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Which biscuits should you eat with your tea?

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THE BEST BISCUITS TO ENJOY WITH TEA

What would tea time be without delicious biscuits?

The traditional English practice of eating biscuits with tea now knows no boundaries. All over the world, tea lovers cherish the moment of calm and comfort that surrounds its tasting and do not hesitate to add a gourmet touch to it. But to do it right and let the tea reveal all the complexity of its flavours, you can't just pair it with any cake.

Wondering what are the best biscuits to enjoy with your tea? Here are our answers.

The scone, for an English-style tea

Scones are small loaves of bread, or small cakes when sweetened, that are very popular in the UK. Originally from Scotland, scones have gradually spread throughout the English-speaking world. Across the Channel, scones are an integral part of the famous national tea time.

 

The English enjoy them with Earl Grey or English Breakfast tea, with a little jam or clotted cream. Practised at Buckingham Palace as well as in the working classes, this tradition is omnipresent in British culture, so much so that kits including tea, scones and cream can be found in local supermarkets! Although not a biscuit per se, the scone seems to have proved itself as an ideal partner for tea.

 

The cookie, for a gourmet snack

Crunchy and melting at the same time, the cookie has to be on this list of the best biscuits to enjoy with tea. The more adventurous may even venture to dip their cookie briefly into their cup of tea, making sure to remove it before it disintegrates...

For flavour, we recommend serving chocolate chip cookies with black tea, whose smoky taste will stand up to the intensity of the cocoa. Almond, red fruit and citrus cookies can be served with a light, lightly infused green tea or white tea.

The little butters, to go back to childhood

It would be indecent to talk about biscuits to be enjoyed with tea without mentioning petit-beurre. In the French collective unconscious, the petit-beurre is the biscuit par excellence, the symbol of carefreeness and school snacks. With its four ear-shaped corners and its little teeth that you try to bite into one by one, the petit-beurre is part of a real consumption ritual that takes us back to childhood. At breakfast or tea time, enjoying a homemade petit-beurre with a cup of tea is the promise of a sweet, simple and regressive moment.

The lace crepes, all in lightness

Tea often satisfies a desire for lightness and delicacy. To add a touch of delicacy to your afternoon tea without giving up the finesse you are looking for, opt for lace crêpes.

This Breton speciality is said to have originated from the careless error of a Quimper woman who, to avoid spoiling a crepe left on the stove, decided to roll it up on itself. Since then, the gourmets of Brittany and elsewhere have never stopped thanking Madame Katell for her absent-mindedness. The plain crêpes dentelle go wonderfully well with green and white tea, while the chocolate-covered crêpes dentelle will delight the taste buds of black tea drinkers.

The best biscuit to enjoy with your tea according to science

Yes, the field of possibilities when it comes to tea and biscuit combinations is vast. But as you will have realised, it is not infinite. Not all biscuits have the qualities required to be dipped in a cup of steaming tea.

But is there one type of biscuit that is the ideal candidate for eating with tea more than any other? A British magazine decided to take a serious look at this question. To do so, they asked a physicist from the Institute of Physics (IOP) in London to supervise an experiment in which a robot dipped several types of biscuit into a cup of tea until they disintegrated.

The winner of the competition turned out, not surprisingly, to be a famous English biscuit. The important thing to remember about this experiment is that to be the best biscuit to enjoy with tea, a biscuit must be absorbent enough to melt after being dipped in the liquid, but robust enough not to fall to the bottom of the cup, reduced to pieces, after a few seconds of immersion.