:18
Speaker 1: cookie is not a cake, and don't call it that
4:20
Speaker 1: ever again, right unless it's a cupcake also not even
4:23
Speaker 1: close to a cookie, that's right. But you do eat
4:27
Speaker 1: that with your hand, which kind of under undermines that
4:30
Speaker 1: whole idea that a cookie is just a dessert you
4:32
Speaker 1: eat with your hand. It's a handcake, I guess. So,
4:35
Speaker 1: but isn't that really a cupcake not a cookie? Well, no,
4:38
Speaker 1: that's what I'm saying. A cupcake is a handcake. Oh okay, gotcha.
4:40
Speaker 1: Well then we're on the same page. Finally, it's also
4:43
Speaker 1: not a bread, even though you might hear gingerbread or
4:45
Speaker 1: short bread bread as we know, and you know, cookies
4:49
Speaker 1: kind of come from all of this tradition of of
4:52
Speaker 1: bread baking and biscuit making and stuff like that in
4:54
Speaker 1: a way, but gingerbreads and shortbreads they don't have leavening
4:58
Speaker 1: agents like bread does. They're not gonna rise like a
5:02
Speaker 1: bread is supposed to rise. And uh flour bread flour
5:07
Speaker 1: has got usually more gluten going on in it. Yeah.
5:10
Speaker 1: I mean like if you look at um cookie dough
5:12
Speaker 1: and then you look at bread dough, it's it's like
5:14
Speaker 1: two totally different things. Yeah, two different things. So not
5:18
Speaker 1: really a bread, not really cake. So you might say
5:21
Speaker 1: a pastry, it's a pastry. No wrong again, because pastries
5:24
Speaker 1: at their base usually have some sort of flower of
5:27
Speaker 1: some sort of fat and the water and it didn't
5:30
Speaker 1: see water. Yeah. I looked up a bunch of pastry recipes,
5:35
Speaker 1: Croissants and Danish is water. I didn't see water in
5:37
Speaker 1: any of them, but water in all of them. None
5:40
Speaker 1: of them had water. It's it's implied in the recipe.
5:43
Speaker 1: Just work with okay, all right. It's so universally known
5:47
Speaker 1: that you pull water in in pastries that you they
5:50
Speaker 1: don't even include it in the recipe. The one recipe
5:52
Speaker 1: I did say that I saw this headwater was a
5:55
Speaker 1: bear claw. Really yeah, like a bear claw croissant doesn't
5:59
Speaker 1: have water and not the recipes. That's really interesting. So
6:03
Speaker 1: a lot of people do say cookies are a type
6:05
Speaker 1: of pastry. I've seen elsewhere that that's not the case. No,
6:07
Speaker 1: it's a cookie. So I came up with a definition
6:10
Speaker 1: of cookies, if I may share it myself, A cookie
6:15
Speaker 1: is quote. I'm quoting myself here, so I don't know
6:17
Speaker 1: if it's right to actually say quote, but usually small,
6:21
Speaker 1: off and round, usually flat, handheld dessert consisting of at
6:26
Speaker 1: least flour, a fat like oil or butter, and sugar. That, friends,
6:32
Speaker 1: is probably the greatest definition of cookie anyone's ever put
6:36
Speaker 1: to paper, the only issue I would take is usually round,
6:38
Speaker 1: because I've seen a lot of chipped cookies. But but
6:41
Speaker 1: that's why I said, usually, okay, what would you say,
6:45
Speaker 1: sometimes round? Frequently round? I might bump that up to
6:48
Speaker 1: often I said off and round? I thought you said
6:51
Speaker 1: usually no, usually small, off and round, usually flat. Okay, alright, boy,
6:58
Speaker 1: I like it. Okay, So we've got the definition of cookies,
7:02
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you indulge in me because I really
7:04
Speaker 1: did kind of wade through a lot of the Internet
7:07
Speaker 1: to put that together. But there was something in there
7:11
Speaker 1: that's really important too, which is sugar. And you think, well, yeah,
7:14
Speaker 1: of course sugar cookies are sweet. Well, there's other things
7:17
Speaker 1: you can sweeten cookies with besides sugar, Like you got
7:20
Speaker 1: molasses cookies, you've got honey cookies. Um, there's a lot
7:24
Speaker 1: of different cookies you can you can make, but if
7:26
Speaker 1: you dig into those recipes, you're gonna find they still
7:28
Speaker 1: use sugar. And sugar is an extremely important um ingredient.
7:33
Speaker 1: As we'll see a lot of people say basically, cookies
7:35
Speaker 1: didn't exist until sugar came along. Yeah, depending on where
7:40
Speaker 1: you are in the world, they're going to call them
7:41
Speaker 1: different things. If you watch ted Lasso, you're gonna know
7:44
Speaker 1: they call them biscuits in England, uh and also Australia.
7:48
Speaker 1: In Spain there gelattas. The Germans call them kicks. I
7:54
Speaker 1: don't know what that Christmas cookie. Don't even how to
7:55
Speaker 1: pronounce that you took German? You don't know. I was
7:58
Speaker 1: gonna ask you. I don't know. Man, that's five consonants
8:01
Speaker 1: just to start the award. Please chin t l z H.
8:08
Speaker 1: I would say it's probably like petch gin or something. Okay,
8:11
Speaker 1: but again, no vowels in the beginning of that and
8:14
Speaker 1: most of that word. Yes, what about Italy? Oh you're
8:18
Speaker 1: talking about to be Scotty? Very nice? Yeah, which you
8:21
Speaker 1: can find wrapped in a little jar at your local
8:25
Speaker 1: um coffee place. Yeah, I'm not a fan of about Scotty.
8:28
Speaker 1: It really depends. But no, for the most most part,
8:30
Speaker 1: I'm not. Which it's a good thing we're not alive
8:33
Speaker 1: and like the or fifteenth century, because we wouldn't have
8:37
Speaker 1: had many options, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I
8:39
Speaker 1: get it that almondy taste is fine, but if I'm
8:42
Speaker 1: gonna burned calories on a cookie, it ain't. It's not
8:45
Speaker 1: gonna be a b Scotty, I got you, you know
8:47
Speaker 1: what I mean. So the word cookie itself chuck comes
8:50
Speaker 1: from the Dutch, who have the word uh cook j
8:55
Speaker 1: ko e k j e means small or little cake
8:58
Speaker 1: once again, right, So oh that's There's a lot of
9:01
Speaker 1: different words for cookies, that's the point. But cookies are
9:04
Speaker 1: their own thing, um, and over thousands of years people
9:08
Speaker 1: have said these are great. I like this. I'm going
9:10
Speaker 1: to contribute to humanity's understanding of of baking by creating
9:15
Speaker 1: this cookie and that cookie. And now finally we're living
9:19
Speaker 1: in what I consider the pinnacle of the age of cookies,
9:23
Speaker 1: because I can't imagine we're going to come up with
9:27
Speaker 1: better cookies that aren't just variations of what we have now.
9:30
Speaker 1: I feel like we've created all of the great cookies,
9:33
Speaker 1: and that really, if you dig into it, most of
9:35
Speaker 1: the greatest ones, the apex, the pinnacle of them, were
9:39
Speaker 1: created here in the good old Us of a agreed
9:43
Speaker 1: but not the first cookies because we're a young country
9:47
Speaker 1: and most people say that cookies have been around since
9:50
Speaker 1: Persia around seventh century CE. Uh. They had sugar for
9:55
Speaker 1: a while, and they had been making cakes and things
9:58
Speaker 1: like that. You had be you know, pretty wealthy. And
10:01
Speaker 1: that's a sort of a repeated thing you'll see in here.
