How Are Biscuits Different To Cakes? | QI 

true marie-antoinettesque

Same! 😄

The set up was about 10 sec too long.

@@IndigoIndustrial Congratulations, you found the joke.

That one never gets old the delivery is just gold

The more stories you tell the better you get at telling them, but you won't get any stories to tell unless you have some form of 'a life' where you interact with people and take risks and live spontaneously.

I told him all the stories I know.

@@ordelian7795 You might get the odd story if, let's say, you were the presenter of a TV show that had an entire team of researchers famously known as The Elves.

I’ve loved this story for years and years, and goes hand in hand with the napkin ring story.

@@RahRahGreg Oh I see. So Steven Fry has memorized these stories much like I might remember a song. I should have known that. He does have an astounding memory.

😆

Or for not being able to say "Harry pocketed it" in the Harry Potter audio books.

Indeed! 😆

@@RJSRdg Did she end up including that in all the books?

@@benwu7980 I think Book 2 was the one it first appeared in, but yes, every book after that!

Doesn't the word 'cake' in the name of Jaffa Cakes kind of give it away that they're cakes? Cupcakes can fit in a biscuit tin, but they're not biscuits, so your logic there is flawed.

You absolute MONSTER! Just because a cake can fit in the biscuit tin, and vice versa, DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE ALLOWED TO PUT THEM IN THE WRONG TIN!!! Good grief, man. What would happen if the vicar came over for tea and you presented him with the cake tin and he saw it contained biscuits?! We'd have to raze your entire street to the ground to atone for your sin!

But the HMRC are trying to get their dirty mits on more money!

@@christhomas7905Anything which calls itself a cake but is small enough to fit into the biscuit tin will not survive the journey home from the shop, so that's never been a problem.

🤔But where do we put a cake that has biscuits as a topping, to save confusion in my belly 😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋😋

that's why the joke only works if you have the charisma and captive audience that won't interrupt you

Truly, Sir, you have been blessed...

And thus our masterplan to take back the US one delicious sugary British treat at a time continues...

So it's much like a psychological disorder in the DSM

Is it too late to shove "tarts" into this conversation?

@@petethebeak636 Phwoar, never too late for that, knowwaddamean?

"The Eleven Tests of Cake" sounds like an Ingmar Battenbergman film.

@@esquilax5563 Yes exactly

That's a different clip from the same episode.

Who the hell is serving biscuits with gravy? Gross.

*gesticulating wildly* "What...... do your people..... eat?" "Everything!" Rich didn't speak often but when he did it was gold.

It's also an English word for trousers 😀

The ameamericanrican "cookie" comes form the dutch "koekje". Its not a small jump to "kajk" from the dutch "koek"

@@paulsharp3865 and to add if you've soiled yourself, least round my way it is

Are you really trying to use German shite as some sort of superior example? They know nothing about food.

topkek

@Debs - Bassist Understatement of the month... says the man capable of inhaling a sleeve of jaffas in under ten seconds.

Pineapple Jaffa cakes are not that good

I imagine they’re as popular as Oreos are here in the states.

The absolute Prince of mini-cake-biscuits-whatever... To die for.

WE DO NOT SPEAK OF THOSE ABOMINATIONS!!!! I believe the man responsible for those... things... was taken outside and shot by a representative of Her Majesty's Confectionary Constabulary . And that should be the END OF IT!!!

Damn you. Now i must purchase said books and read them while demolishing vast quantities of Jaffa Cakes

@@peterclarke7240 - There are only two Nursery Crimes books. Separate, but kind of in the same universe, is the Thursday Next stories, about a woman with the ability to enter stories and change them from inside (Jane Eyre used to be much bleaker until she showed up.) There are seven books in that series.

@@TechBearSeattle Ooh, excellent, thank you! I'm a fan of authors like Robert Rankin (his "Toyminator" books about Eddie the grumpy alcoholic Teddy Bear is one of my favourites), so any sort of Far-Fetched Fiction is right up my alley.

That’s what I immediately thought of!! Incredibly storyteller, is Jasper Fforde.

That is the origin of the word, but it is no longer a requirement of modern biscuits. And yes, it was QI that means that bit of information lives permanently in my head. 😂

Yes we learned that as children. So I wanted biscuits even more!!!!!!

From this episode

Except biscuits aren't baked twice....

@@dougaltolan3017 It is literally what the word means, from latin bis coctus: twice baked. It *is* that simple. If it baked twice it is a biscuit, if not it isn't.

It might mean that in Latin. It doesn't in English.

Both are perfectly acceptable along with “different than.” This message brought to you by the Descriptivists Guild.

Unfortunately no. They were replaced by Hob-Nobs which, in my opinion, are nowhere near as tasty as a nice Abbey Crunch.

It's because the VAT man tried to insist that, despite their name, they were in fact biscuits due to their shape and size. McVities fought the case and won, thus depriving the British coffers of millions upon millions of pounds.

@@peterclarke7240 No real loss as the government would have squandered it anyway.

@@deaddoll1361 At the time (1991) I suspect one of the Tories would have trousered it to pay for their moat to be cleaned.

