Anzac biscuits are relatively humble but extraordinarily practical, made with simple ingredients such as oats, flour, brown sugar or golden syrup, a stick of butter and coconut (which is optional, historically speaking) and they keep well. They are easy to make and fill the kitchen with inviting aromas.
There has been much debate as to the origins of the iconic Anzac biscuit, and whether they were sent in care packages to soldiers at war, or if they were made by soldiers at ‘the front’. They were certainly enjoyed by Australians long before the First World War, but under different names.
Digging into history
It is universally agreed that an Anzac biscuit is oat based, contains no eggs, and is made with melted butter rather than butter creamed with sugar, but when were earlier iterations defined as Anzac’s?
Food historian Barbara Santich notes in her book, Bold Palates: Australia’s gastronomic heritage (2012), that the first-known published recipe in Australia appeared as ‘Anzac biscuits or crispies’ in the Melbourne Argus in 1920, and follows the accepted method. (New Zealand lays an earlier claim for an ‘Anzac Crispie’ in the St Andrew’s cookery book, in 1919!) The title puts paid to whether an Anzac biscuit should be crispy or chewy.
Shared traditions
These early recipes do not include coconut, which is a later addition, but became very much entrenched in the ‘traditional’ Anzac biscuit. Oatmeal crispies are a popular ‘cookie’ in America, and have a long tradition there. They too contain coconut, but as they follow the conventional biscuit making method of creaming the butter, and contain eggs, cannot be considered a close relative to our Anzac.
English flapjacks, on the other hand, contain no coconut, but include golden syrup. Rather than being made into biscuits, they are baked in a slab and cut once cooked, but are certainly akin to the local interpretation.
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