10:04
Speaker 1: As far as the early days of sugar being available,
10:07
Speaker 1: you had to have pretty much a lot of money
10:09
Speaker 1: and be part of royalty or at least super wealthy
10:12
Speaker 1: to eat these sweet confections. But at some point there
10:15
Speaker 1: was a Persian baker who said, all right, I got
10:18
Speaker 1: a test out. I'm making a cake. I want to
10:20
Speaker 1: see if this oven is ready. We don't have thermometers
10:22
Speaker 1: or anything like that, so let me just throw a
10:24
Speaker 1: little bit of this uh I guess dough in there
10:28
Speaker 1: and see what happens. And it came out this little
10:32
Speaker 1: little baby cake and tasted awesome, and so whatever accents
10:37
Speaker 1: the Persians might have used, said, this is fantastic. Let
10:40
Speaker 1: me keep doing this. I've discovered a new thing. Yeah,
10:43
Speaker 1: they said, like, why don't I just make a batch
10:46
Speaker 1: of test cakes only? And the cookie was born. That's
10:51
Speaker 1: the story, It's not it's it's not entirely clear if
10:53
Speaker 1: that's true. Um, it's spread all over the internet. I'm
10:58
Speaker 1: not just in like the copy pay way like it
11:01
Speaker 1: does seem to be that. Food historians tend to think
11:04
Speaker 1: like that's that's possibly what happened. But even if that
11:07
Speaker 1: is true, it ignores a lot of the previous evolution
11:12
Speaker 1: that led to two cookies, um, that came before the Persians. Yeah,
11:18
Speaker 1: and you know, we kind of mentioned this early. You know,
11:19
Speaker 1: it comes from the tradition of baking bread, of course,
11:22
Speaker 1: something that we've been doing for fourteen thousand years. But
11:26
Speaker 1: those those have those leavening agents. Uh. The Mediterraneans used
11:31
Speaker 1: to honey and they made these honey pastries for a
11:35
Speaker 1: long long time. The Russians made these cookies called uh
11:39
Speaker 1: priyan nix something like yeah, no, of you, I don't
11:46
Speaker 1: I don't know, Okay, They're made from honey, rye, flower
11:52
Speaker 1: and berries and those go back to fourth century BC. Uh.
11:56
Speaker 1: And then we have our good old biscuits, Yeah, which
11:59
Speaker 1: are they seemed to kind of have evolved from the
12:02
Speaker 1: Romans who created something called rusk, which is you know
12:05
Speaker 1: what you don't like about biscotti. Yeah, take away anything
12:09
Speaker 1: even remotely likable about biscotti, and you've got rusk where
12:14
Speaker 1: it was like it was a yeah, hard tech what
12:16
Speaker 1: what like the Navy's um adopted and use this hard
12:20
Speaker 1: tech and the reason that I think it was initially
12:22
Speaker 1: created was because the Roman soldiers who were going further
12:24
Speaker 1: and further afield, conquering all these different lands, they were
12:28
Speaker 1: supplied with this this rusk as rations because what they
12:33
Speaker 1: would do is they would bake bread and then they
12:35
Speaker 1: would cut the bread into pieces and they would bake
12:37
Speaker 1: it again, which would remove almost all of the water content,
12:41
Speaker 1: all the moisture content from it. And you'd still have
12:44
Speaker 1: the nutrients, but none of the moisture, which means that
12:47
Speaker 1: it would um, it would stay for keep for a
12:50
Speaker 1: very long time, like it wouldn't it wouldn't mold because
12:52
Speaker 1: it didn't have any water to create mold. Yeah. I
12:56
Speaker 1: mean when you hear that story, like why would they
12:58
Speaker 1: purposely just keep making it and making it tastes worse
13:01
Speaker 1: and worse. But it was just a necessity for for rations.
13:05
Speaker 1: It was preserving it. Yeah. And there's a there's a
13:09
Speaker 1: name for that baking process, right, that's right. Biscato from
13:14
Speaker 1: Italian means twice baked. And that's where you get biscotti. Yeah.
13:18
Speaker 1: Not only is that where you get biscotti, chuck, that's
13:20
Speaker 1: also where you get biscuits. With the uk Um and
13:23
Speaker 1: Australia New Zealand and a few other places referred to
13:26
Speaker 1: their cookies as biscuits. That's a derivation of biscato. That's right,
13:31
Speaker 1: pretty neat. This is making me nothing but hungry. That's okay,
13:36
Speaker 1: because there's plenty of cookies in your future. I can
13:38
Speaker 1: see it now, and I also see chuck in our
13:40
Speaker 1: future and ad break happening. This is very nice, that's
13:44
Speaker 1: all that coming. So okay. So, as we said, most
14:05
Speaker 1: food his storians who think about these kind of things say, yeah,
14:07
Speaker 1: it was Persia. Persia's the place where, um, where cookies
14:12
Speaker 1: were kind of invented. And the reason you can't really
14:14
Speaker 1: argue with that is because if you are of European
14:17
Speaker 1: ancestry or live in a country that was founded through
14:20
Speaker 1: European colonization, there's a pretty good chance that all of
14:25
Speaker 1: the cookies that you've ever been exposed to came after
14:28
Speaker 1: the introduction of sugar and cookies and spices um by
14:33
Speaker 1: the Persians to the Europeans through the Crusades. That's right.
14:39
Speaker 1: The crusades happen, and anytime there's a conquering nation, one
14:44
Speaker 1: thing is for sure going to happen, and they are
14:46
Speaker 1: going to spread, They're going to find all the delicious,
14:48
Speaker 1: wonderful things that that culture does, and they're going to
14:51
Speaker 1: steal them and take them back to their home lands.
14:54
Speaker 1: And that's how things spread throughout the world. And that's
14:57
Speaker 1: what happened with cookies. Yeah, and sugar, that's right. So
15:01
Speaker 1: starting these Arab countries and they said, let's bring back
15:05
Speaker 1: ginger and cinemam and cardamum and the sugar and all
15:08
Speaker 1: this delicious stuff, and let's start making our own cookies. Yeah.
15:13
Speaker 1: And then one of the reasons why all of this
15:15
Speaker 1: stuff was in Persia at the time, Chuck, is not
15:17
Speaker 1: just because the Persians had already started cultivating sugar they
15:21
Speaker 1: had easy access to it, but they had access to
15:24
Speaker 1: things like ginger too, like you said, um, which came
15:27
Speaker 1: from Asia Um or East Asia, I should say um.
15:32
Speaker 1: And the reason that they had access to this is
15:34
Speaker 1: because they were pretty well located along the Silk Road.
15:38
Speaker 1: But Europe, and especially Western Europe, was located very far
15:42
Speaker 1: off of the Silk Road. So even though this stuff
15:44
Speaker 1: was pretty commonly traded further east, you could not get
15:48
Speaker 1: it in Europe unless you were one of the most
15:51
Speaker 1: fabulously wealthy people on the planet at the time. Yeah,
15:55
Speaker 1: and you know, as time crept on a little bit,
15:57
Speaker 1: there was a little more access us two things like sugar,
16:01
Speaker 1: but it was still, um, kind of like a special
16:05
Speaker 1: occasion thing. You didn't necessarily have to be super wealthy.
16:07
Speaker 1: But it wasn't like all of a sudden, the working
16:10
Speaker 1: class of Europe was all of a sudden just baking
16:12
Speaker 1: cookies all the time. Um. But that did give birth
16:15
Speaker 1: to a tradition, which is if it's a special occasion
16:19
Speaker 1: thing like oh, I don't know, Christmas time, then that
16:23
Speaker 1: became a tradition, is making cookies and handing out cookies
16:27
Speaker 1: to neighbors. Because you're not gonna bake a bunch of
16:29
Speaker 1: cakes and deliver thirty five cakes to your neighbors because
16:33
Speaker 1: that's a waste. But what you could do, like our
16:36
Speaker 1: old friend Mona Collin teen used to do, she stopped.
16:41
Speaker 1: I don't think she listens anymore anyway, she'll never hear this.
16:44
Speaker 1: But it was really nice, Like I mean, maybe ten
16:47
Speaker 1: different varieties every year, big box of it was great.
16:51
Speaker 1: It was great. But that's where that tradition comes from.
16:54
Speaker 1: Around Christmas time, on special occasions, baking batches of cookies
16:58
Speaker 1: and sharing them with friends and neighbors. Because they were
17:00
Speaker 1: splurging to show off for Baby Jesus. Sure, that's what
17:04
Speaker 1: you do. So um. One of the things I came
17:07
Speaker 1: across though, was that a family in medieval Europe or
17:11
Speaker 1: Middle Aged Europe, um baking cookies around the holidays, we're
17:16
Speaker 1: probably breaking the law. Because the trade guilds were really
17:20
Speaker 1: powerful at the time. And among those trade guilds where
17:23
Speaker 1: the baker's guilds who had managed to get laws and
17:26
Speaker 1: acted that said you can't even bake for yourself in
17:29
Speaker 1: your own home. You have to buy your bake goods
17:31
Speaker 1: from a baker who's a member of a trade guild,
17:33
Speaker 1: a trained baker. Um. And apparently everybody said nuts to that.
17:38
Speaker 1: We're not We're not going to listen to that. And
17:39
Speaker 1: over the course of a century or two, those that
17:42
Speaker 1: kind of enforcement went away because who doesn't want to
17:45
Speaker 1: bake in their own home? You know? Yeah? I mean,
17:48
Speaker 1: I'm a union guy, but I draw the line at
17:50
Speaker 1: some point, you know, Yeah, baking in your own home
17:53
Speaker 1: is that line? Yeah? And it literally became the will
17:56
Speaker 1: of the people, and they were just like, no, no no, no,
17:57
Speaker 1: we're not doing this anymore. We gotta bake at home. Uh,
18:02
Speaker 1: they were you know, some of the first recipes and
18:04
Speaker 1: some of the first cookbooks in North America were cookie recipes. Yeah,
18:10
Speaker 1: not just that, like even earlier than that, there was
18:12
Speaker 1: um cookbooks that came out in like the sixteenth century,
18:15
Speaker 1: the early seventeenth century, and they started having cookie recipes
18:20
Speaker 1: in them and cake recipes in them. Uh. And the
18:23
Speaker 1: reason why, one of the reasons why it was because
18:26
Speaker 1: the European powers had started to call in nice places
18:30
Speaker 1: where you could grow sugar, because people had gotten a
18:32
Speaker 1: little taste of sugar and the demand was so great
18:35
Speaker 1: that they went out and actually conquered new areas so
18:38
Speaker 1: that they could grow sugar, which lowered the prices of sugar,
18:42
Speaker 1: which meant that the average household was way more likely
18:45
Speaker 1: to be able to afford it, and say like the
18:47
Speaker 1: sixteenth or seventeenth or probably eighteenth century, um. And that
18:51
Speaker 1: as a result led to these cookbooks coming up, like
18:54
Speaker 1: like there's one called The Good Huswife's Jewel Chuck, did
18:58
Speaker 1: you say housewife? Know? Huzzwives? What is that? Just I
19:03
Speaker 1: guess a variation of I guess an old old timey
19:06
Speaker 1: English way to put it. But if you look at
19:10
Speaker 1: there's a recipe for fine cakes in there, and if
19:13
Speaker 1: you look at it, you're like, how did anybody produce
19:15
Speaker 1: anything like this? Like we we expect extremely precise recipes
19:20
Speaker 1: these days when you open a cookbook, well for baking especially, Yeah,
19:24
Speaker 1: because I mean it's a science experience, a chemical reaction
19:27
Speaker 1: you're doing with baking. Cooking is a little more like
19:30
Speaker 1: an art, right. So with a Good Housewife jewel with
19:33
Speaker 1: the recipe for fine cakes, you could find um ingredients
19:36
Speaker 1: like take two or three yolks of eggs in a
19:40
Speaker 1: good quantity of sugar. Yeah, and I think each one
19:43
Speaker 1: was was signed like good luck, Yeah, figure it out. Yeah.
19:47
Speaker 1: But but apparently people got it right enough of the
19:50
Speaker 1: time that these things really started to take off and
19:52
Speaker 1: people were would bake cookies more and more. Yeah. We
19:56
Speaker 1: mentioned shortbreads earlier that came from Scotland, and the name
20:01
Speaker 1: shortbread might sound a little weird, but it was, um,
20:06
Speaker 1: it was sort of a hybrid. It was it basically
20:08
Speaker 1: means crumbly cookie. Um. Yeast was swapped out for butter
20:12
Speaker 1: and sugar was added in when they had this leftover
20:16
Speaker 1: bread and these hard biscuits, and it became shortbread and
20:19
Speaker 1: they used short met crumbly. So that's where the crumbley
20:21
Speaker 1: comes from and the uh there was a tax on biscuits,
20:26
Speaker 1: and then the Scottish Heritage site says that they called
20:29
Speaker 1: it bread to get around the tax on biscuit. So
20:31
Speaker 1: that's why the only reason it's called shortbread, basically it
20:34
Speaker 1: should have been called crumbly cookie exactly. Yeah. Somebody, some
20:37
Speaker 1: tax collectors, like, that's a cookie. He said, no, it's
20:40
Speaker 1: a it's a bread. It's a short bread. Quiet. Yeah,
20:43
Speaker 1: that got me looking into the etymology of how the
20:46
Speaker 1: cookie crumbles and it's It was one of those uh,
20:50
Speaker 1: sort of disappointing ones where they just said, like uh
20:54
Speaker 1: mid like nine fifties America, not Scotland in the eighteenth century. Yeah,
21:02
Speaker 1: it couldn't be traced back to uh like a specific person.
21:05
Speaker 1: And basically they some people said it might have come
21:07
Speaker 1: from like say lev In France. Uh, but I just
21:11
Speaker 1: I just love that line. In the apartment and Billy
21:14
Speaker 1: Wilder is the apartment. He says it a couple of times.
21:17
Speaker 1: He says, that's how it crumbles. Cookie wise said that
21:22
Speaker 1: that's how the cookie crumbles. He said, that was it?
21:23
Speaker 1: Jack Lemon. Jack Lemon said that, Yeah, that's just a
21:26
Speaker 1: nice little turn of phrase by Billy Wilder. Good stuff, man.
