Staring down the Barrel

The next time that you go for a sweet biscuit selection to dunk into your cup of tea you may be, unwittingly, perpetuating a bloody era of European History. 

I am not referring to the Battle of Custard Cream, The Oat Crunchie Crisis or the Digestive Wars but to the emergence of the Italian Nation in the middle of the 19^th Century. 

The name choice for three particular favourite brands hearkens back to the characters and places of that momentous time and although you could argue that this may just have been a clever and catchy bit of marketing and advertising there is no doubt that Garibaldi, Bourbon and Nice were to the forefront in the intentions of the manufacturers. 

There has always been a split in opinion over the pronunciation of the last of these three biscuits. 

Nice to some just means that: pleasant, flavoursome and good. However, delving back into the archives of a number of sources hints at a more Nationalistic origin. The well known institution that is Huntley and Palmers Biscuit Makers brought out a Nice product in 1904 and a Dutch company brought out a similar under the Nizza brand in 1910. This is interesting as Nizza is the former name for what is now the French Riviera City of Nice. 

My local newspaper, The Hull Daily Mail, is purported to have carried an advertisement for Huntley and Palmers in or around 1929 under the strapline of “Delightful as the town after which they were named”. This may have been just been a bit of a reinvention of the product by firmly associating it with the stylish and high society image of that decadent Mediterranean Resort, very much in vogue in the inter war era. 

The naming after the place does have a bit of a twist in that for some time it was occupied by and formed part of the territory of the European Royal House of Bourbon. The chocolate flavour and cream filled Bourbon biscuit was made by Peek Freans, another great manufacturer and first appeared as a Creola in 1910. 

As you can see there was a bit of a competition going on in the first decade of the 20^th for the dominance in the sweet biscuit stakes. 

The Copywriters representing both Huntley and Palmer and Peek Freans will certainly have identified something worth exploiting on the romantic although murderous Italian Revolutionary theme and this was predominantly down to the dominance of the Garibaldi branded biscuit. 

This significantly predated the Nice and Bourbons by some 40 to 50 years and has persisted in being a favourite in the biscuit barrels of the UK ever since. 

Giuseppe Garibaldi does not require any bigging up in terms of his struggles, achievements, folklore reputation and his contribution to the creation of the Italian Nation. 

He actually came from Nizza (Nice) which brings the historic theme of sweet biscuit naming full circle. 

I was brought up, as a treat, on Garibaldi’s. 

That does not necessarily mean that I was a fan of them as they were and still are a bit dry in texture but I could nevertheless easily finish a whole packet of them just on my own. 

To my younger self they were a source of great entertainment what with the currants resembling dead flies and this appearance could thrill and terrify my peers or underlings. 

I have only just become aware of some speculation about the origins of the biscuit and its link to Garibaldi, the hero. This centres on the hardships and  regular privations of the rag-tag army commanded by Garibaldi who often ran out of food in their campaigns to oust the occupiers and foreigners from what was a disparate Appenine Peninsula. 

An often chronic need for sustenance is said to have resulted in a diet of bread soaked in horse blood from a bleed of the cavalry animals and mixed with scavenged berries. Peak Freans did apply a bit of restraint in the subsequent ingredients of their Garibaldi homage.

I wish I had known that aged 8 as I could have had a lot of fun with that sort of revelation.