It's hard to find cream crackers
If ever an area of life encapsulated the tyranny of choice, it is cheese biscuits. Tony Naylor, The Guardian
I took this not very good picture today in my local supermarket to demonstrate the huge array of choice in savoury biscuits. Both sides of the aisle down to the lady with the trolley are full of biscuits to serve with cheese or as a savoury bite. There are biscuits made from every imaginable grain - including the dreaded quinoa - in every possible shape and size, flavoured with every possible spice, vegetable or herb. But, in this supermarket (Coles) there are just two versions of the cream cracker - and in Woolworths just one. They call them Sao here for some reason.
I started on this blog because, for some reason, that I cannot remember now, I thought back to my childhood when my father would make us all a cream cracker cheese sandwich with a cup of cocoa just before we went to bed. I think ours had butter in them too and we did not have anything else with them, as in this photo - jam, chutney ...? And I thought to myself that I did not know whether you could still get cream crackers. They are called cream crackers, did you know, not because they have any cream in them but because the ingredients - flour, palm oil and yeast are creamed together. Unlike many savoury biscuits they are not very salty. They are fairly plain.
They were invented in Ireland by Joseph Haughton who made them at home in Dublin - but later - 1885 - by William Jacob in his small factory in Waterford.
This expanded, doubled up in Liverpool and the company (Jacob's Biscuit Co.) has split, rejoined and has undergone a number of takeovers since then. I couldn't quite disentangle who actually owns Jacobs cream crackers now - Kraft Foods maybe? But you can certainly still get Jacob's cream crackers in England where they are still popular. I suspect that the name cream crackers may be a trademark which is why they are called Sao here. Why Sao though? It's a very odd name.
Since then I guess the biscuit you have with cheese, has evolved enormously. Originally the cream cracker perhaps got overtaken by the rather more elegant Carr's water crackers. Cream crackers are rather more lower class somehow. And the Scandinavians got in on the act with Ryvita - at least I think they are Scandinavian, but perhaps not - maybe it's clever marketing. There is crisp bread, and lavosh, Arnott's shapes, grissini, waterthins, etc. and just about every biscuit manufacturer has tried to outdo the other with the herbs and spices they flavour their brand with, and the shape in which it is made. Not to mention the grain - corn, rice, wheat, oats, wholewheat, spelt, quinoa - you name it, it's probably got a biscuit.
So should you eat cheese with biscuits or bread - or with nothing at all? Opinion seems to be divided. Some people think bread, some biscuits (never with butter) and some say you should just eat the cheese on its own - the biscuits and bread were only there to cover the taste of gone-off cheese. For a good summary read Tony Naylor in The Guardian as he discusses how to eat cheese and biscuits. He maintains:
"The cheese biscuit's primary function is as a delivery vehicle for cheese. With their gaudy herbs and flashy seasoning, flavoured biscuits distract us from said cheese and embroil us in world of cheap sensation." Tony Naylor
Today I had a Committee meeting in my home and we began with a scratch lunch, of leftovers from our barbecue dinner - well the cold meat and cheese part of it - and it was a very scratch selection of cheese. And we mostly had it with bread. But it was very enjoyable and it is indeed a very easy thing to do these days, because of the plethora of choice in cheese and biscuits (and bread and cold meats too). Mine didn't look quite as classy as these though.
And I have such fond memories of that old family tradition of the cream crackers, cheese and cocoa. Perhaps the next best thing to nothing with the cheese.