21:29
Speaker 1: I ended up watching Casablanca the other night. It just
21:32
Speaker 1: happened beyond and I caught it towards the beginning. It
21:35
Speaker 1: really is maybe the greatest movie ever made. It is
21:39
Speaker 1: amazingly good. Like I liked it during my James Dean
21:42
Speaker 1: like Humphrey Bogart teenage phase, but as an adult watching it,
21:47
Speaker 1: I haven't seen it in many, many years. It's just
21:50
Speaker 1: it's astounding how good it is, the acting, correcting, the lighting.
21:53
Speaker 1: It's crazy. I need to do it. Chuck you will
21:57
Speaker 1: like it is such a good movie. I can't imagine
22:00
Speaker 1: than anybody's ever seen Cassi Blanc have been like that sucked?
22:04
Speaker 1: Probably so have you seen The Apartment? No? I never have.
22:07
Speaker 1: Al Right, well i'll trade you gotta see that. That
22:11
Speaker 1: was on movie Crush. That was our good friend Scott Ackerman.
22:14
Speaker 1: That was his movie, pick the Apartment or Cassi Blanca,
22:17
Speaker 1: The Apartment. And Scott is such a pro and such
22:21
Speaker 1: a sweetheart. He rewatched the movie and uh like reread
22:26
Speaker 1: Mike multiple chapters of Billy Wilder's book in preparation for
22:29
Speaker 1: that episode. That's what like what a pro he is
22:31
Speaker 1: and designed an original movie poster for it. Yeah, did
22:35
Speaker 1: he signed for me? That's nice. It sounds like Scott Ackerman. Yeah.
22:40
Speaker 1: So alright, short bread is where we were cookies, Well,
22:43
Speaker 1: we were talking. I think what the point we were
22:45
Speaker 1: trying to get across is that, like the Europeans had
22:48
Speaker 1: like a bananza golden age of cookie development after sugar
22:51
Speaker 1: became widely available, say, starting in the fifteen hundred, sixteen hundred,
22:57
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds. And so you've got short bread created in Scotland.
23:02
Speaker 1: Macaroon was created way earlier in Italy, but it spread
23:05
Speaker 1: its way to France and then England got its hands right,
23:10
Speaker 1: the macaroon different um, the coconutty kind that's crispy on
23:14
Speaker 1: the outside, very chewy on the inside, and it's kind
23:17
Speaker 1: of like a ball almost. Yeah, not a fan. Oh
23:20
Speaker 1: I like them. I like them. I like a macron too.
23:24
Speaker 1: I I don't really discriminate, like it has to be again,
23:27
Speaker 1: it's got to be a pretty bad cookie. Usually it's
23:29
Speaker 1: got to be a mass produced, industrialized cookie. As somebody
23:33
Speaker 1: cooked it at home, I'm probably going to like it. Yeah, yeah, no,
23:37
Speaker 1: I'm with you. And then gingerbread cookies to chuck um.
23:41
Speaker 1: They made their first appearance in the fifteenth century. Yeah,
23:45
Speaker 1: so we mentioned Greece coming over from China. But the
23:50
Speaker 1: cookie itself, I believe started in Greece about b C.
23:56
Speaker 1: And uh Medieval England. Medieval England preserved ginger um was
24:02
Speaker 1: what gingerbread was called. But that's not like the dessert
24:06
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. The dessert is, you know, is
24:09
Speaker 1: that delicious sort of molasses gingery cookie that eventually they
24:14
Speaker 1: started making into people shapes because of Queen Elizabeth the
24:19
Speaker 1: first when dignitaries would uh visit, they would she would
24:23
Speaker 1: she would have cookies shaped like them in tribute, and
24:29
Speaker 1: that's how they came to be made. I think that
24:31
Speaker 1: was Tie Gilliam. You just did. Actually, I think didn't
24:35
Speaker 1: we on a Christmas episode do someone gingerbread houses or
24:38
Speaker 1: gingerbread man? Yeah, I think we did it. May it
24:42
Speaker 1: may have been our live one that we did in
24:43
Speaker 1: two thousand eighteen. I'll have to look. Remember we've got
24:47
Speaker 1: the handy list of everything we've ever done on Christmas
24:49
Speaker 1: episodes that. Yeah, so you want to take a break
24:54
Speaker 1: and then talk about cookies coming to their rightful place
24:56
Speaker 1: where they will truly enter their true Golden Age America, USA. Yes,
25:02
Speaker 1: that's right. We should insert like a bald eagle scream here. Oh,
25:06
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. So one of the reasons all
25:32
Speaker 1: the people chuck who are like, stop talking about how
25:34
Speaker 1: great America and it's cookies are. One of the reasons
25:36
Speaker 1: why our cookies are so great is because America has
25:39
Speaker 1: always been a melting pot of immigrants coming from all
25:43
Speaker 1: these different places. And one of the things that all
25:45
Speaker 1: these immigrants brought with them where their cookies and their
25:48
Speaker 1: cookie ideas, their cookie traditions and all that stuff got
25:51
Speaker 1: blended together and inspired people that come up with new
25:55
Speaker 1: stuff too, and now we have even better cookies, but
25:58
Speaker 1: they improved upon the traditions of the of grids who
26:00
Speaker 1: came here in the first place. That's right. And depending
26:03
Speaker 1: on where you go in the United States today, you're
26:05
Speaker 1: gonna see traces of those original immigrant populations and the
26:09
Speaker 1: cookies that they brought by probably how popular the cookies
26:13
Speaker 1: in that region still are today. If you go to
26:15
Speaker 1: the Midwest, maybe uh, I don't know, Michigan, Ohio, you
26:20
Speaker 1: might eat a pixel. I think it's bizele bazell I
26:25
Speaker 1: think so. Yeah. I remember people calling it in Toledo. Okay,
26:29
Speaker 1: they're probably like, oh my god, chuck that one up.
26:32
Speaker 1: It's like a pizzas a round flat thing. A pizel
26:36
Speaker 1: is like a little round flat thing basically all right,
26:39
Speaker 1: but it's not like have you ever had one? Yeah?
26:43
Speaker 1: I think so. It's like a little it's like a
26:45
Speaker 1: little waffle, but not a stroop waffle. Yes, No, it's
26:47
Speaker 1: like a waffle. It's a little thicker than a stroop waffle.
26:50
Speaker 1: Um part um. It's almost like a crispi er um
26:55
Speaker 1: doughier funnel cake that's much thinner and flatter, and it's
27:00
Speaker 1: often flavored with annis and it can be really good,
27:03
Speaker 1: but it can also be really dry and not good. Yeah.
27:06
Speaker 1: But it's made in a little like waffle of iron mold. Yes,
27:09
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those things where you really
27:11
Speaker 1: want to eat a pizel, like fresh out of the iron.
27:14
Speaker 1: What I call it a pizel pitzel. Yeah, that's not right.
27:18
Speaker 1: That wasn't right. It's a pitzel cookie. I believe that
27:24
Speaker 1: the Scottish shortbreads eventually became tea cakes here in the South,
27:29
Speaker 1: which can be a thing. Evidently, I haven't had a
27:31
Speaker 1: lot of teacakes but I think it's like part of
27:34
Speaker 1: the old sort of southern tradition. Yeah, and like you
27:37
Speaker 1: said to Chuck, I mean like Americans were cool with
27:39
Speaker 1: cookies from the from the earliest stages of the country.
