Oh look, I have been absent from Blogger for a while, and all the formatting has broken! ANYWAY, until I have time to fix it, this:
Unlike East and Southeast Asians*, Brits traditionally drink tea with milk (and sometimes sugar). I don't think milky tea is popular in other European countries. Italy, France, Spain are definitely more into coffee as their national beverages.
In the UK we also have a habit of dunking sweet biscuits into the tea, and then nibbling on the soaked biscuit. In the modern day, this has an effect of part-melting and warming chocolate biscuits, and softening others. (The duration of your dunk is important for this - too long and whole confection just collapses into your drink..)
Dunking also happens in other Western cultures, but perhaps with coffee and/or more specific biscuit types (biscotti in Italy, for example, or stroopwafels in the Netherlands).
History
Apparently the ancient Romans used to dunk hard, crunchy bread into wine. And more recently in Europe, 16th century sailors would dip their rock-hard biscuit rations into hot drinks, simply to make them edible. When British Victorians invented the formal 'afternoon tea' and Queen Victoria herself was seen to dunk her biscuits, the trend caught on, and was thereafter exported to countries such as the US and Australia.
In Britain, most cookie types can be dipped, and we just do it with tea. Click here for the Wheel of Dunkability and find out which UK biscuit you are! (The chocolate digestive is apparenty the national favourite.)
* The exception might be modern 'dessert-style' teas such as Taiwanese bubble tea, or matcha and houjicha drinks from Japan.
** English learners: sweet, crunchy confections are known as 'biscuits' in the UK, and 'cookies' in America. Though we do also understand the term 'cookie' in the UK.
Also on this blog:
