The fine art of dunking

THOSE of us who like to dunk our cookies (or biscuits as the Brits call them), may not be aware that the quaintly-named Biscuit Appreciation Society (BAS) has published guidelines to help us achieve maximum enjoyment from our dunk.

For many, immersing a cookie into a warm beverage makes it taste better? But why?

With the help of a high-tech gadget inserted up his nose, renowned British chef Heston Blumenthal found that a chocolate-covered biscuit dipped into hot black tea did indeed have more flavor than an undunked one.

To solve the mystery of the tea-drenched biscuit, Blumenthal enlisted the help of food scientists from the University of Nottingham in England.

They’ve developed a device, called MSNose, which measures the amount of flavor released in your mouth as aromas when you take a sip of wine, melt a chocolate bar on your tongue or chew on a cookie.

When one is hooked up to the device and start chomping on say, a chocolate cookie, the MS-Nose sends data back to a computer screen, where the levels of flavor released are plotted on a chart.

The scientists say they are measuring ‘methylbutanol,’ a compound that gives cookies and baked goods a toasty or malty taste.

Blumenthal took a bite of a chocolate cookie when it was dry, and when he dunked it into tea and took another bite, the “flavor line” noticeably spiked up on the chart. The wet biscuit not only released more cookie flavor, but the aromas also burst into Blumenthal’s mouth more quickly.

Quite simply, dunking makes the biscuit taste more biscuity. I suspect all dedicated dunkers know this and don’t need to stick something up their noses to prove it.

For new dunkers, it’s important to choose the right kind of cookie. The BAS suggests you avoid very hard biscuits as they don’t become weak fast enough so you have to wait longer to enjoy the dunking phenomena.

The Brits primarily dunk in tea, while Americans tend to plunge their treats into coffee, hot chocolate or even milk.

Although most Brits will dunk from timeto-time, dunking in England is not considered quite the “done thing” from an etiquette perspective. David Daly, owner of a tea shop in southern England, is so offended by the practice he will ask any dunking customers to leave the premises.

But the Brits love a good dunk so it seems many only dunk when alone for fear of being labeled “common.” Avid Brit dunkers, however, press on regardless. They even celebrate an unofficial International Dunking Day on February 9 each year.

But everywhere else, dunking seems perfectly acceptable, especially in the US. Indeed, there’s even a “Dunkin’ Buddy” device to help American kids enjoy that dunking moment.

The most important advice from the BAS is not to leave your cookie in the liquid for too long. If you do it’s likely to dissolve before you get to eat it and you’ll get floating crumbs bobbing around making your drink lumpy.

But, if you leave it in for too short a time, the cookie may as well be fresh out of the packet. Good dunking!

(Sunnex)