27:43
Speaker 1: The first ever cookbook that was written by an American
27:46
Speaker 1: printed in America was printed in sevent It's called American
27:51
Speaker 1: Cookery by Amelia Simmons, and she had a bunch of
27:54
Speaker 1: different cookie recipes in there. She did. She had a
27:58
Speaker 1: few gingerbread cookie recipes. I think one reportedly is by
28:02
Speaker 1: George Washington's mother. And uh, all kinds of fun names.
28:09
Speaker 1: Kinka Woodles or how about a how about a tangle Breech?
28:13
Speaker 1: I like that one, that's pretty good. What about plunkets
28:15
Speaker 1: or cry babies? Cry baby sounds pretty good, it is,
28:19
Speaker 1: but that's also the name of that little um. Remember
28:22
Speaker 1: the sugar Daddy bar. Sugar Daddy bar, it's like a
28:27
Speaker 1: very very chewy, I don't know what. Okay, So they
28:31
Speaker 1: cut those into little kind of rabbit poop size pieces
28:34
Speaker 1: and I think coated them with chocolate and called those
28:37
Speaker 1: sugar babies. No, they're not coated in chocolate, which I
28:40
Speaker 1: think is a failing. So that's what I always associated
28:43
Speaker 1: with with cry babies, even though they're called sugar babies. Okay,
28:47
Speaker 1: either that or that Johnny Depp John Waters movie of
28:49
Speaker 1: the nineties. Yeah, baby Jolly Boys. That was another cookie
28:54
Speaker 1: name met old cookbook. These are kind of fun. Sniack
28:57
Speaker 1: or doodle not in there. No, And apparently snicker doodle
29:00
Speaker 1: has give some sort of German derivation, but I'm not
29:03
Speaker 1: sure about that. One thing I found researching cookies, Chuck,
29:07
Speaker 1: is that there's a lot of contradictory information out there.
29:11
Speaker 1: Sure that we invented it. Well, the sugar cook the
29:17
Speaker 1: sneaker doodle is sort of a play on the sugar cookie,
29:22
Speaker 1: as is the ice sugar cookie, which is the only
29:25
Speaker 1: kind of sugar cookie. I like, Oh yeah, the ice one.
29:27
Speaker 1: You don't like snicker doodles, Huh, I consider that a
29:31
Speaker 1: sneaker doodle. I don't. I'm just talking about a standard
29:34
Speaker 1: sugar cookie. I like a snicker doodle. Okay, yeah, I
29:37
Speaker 1: like sugar cookie, but I just I meant like the
29:40
Speaker 1: plain white sugar cookies. Yeah, I know. It's almost like
29:42
Speaker 1: you're kind of like, well, you didn't finish there's no
29:44
Speaker 1: frosting on here. Yeah, exactly, you know, so yeah, a little,
29:50
Speaker 1: a little, if you're everage is hard up for something
29:52
Speaker 1: like that. Just some like regular break and bake sugar
29:55
Speaker 1: cookies and like a tub of vanilla frosting is all
29:59
Speaker 1: you need to just recreate a world of wonder for yourself.
30:04
Speaker 1: But yeah, you said the snickerdoodle and the sugar cookie
30:07
Speaker 1: I think came from German immigrants, the Moravians. Pennsylvania very
30:13
Speaker 1: famous for their stars as well. We have a Arabian
30:16
Speaker 1: star light which I'm a big fan of. But they
30:20
Speaker 1: were called Nazareth sugar cookies because of Nazareth Pennsylvania. Yeah,
30:25
Speaker 1: or some people call him Amish sugar cookies. And some
30:28
Speaker 1: people say, well, why wouldn't they just call him Moravian
30:30
Speaker 1: sugar cookies because that would be too confusing. Because we
30:34
Speaker 1: can also thank our friends the Amish or the Moravians,
30:37
Speaker 1: the the group who moved to North Carolina for inventing
30:41
Speaker 1: the Moravian spice cookie, which is a very crispy, very
30:44
Speaker 1: thin little cookie um made with molasses and ginger and
30:48
Speaker 1: cinnamon that you have around the holidays. Yeah, it's close
30:52
Speaker 1: to gingerbread, but crispi er and thinner. Yes, And that
30:56
Speaker 1: was an American made cookie as well. So both the
30:58
Speaker 1: sugar cookie and the morava and spice cookie were invented
31:01
Speaker 1: by the same sect of German Protestants who arrived in
31:04
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania in North Carolina, respectively. Mind blowing, very cool. Uh,
31:10
Speaker 1: we got to talk about the state cookie of New Mexico,
31:13
Speaker 1: the bisco cheeto. This was brought in by the Spanish colonists,
31:19
Speaker 1: sort of co developed by the Pueblo people there. Uh
31:23
Speaker 1: and uh, you know areas like New Mexico what we
31:26
Speaker 1: now call New Mexico, and bizcocho means cakes in Spanish,
31:31
Speaker 1: so bisco cheeto means little cakes. Yeah, and bizcocho should
31:34
Speaker 1: be like, oh, yeah, it's kind of like biscodo, which
31:37
Speaker 1: it is. It's derived from that as well, like biscotti. Yeah, exactly,
31:42
Speaker 1: they're all cognates. I have not had a bisco cheeto
31:44
Speaker 1: cookie yet, but I planned to. Cinnamon and annas sounds
31:49
Speaker 1: like a very waning combination. Yeah, I looked them up
31:52
Speaker 1: on the internet that they look tasty. They definitely do.
31:55
Speaker 1: But then I propose that it's maybe the most famous
31:58
Speaker 1: cookie of all. Would you agree or disagree? Am I
32:01
Speaker 1: over overstating things? No? I think the chocolate chip cookie
32:05
Speaker 1: is the at least from our view of the most
32:07
Speaker 1: famous cookie of all time. Okay, so that cookie is
32:10
Speaker 1: one of those few origin stories that you can say definitively,
32:15
Speaker 1: this person did this, and this is when they did it.
32:19
Speaker 1: And no, there's not some other person out there who
32:21
Speaker 1: says that they were the ones who did it, and
32:23
Speaker 1: there's some evidence that they may have done it three
32:25
Speaker 1: years earlier. That's not the case. The chocolate chip cookie
32:28
Speaker 1: was invented by a woman named Ruth Wakefield in Whitman, Massachusetts,
32:32
Speaker 1: possibly in nineteen thirty maybe one. Apparently she didn't remember
32:37
Speaker 1: exactly when she did it, but she is the person
32:40
Speaker 1: who invented the chocolate chip cookie. And what's awesome about
32:42
Speaker 1: is she invented it by accident. And where was it?
32:47
Speaker 1: At the toll house. In the toll house in there
32:51
Speaker 1: you are everyone. She was baking. She needed Baker's chocolate.
32:55
Speaker 1: She didn't have any that's that unsweetened chocolate that gives
33:00
Speaker 1: you know, like fudge and cake, a lot of flavor
33:02
Speaker 1: and the color. And she said, I don't have meny
33:04
Speaker 1: of that. So I got the semi sweet chocolate. I'm
33:06
Speaker 1: gonna chunk it up real good. And when she put
33:09
Speaker 1: it in there. She found that those chunks did not
33:11
Speaker 1: just smelt him, become a part of the entire cookie.