Jaffa Cakes were packaged and sold as biscuits. Supermarkets place them with biscuits. I dare say there are, some vile people that dunk them in tea as well.

I don't think he said it's a tax on luxury items, but rather that it applies to chocolate biscuits because they are not a basic foodstuff (which, as you said, won't pay VAT in most cases).

@@silvasilvasilva you could be right. I certainly consider cake as a basic foodstuff.

Luxury, definition 1: "a material object, service, etc., conducive to sumptuous living, usually a delicacy, elegance, or refinement of living rather than a necessity." In this sense, both chocolate biscuits and crisps would be luxury items. I suspect chocolate cakes are not classified as such because there are probably other things that are technically cakes that are eaten regularly as part of certain diets.

@@jordivermeulen2519 Potatoes in any way, shape or form a luxury? Not for the Brits, sir.

@@salaciousone this very question helped decide Australia's 1993 federal election when John Hewson struggled to explain whether a birthday cake would be subject to his proposed Goods and Services Tax.

He's just got one of those faces that looks perpetually befuddled.

Dark Blue - Rich Hall is a wise man, to not be caught up in the frenzy of cake,pies tarts, and biscuits. ( All though you have to know he wouldn't want to try to guess, instead just reference a culinary professor.

För varrann. Ok Vi ska ut i kylan igen

För varannan. lost there. Glad we have you

See all, all good. I doubt.

Good

Maybe it does in french, but this clip is in English.

What’s Johnny cake? I’ve never heard of it before.

@@rachelcookie321 Johnny cake is a bread made with molasses, good with baked beans. Ginger bread is a cake, served with lemon curd and whipped cream. Both yum

@@ellicooper2323 I thought gingerbread was a biscuit. Like a gingerbread house or a gingerbread man. Those definitely aren’t cakes.

@@rachelcookie321 no, baked in a cake pan, softer. Tastes like a cookie,(biscuit) though.

And that was a *Q*uite *I*nteresting observation. ;-)

Always means something is a little whatever. So quite nice usually means a little nice.

Are you quite sure?

It's quite simple; 'quite' means either completely or a lot or a bit or a little or almost none.

Are these replies getting quite annoying? If so, it’s quite likely we’ll have to console ourselves with quite a lot of Jaffa Cakes. ;-)

Yeah and ironically the base of made of broken digestive biscuits lol 😆

As a fellow American I gotta say this comment must be really confusing for the Brits, cuz to them “biscuit” means something entirely different than it does to us! I assume that was your humorous intent, but in case you were actually being serious and don’t know, what the British call “biscuits” are what we call “cookies!” And to all the Brits who are disgusted by the idea that we put gravy on cookies, our biscuits are sort of like round scones, but not sweet. Also like English muffins, but I don’t think y’all call those that over there lol. I’ve heard that the English don’t actually eat “English muffins” but I don’t know how true that is lol.

Yuk, who eats biscuits with gravy? Especially a chocolate biscuit, I couldn't think of anything worse to eat. Except Brussel sprouts!

@@MerkhVision Yes but we just call them muffins same as what we call American football is just football to you. Distinguishing between savory English muffins and the sweet muffins you'd find somewhere like Dunkin' is entirely by context. My biggest issue with American biscuits is the shortening, even with gravy they seem very dry and as if could be improved with large amounts of butter.

@@drumlightable American biscuits are always better with lots of butter!

@@helenbartoszek243 brussel sprouts are delicious. Especially sauteed with a light sprinkling parmesan cheese.

do on biscuit then evolve!

Well...

I don't know, I think American biscuits are probably still harder than cakes. It looks like you can pick up and hold an uncooked biscuit, but an uncooked cake would just run through your fingers.

Incidentally, this bit is preceded by a discussion with Rich on what American's call biscuits.

@@barneylaurance1865 There are crumbly type biscuits that are a little bit harder, but most people make them soft or flaky.

As a Canadian (half way between American and Britain vocabulary-wise), when they say "biscuit" they mean "cookie." What you think of as a "biscuit" is more like what would be called a "scone" in the U.K.

Because he knows that would be the last thing he ever did

Because that would be extremely boring.

It's a British show, so that wouldn't be a correction. He'd just be another insufferable American unable to deal with a conversation that doesn't revolve around them.

@@deaddoll1361 have American guests been historically ‘insufferable’ on these shows? Or are you just venting?

@@sstills951 I just put milk in the cup before the tea to watch the chaos that ensued.

Southern USA biscuits and gravy are unknown in the UK. Those baked goods are "scones" in the UK.

Yeah coz biscuits are only baked once.

Murican approaches don't apply to a British Program. As 'Buttermilk biscuits" are the same as British Scones. Meanwhile Murican SKownEs closer resemble a fruit-cake that contains too little butter and too few fruit.

This comment must seem really disgusting to a Brit haha

Biscuits are what you dunk in your tea.

Wouldn't that be a cracker then?

They're also closer to plain scones, than they are to biscuits.

You also call football soccer.

@@deaddoll1361 we also went to the moon.

Cookies are quite different from biscuits

@@sstills951 Yanks really are the definition of "peaked in highschool" lmao

@@voland6846 are we friends now?

You too. ok?