Taking the biscuit

Next time you reach into the biscuit tin, you may not be thinking of SCI. But there is a connection — especially if you pick up a digestive.

Robert McVitie, who joined our society in 1884, made the bakery he inherited from his father, another Robert, a household name. He was sent to Europe at an early age to study bakery techniques and learn French and German, and came back with Vienna bread, which he introduced into Scotland.

Robert won a gold medal and first class certificate at the Calcutta Exhibition in 1883/1884 for McVitie Scotch cakes (shortbread, oatcakes and biscuits). He travelled to the US in 1887 to see for himself how the bakery business was conducted in that part of the world.

The digestive biscuit had long been a staple of the business. It was invented by his father’s colleague, Alexander Grant, in 1839 and contained an antacid, bicarbonate of soda, to aid digestion.

The famous biscuit rapidly caught on, partly due to its attractiveness as an early convenience food. Scotland’s population was becoming increasingly urbanised at the time, and apart from stuffing biscuits in pockets and lunchboxes, many more would have had tea at home or in such famous tea rooms as Lyon’s Tea Shop.

While Robert died in 1910, the business, now known as McVitie and Price, continued to flourish, and other favourite biscuits were developed. The chocolate digestive, topped with milk chocolate, was baked in 1925, and named Homewheat, as unlike rival biscuits, it used British wheat. It was followed by the Jaffa Cake in 1927, and much later, by the Hobnob in 1985.

The success of the business brought fame and fortune to Robert, who became a generous benefactor. He contributed to Scotland’s 1902 Antarctic Expedition, though his cheque was accompanied by a letter complaining that it had no government funding, unlike English expeditions.

The McVitie and Price bakery was soon producing biscuits in vast quantities from its Edinburgh base, and employed over 1000 people. A new factory in Harlesden, north London, opened in 1910, under the care of Grant, who became McVitie’s successor. The factory was a success from the start, and today is the largest biscuit factory in Europe.

The biscuits, while seemingly old-fashioned, have never gone out of fashion. Today over 71 million packets of chocolate digestives are eaten in the UK each year, apparently 52 biscuits per second.

Joanna Pegum
Web Editor

Image: Burke's Peerage & Gentry www.burkes-peerage.net.