33:14
Speaker 1: They held their shape and they came out, uh like
33:17
Speaker 1: little chocolate chips because of that lower cocoa butter content
33:20
Speaker 1: and bing bang boom chocolate chip cookie. Yeah, and she
33:24
Speaker 1: served him anyway. I guess she tried when it was
33:27
Speaker 1: like this is pretty boss, and they became like an
33:30
Speaker 1: instant hit at the toll house, and so it was
33:32
Speaker 1: called the toll House Cookie. Um, and I guess words
33:36
Speaker 1: spread enough that I don't know if she approached Nestlie
33:39
Speaker 1: or Nestle approached her, but they struck a deal that
33:42
Speaker 1: they could print her recipe for toll House cookies using
33:45
Speaker 1: semi sweet chocolate chips on their bags of semi sweet
33:49
Speaker 1: chocolate chips, that her her cookie recipe was now helping
33:51
Speaker 1: to move pretty good in exchange for a lifetime of
33:55
Speaker 1: free chocolate. She said. She apparently thought it was just fine.
34:00
Speaker 1: So she actually did end up cashing in. She sold
34:03
Speaker 1: her fully sold all of her rights to the toll
34:06
Speaker 1: House cookie what we call the chocolate chip cookie, to Nestley.
34:10
Speaker 1: I think I don't remember exactly when she did that.
34:13
Speaker 1: But they had it until nineteen eighty three and then
34:15
Speaker 1: lost the rights. Chuck. Yeah, I mean I think at
34:19
Speaker 1: a certain point it was just like, sorry, this belongs
34:22
Speaker 1: to the world. Yeah, there was, you can't own this anymore.
34:25
Speaker 1: I saw eight poll that said that more people associated
34:29
Speaker 1: the term toll house with cookies or chocolate chip cookies
34:33
Speaker 1: in general than they did with Nestlie or any of
34:35
Speaker 1: its products. That was not the case for me. I
34:38
Speaker 1: always called chocolate chip cookies a chocolate chip cookie. Did
34:40
Speaker 1: you ever call him toll house cookies? Nope, cho chocolate
34:43
Speaker 1: chip cookies. It was a weird pole or people who
34:46
Speaker 1: were polled in this weird pole were very weird back
34:49
Speaker 1: in agreed, Although I don't remember. Maybe we did say
34:54
Speaker 1: that when I was seven. I just I don't remember
34:57
Speaker 1: it at all. I mean a TV commercial set it.
35:00
Speaker 1: That didn't count. But that was a commercial for the
35:02
Speaker 1: Nestle bag of chips. They were chips. That's what I
35:05
Speaker 1: always thought of him. Man, Man, do you remember the
35:07
Speaker 1: butter scotch chips. I would just eat an entire bag
35:10
Speaker 1: of those things by myself, just just right out of
35:14
Speaker 1: the bag. Yeah, I mean the peanut butter chips, butter
35:17
Speaker 1: Scotch chips, if you throw a little the plain eminem's. Uh,
35:21
Speaker 1: those those are all good variations. But but your classic
35:25
Speaker 1: chocolate chip cookie is is just a hands down winner. Yeah,
35:28
Speaker 1: and in particular Sally's making addictions. Brown butter America also
35:34
Speaker 1: birth the peanut butter cookie and the brownie, the oatmeal
35:38
Speaker 1: raisin cookie. Um, I get. Can we skip to brownie
35:42
Speaker 1: real quick and talk about that short of pedantis um? Yeah?
35:46
Speaker 1: Because I'm sure some people are brownies aren't cookies. Well
35:49
Speaker 1: that's me. I just yeah, It's just it's one of
35:53
Speaker 1: those things where it's just it feels like a pedantic
35:56
Speaker 1: argument to call a brownie a cookie. Technically it's a
35:58
Speaker 1: pan cookie. But to me, a brownie is a brownie.
36:01
Speaker 1: And if someone comes up, I think it's the other
36:02
Speaker 1: way around, say no, brownie's a brownie? Is to say no, no,
36:06
Speaker 1: technically brownies for cookies. Well yeah, I mean, if anybody
36:09
Speaker 1: says it to you, just say hey, you want a brownie,
36:11
Speaker 1: and that just takes care of exactly. Why talk about it?
36:14
Speaker 1: Just eat it? Right? But but the point is, this
36:17
Speaker 1: is a brownie is I'm just not letting this pass by.
36:22
Speaker 1: A brownie is a type of cookie is a bar
36:24
Speaker 1: cookie in the same way that a lemon bar is
36:27
Speaker 1: a bar cookie. Nana Emo, Um is a bar cookie.
36:32
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure I'm saying that right, Um. And it's
36:35
Speaker 1: just a cookie where you you take the battery and
36:37
Speaker 1: you build it. You bake it in a single mass
36:40
Speaker 1: and then cut it into squares rather than baking them individually.
36:44
Speaker 1: But it's still a cookie. Not to me, it's not.
36:48
Speaker 1: That's fine, that's totally fine. I just I could not
36:51
Speaker 1: explain it further. But consistency is different to me, the
36:56
Speaker 1: that the little flaky top is different. It's just all different. Well,
36:59
Speaker 1: let me ask you this, chuck. What about a chocolate
37:02
Speaker 1: chip brownie that is nothing more than a square, slightly
37:06
Speaker 1: thicker chocolate chip cookie. No, do you mean a choci
37:10
Speaker 1: a pan baked chocolate chip cookie. Yeah, well that's not
37:14
Speaker 1: a brownie. That's a that's a pan baked chocolate chip cookie.
37:17
Speaker 1: But it looks exactly like a brownie. It's the same shape,
37:21
Speaker 1: but it has different consistency and doesn't have that flaky top.
37:23
Speaker 1: So to you, just just the brownie is its own thing. Yeah, okay,
37:28
Speaker 1: what about a lemon bar. It's a lemon bar. Okay,
37:32
Speaker 1: I can, I can. I can get with you on
37:34
Speaker 1: both of those. Actually, but I mean that's just you know, again,
37:38
Speaker 1: it's a this is a pedantic argument that that no
37:41
Speaker 1: one should ever have. Those are my favorite kind. What
37:47
Speaker 1: you should do is just sit down, eat those cookies,
37:50
Speaker 1: Eat those brownies, Eat those eat those bar brownie cookies.
37:55
Speaker 1: Throw some ice cream on top, some hot fudge, some
37:57
Speaker 1: whipped cream. Put a lemon bar on there. I'm not
38:00
Speaker 1: a big lemon bar guy. Oh I like them, but
38:02
Speaker 1: they have to be totally by themselves. You wouldn't mix
38:04
Speaker 1: that with anything. No, I'm not a big fan of
38:07
Speaker 1: lemon cookies either, Like lemony sweets aren't my favorite. I
38:12
Speaker 1: got you, I love them. I feel like, how if
38:15
Speaker 1: you take your likes and my likes and my dislikes
38:17
Speaker 1: and your just likes and put us together, we form
38:19
Speaker 1: a fully formed whole. You know, we would like every everything.
38:24
Speaker 1: So chuck. There's a couple of other kinds of cookies
38:26
Speaker 1: we need to shout out real quick. Um, the cutout cookie,
38:29
Speaker 1: where you roll them out and cut them out. That's
38:31
Speaker 1: why they're called that. Like a Christmas sugar cookies are
38:34
Speaker 1: often cut out cookies that are fun I don't love
38:37
Speaker 1: to eat those as much like a a Christmas shaped
38:40
Speaker 1: cookie with the sprinkles on top. Uh, not my favorite.
