Food That Time Forgot: Ships Biscuits

Ship's biscuit was a staple food for sailors and soldiers for centuries. Join us as we take a journey back in time to learn how this simple, hard, and durable bread sustained armies and navies during long voyages and battles.

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[wwesbuy]

....I'm 85 years old, and I remember my grandpa always refering to regular bread as, "light

[BeforeMoviesSucked]

Sailor: "Cook, I was eating your biskets and bit into something soft!"
Cook: "What was it? A worm?"
Sailor: "No. A nail."

[KenDBerryMD]

Ship's Biscuits are a great example of starvation-food; they contained just enough nutrition to prevent starvation for a few months. They were in no way nutritionally complete and led to multiple deficiencies if exclusively relied on for too long. The sailors probably hoped there would be bugs in the biscuits because this increased the nutrition content drastically...

[sdswood]

Our boy actually ate some of the rock hard decade old biscuit with visible bugs. Legend.

[bitparity]

What's wild is I remember watching the original video from 10+ years ago, and realizing this biscuit was probably cooked in that video. Circle of life.

[danthreepwood]

Fun fact: ships biscuits where used by poachers to lure tropical parrots. Hence the phrase ''Polly wants a cracker?''.

[alexmcd]

I made your ship biscuit recipe years ago to explore historic cooking. And it lead to a discovery. Ship biscuit tastes like Grapenuts cereal. So I looked into it, and the ingredients on a box of Grapenuts is almost identical. And it was invented to compete with corn flakes during the bland = healthy Era of packaged food. So now, if I want grapenuts and the stores are closed, I can just pound a couple ship biscuits and add a spoon full of malt, the only additional ingredient in the box. :D

[SymphonyZach]

Every person I’ve seen handle hard tack always has to smack it together. It’s like an instinct for us

[talyrath]

"The soldiers stuffed ships biscuits in all their coats."

Are you sure they weren't just trying to get a layer of armor? 😂

[digital]

This is how I imagine the dwarven bread from Terry Pratchett's Disc World. You take it with you and when you're hungry you just take it out of your backpack and look at it. And suddenly you're no longer hungry :D

[zaya.juniper]

the etymology of the word biscuit is really interesting, it’s literally latin for “twice baked” (bis coctus) corrupted a bit over time

[robinrichardson]

10yr old ship's biscuit: "just as edible as it was before!"
Important: you didn't say it was edible, simply that the edibility hasn't changed over 10+ yrs

[joydavid]

Our family has something very similar that came from Norway with my great-grandfather in 1890's. They were made by his mother for the journey. it traveled in a special air tight wooden container called a tina handmade by his dad. The bread has now lived there for 133 years. It is opened on rare occasions and only on a low humidity day. The joke among folks in my generation (and there are two generations behind me) is what kind of family passes down old bread as family treasures. Collectors of course!

[ihavenomouthandimusttype]

1:02 They check off all the difficulties: except the requirements for vitiman c

[Anoname]

Tasting History has really conditioned me to expect that satisfying *clack clack* whenever someone talks about hardtack and I'm so glad it was included here as well.

[LUIGAUZUKI]

As a sailor in 2023 I can tell you the improvement to the food has been minimal 😂

[qBeYcarpet]

For some reason an extremely simple food like this is much more fascinating to me than some complex and fancy dish from the past

[allanplant]

This is really brilliant. I'm a recluse living in Australia, and at 73 years old I don't intend to go out shopping much for the rest of my time. I'm fairly self sufficient from my garden and surrounding forest, but your posts really help me out. The first one I watched was the mushroom ketchup (brilliant). I will now start to catch up on all the others. Thanks so much.

[Everlast]

1:40 "Eat them in the dark, so you don't know what you're eating" reminds me of my ex. I miss you Ann Marie... We could off gone places...

[harrytodhunter]

Legend has it they call it “Hardtack” not because “tack” is old British sailor slang for food, but because when you hold two, you instinctively “tack-tack” them together!