38:43
Speaker 1: I'm I'm sort of a dropped cookie purest. Yeah. Drop
38:47
Speaker 1: cookies are kind of like a chocolate chip cookie where
38:50
Speaker 1: you like scoop them out by the spoonful and drop
38:52
Speaker 1: that mound on there and they kind of spread and
38:55
Speaker 1: flatten out as they bake, producing a round, flat dessert tree.
39:02
Speaker 1: That's right. And by the way, brownies we know the
39:04
Speaker 1: edema or the etymology want to be just the origin
39:08
Speaker 1: story what Fannie Farmer in nineteen o five and been
39:11
Speaker 1: at the brownie? Uh, there's a story that a housewife
39:14
Speaker 1: in Maine forgot baking powder and their chocolate cake and
39:18
Speaker 1: it became a brownie. And that's in like some cooking encyclopedias.
39:22
Speaker 1: Not true, because that was in nineteen and twelve, and
39:25
Speaker 1: Fanny Farmers recipe was printed in nineteen o five. Yeah,
39:27
Speaker 1: and Fanny Farmer actually did a lot more than just
39:30
Speaker 1: invent the brownie. She also is credited for inventing the
39:33
Speaker 1: oatmeal raisin cookie too. Oh really, Yeah, she's very prolific.
39:38
Speaker 1: See here's my deal. I listened to a judge John
39:40
Speaker 1: Hodgman the other day and Jesse Thorne, our friend and
39:43
Speaker 1: bailiff of that show called raisins a a b s
39:47
Speaker 1: addition to any sweet treat, which I generally agree. But
39:52
Speaker 1: I like an oatmeal raisin cookie and I'm not the
39:54
Speaker 1: biggest raising guy, A good one for sure, but that's
39:57
Speaker 1: pretty much the limit of raisins in in dessert unless
40:00
Speaker 1: it's just a fistful of raisins. The Great Clinic Swood movie,
40:05
Speaker 1: It's right, they're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.
40:09
Speaker 1: Uh what about the ice box cookie? So those came
40:12
Speaker 1: along after the image of the ice box obviously, but
40:15
Speaker 1: usually you take the dough and you roll it into
40:17
Speaker 1: a log, chill it, and then you cut it into
40:21
Speaker 1: slices and those slices are baked as cookies. Yeah. If
40:24
Speaker 1: you look at a pin wheel cookie, that that swirly
40:26
Speaker 1: shape comes because it's rolled up and chilled, or the
40:30
Speaker 1: logs of like ready to bake cookie dough you find
40:33
Speaker 1: in like the dairy issle, that's that's an ice box cookie. Technically,
40:37
Speaker 1: I disagree because that's not rolled flat. That's just a
40:40
Speaker 1: big tube. So no, no, it's not rolled flat. A
40:44
Speaker 1: pin wheel cookies not roll flat either. It's rolled into
40:46
Speaker 1: like a tube, but cylinder, and then you cut the
40:49
Speaker 1: cylinder into slices. No, no, no, it's rolled flat and
40:52
Speaker 1: then it's rolled so it's got it's got rings saying
40:56
Speaker 1: I got you, I got you. Um yeah, I think
41:00
Speaker 1: the final product and the fact that it's a tube
41:02
Speaker 1: in the fridge makes it an ice box cookie. Alright,
41:07
Speaker 1: that's not just me saying that. Either you got your
41:11
Speaker 1: classic sandwich cookie, which everything from an oreo to a
41:15
Speaker 1: macron to uh those great ritz peanut butter ritz chocolate
41:20
Speaker 1: dip things that his grandmother used to make. Who, by
41:25
Speaker 1: the way, is turning a hundred and one this year.
41:26
Speaker 1: I'm not on Facebook anymore, but Mary's turning a hundred
41:29
Speaker 1: and one and a couple of weeks. Hey you did Facebook,
41:31
Speaker 1: Good for you, Jack. Yeah, I deleted my account. I'm
41:36
Speaker 1: I was out of there. That is what they call
41:38
Speaker 1: mental health. I did miss it at all. No, did
41:41
Speaker 1: it take any kind of transition period for you? You know?
41:43
Speaker 1: The only thing I missed that was actually genuinely hard
41:46
Speaker 1: was the movie crush page and the movie Crushers Page. Uh.
41:51
Speaker 1: Those were awesome and it was a great community. It
41:54
Speaker 1: is a great community, I hope still. But that was
41:57
Speaker 1: the hardest part to leave because I really really enjoy
42:00
Speaker 1: my interactions. There was a very kind little corner of
42:02
Speaker 1: the internet. But having said that, it was all for
42:06
Speaker 1: my well being, so I had to let that go
42:09
Speaker 1: even Yeah, so anyway, Mary's a hundred one soon. I
42:12
Speaker 1: want to let the stuff. You should know Army that
42:14
Speaker 1: I'm glad that came up actually, because she's she's you know,
42:18
Speaker 1: she's not doing the best here at a hundred one,
42:19
Speaker 1: but she's hanging in there. Well, a super duper hooper.
42:23
Speaker 1: Happy birthday to you, Mary, hundred one. That is amazing.
42:28
Speaker 1: That is really impressive. But back to sandwich cookies. You
42:32
Speaker 1: also got your stroop waffle. I think I mentioned the
42:35
Speaker 1: macaron get to Malamar's Catch your moon pies Oreos. Yeah,
42:39
Speaker 1: it's classic. Apparently, the whoopee pie is the original sandwich
42:43
Speaker 1: cookie and that we can thank our Amish friends for
42:45
Speaker 1: as well. Supposedly, the name came from Amish workers on
42:49
Speaker 1: job sites going whoopy when they opened their lunch pail
42:52
Speaker 1: and found a whoopee pie inside. Yeah, I like a
42:55
Speaker 1: whoopee pie, just the cake if it has too much
42:58
Speaker 1: cake to fill it, it becomes a little cumbersome. Point
43:02
Speaker 1: definitely has to be just right. But researching this chuck it.
43:06
Speaker 1: Maybe wonder if oreos were meant to be like kind
43:09
Speaker 1: of some sort of manufactured whoopee pie. Maybe I will
43:14
Speaker 1: say this, the only oreo worth eating is the double stuff.
43:18
Speaker 1: Do you like the the golden kind or the chocolate
43:21
Speaker 1: kind or both? I don't. I don't try the variations.
43:24
Speaker 1: I like the regular What about you like them? Pretty much? All?
43:28
Speaker 1: There's only been a couple of weird oreos that I
43:30
Speaker 1: was like, Man, not this one. Okay, there's all kinds
43:33
Speaker 1: of crazy flavors now, right. Yeah, the birthday cake and
43:36
Speaker 1: the rice Crispy Tree oreos were pretty great. The birthday
43:41
Speaker 1: cake thing has infested every area of the sweet realm. Yeah,
43:46
Speaker 1: for good reason though. I mean, you get some frosting
43:49
Speaker 1: in there, well, that's pretty much it. That's an excuse
43:52
Speaker 1: to put frosting in something that wasn't otherwise there, or
43:57
Speaker 1: in the case of an oreo, you're putting frosting inside
43:59
Speaker 1: of austing and that is amazing. I've got something else here. Now,
44:05
Speaker 1: we've got a few more little tidbits cookie dough. I
44:08
Speaker 1: tried to find out sort of the rise of eating
44:10
Speaker 1: cookie dough and it becoming a thing, and no one
44:13
Speaker 1: really knows when it started to be a big thing.
44:16
Speaker 1: I mean they think nostalgia obviously has a big part
44:19
Speaker 1: in it with looking the better off, the mixing things.
44:23
Speaker 1: But they said that this new generation, like Gen Z,
44:26
Speaker 1: has taken it to a new level. Uh. And they
44:30
Speaker 1: in college towns cookie dough is triple in sales what
44:34
Speaker 1: it is in a regular town, partially because dorms don't
44:37
Speaker 1: have ovens, but partially because the younger generation just eats
44:41
Speaker 1: the stuff up. Yeah, there's this is all safe to
44:44
Speaker 1: eat now. I know everyone thinks it's eggs, but it's
44:48
Speaker 1: usually the flower that caused causes problems. Yeah, it's bacteria
44:55
Speaker 1: and the flower. And so they said, salmonella and eggs
44:58
Speaker 1: is really if you take care of your eggs, it's
45:00
Speaker 1: really not much of a problem. Most eggs are pasteurized.
45:02
Speaker 1: Now yeah, well that too. But like if you if
45:06
Speaker 1: you buy the cookie dough that you're allowed to eat
45:08
Speaker 1: in the grocery store, like just right out of the thing,
45:10
Speaker 1: like cookie dough for eating it has got treated flour.
45:14
Speaker 1: It's uh, it's called heat treated flour, which means Yeah,
45:18
Speaker 1: they just bring the flower up to about a hundred
45:20
Speaker 1: and sixty five degrees fahrenheit for a little while, and
45:23
Speaker 1: then that that takes care of any bacteria and then
45:26
Speaker 1: you can just eat cookie dough like it's going out
45:28
Speaker 1: of stop. I did not know that. Thank you for
45:30
Speaker 1: that one, man. That's the fact of the podcast right there.
45:33
Speaker 1: And the cookie dough ice cream that started in by
45:37
Speaker 1: Ben and Jerry's and their Vermont scoop shop. Yeah, that's
45:40
Speaker 1: good stuff. Apparently it was anonymous suggestion on their suggestion board. Yeah, man,
45:48
Speaker 1: that was nice. So somebody really lost out on something
45:52
Speaker 1: big royalties. They left another anonymous suggestion saying, can I
45:55
Speaker 1: have a little bit of money from my idea? You've
45:58
Speaker 1: got some other good facts here, don't you. Yeah, best
46:00
Speaker 1: selling cookie in the world, Chuck, what is it? Oh jeez,
46:04
Speaker 1: I don't know. Oreo? Oh is it Orio? It is?
46:07
Speaker 1: Or at least in two thousand fourteen, the latest I
46:09
Speaker 1: could find was um okay, But I think that bears
46:12
Speaker 1: reminding me. I know we've talked about it before that
46:15
Speaker 1: Oreo is actually the knockoff that Hi Drocks was the original,
46:18
Speaker 1: and Oreo came along and knocked off Hi Drocks and
46:21
Speaker 1: then became the greatest selling cookie in the world. Ah,
46:25
Speaker 1: that's right. I love that story. I like this bit
46:29
Speaker 1: you have on Famous Amos to the very famous Famous
46:32
Speaker 1: Amos cookies. Uh. I don't think I knew this. Wally
46:36
Speaker 1: Amos was an agent, the first African American agent at
46:40
Speaker 1: the William Morris Agency, and he would bake these cookies
46:44
Speaker 1: to give his axe to be like, hey, how about
46:46
Speaker 1: some cookies you want to stay with me? Right? And
46:49
Speaker 1: they were really popular and he spun it off and
46:51
Speaker 1: founded his own company. Yes, and then I got one
46:55
Speaker 1: more chuck Um. People leave cookies out for Santa, right. Sure,
47:00
Speaker 1: you'd think they'd be pretty old, but actually apparently they've
47:03
Speaker 1: traced it back to the Great Depression in America. Uh
47:08
Speaker 1: Santa cookies. Yeah, that they were teaching kids to show
47:12
Speaker 1: gratitude and appreciation for the gifts that they were getting,
47:15
Speaker 1: and that was some parents started that, and that was
47:18
Speaker 1: where kids started leaving cookies out for Santa. That's what
47:21
Speaker 1: I saw. I saw in multiple places. Yeah, at a
47:24
Speaker 1: very unlikely time. That's very nice. So that's it for
47:27
Speaker 1: cookies everybody. I think the only thing left to do
47:31
Speaker 1: is to go eat some cookies. I wouldn't know how
47:34
Speaker 1: many people are going to bake cookies tonight. That's great.
47:37
Speaker 1: That was kind of the point. I wanted everybody to bake.
47:40
Speaker 1: And I also want to shout out some of our sources,
47:42
Speaker 1: the Nibble's Cooking America and many many many others. Um uh.
47:48
Speaker 1: And since I said many many many others and Chuck
47:50
Speaker 1: said yum, that means it's time for a listener mail. Well,
47:56
Speaker 1: what it's time for is to talk about Sketch Fest. Okay,
47:59
Speaker 1: but because we're returning to the live stage, everybody and uh,
48:03
Speaker 1: we want to see you. It's a vaccinated only show.
48:06
Speaker 1: It is a masked show. We're gonna do it as
48:08
Speaker 1: safely as possible. And this is on January one, at
48:13
Speaker 1: the best comedy festival in the land. Yeah, we'll be
48:15
Speaker 1: at the Sydney Goldstein Theater and you can get tickets
48:19
Speaker 1: at SF sketch Fest dot com. And it will be
48:22
Speaker 1: the first time in two years that we will have
48:24
Speaker 1: been on stage. So um, it's gonna be fun to
48:27
Speaker 1: see for you guys. One way or another, whether we
48:30
Speaker 1: bomb or not, that's one that will be great. It'll
48:33
Speaker 1: be a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to
48:35
Speaker 1: it really miss getting on stage, so it's gonna be great.
48:38
Speaker 1: So we'll see you guys January two. And Chuck, speaking
48:43
Speaker 1: of two, this is our last regular episode of one.
48:48
Speaker 1: So first, I want to wish my dear sweet wife
48:51
Speaker 1: you me very very happy birthday today. Um she actually
48:55
Speaker 1: I said, Hey, which would you rather know more about
48:58
Speaker 1: contortionists or cookie? And she said cookies? So I dedicated
49:02
Speaker 1: this episode to her, and UM, I think we should
49:05
Speaker 1: wish everybody out there a very very happy new year
49:09
Speaker 1: in the hopes that two is a really, really great year,
49:12
Speaker 1: don't you. That's right. Thanks for all the support, not
49:15
Speaker 1: only this year but over all the years that allow
49:18
Speaker 1: us to have one of the best jobs in the world.
49:20
Speaker 1: It means everything to us, and ye all mean everything
49:22
Speaker 1: to us, and so thanks a lot. I hope you
49:24
Speaker 1: had a great or at least a better and maybe
49:29
Speaker 1: things will be even better next year. If you want
49:31
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us to tell us how
49:32
Speaker 1: great your news EVE was, you can send it in
49:35
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
49:42
Speaker 1: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
49:44
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio
49:47
Speaker 1: app Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.