Cracker lovers, rejoice! News of the Bath Oliver’s demise has been exaggerated
FEARS that one of the West’s oldest culinary delicacies had ceased production permanently were eased yesterday.
The Bath Oliver – a thin biscuit that traces its history back almost 300 years – is popular with cheese lovers.
But during recent weeks aficionados have struggled to lay their hands on the biscuits, which were invented by Dr William Oliver in Bath during the Regency period.
They were essentially one of the world’s first diet foods, being designed as a palliative for gout and obesity by Dr Oliver, a medic who co-founded the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases and used the spa waters of Bath to treat patients.
In the intervening 270 years since Dr Oliver first mastered the recipe in 1750 or thereabouts, they have proved popular with the aristocracy, Paddington Bear, who enjoys them with marmalade (naturally) and even appeared in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited.
Over the past ten days correspondents to the Daily Telegraph’s letters page have though been bemoaning their lack of availability.
Yesterday, a letter from a Peter Sitch of SW18 London was published that sent panic waves among connoisseurs, suggesting production had ceased.
It said: “My 93-year-old mother is a huge fan of Bath Olivers. For some months now, she has been discombobulated by her inability to purchase them. By chance I saw a lone packet in my local Waitrose and bought them as a treat in store for Christmas.
“I have since trawled the internet; although Bath Olivers were listed on the major British supermarkets’ websites – along with those of specialist food suppliers both in Britain and as far afield as Australia – they were always out of stock.
“When I contacted United Biscuits, I was told that, after 250 years, production had ceased. The end of yet another small but enduring part of British history.”
However, the Western Daily Press spoke to the company yesterday and it insisted that it had not stopped production.
Production of the biscuits has changed hands many times since they were last made in Manvers Street in Bath in the late 1960s.
They are now made by Pladis, a subsidiary of the world’s second biggest biscuit manufacturer, privatelyowned Turkish conglomerate Yildiz Holdings. Pladis was formed in 2016 after Yildiz bought United Biscuits, the manufacturer of McVitie’s, Jacob’s Cream Crackers and Twiglets, and merged it with its existing biscuit interests.
A spokesman for the firm yesterday assured the Western Daily Press that production was not being discontinued.
He blamed the shortage on the shelves on the impact of Covid, forcing it to temporarily prioritise the production of some of its more popular lines.
For much of the 20th Century Cater, Stoffell and Fortt manufactured the biscuits at its factory in Manvers Street, but over the past 50 years the recipe has passed through many hands, including Huntley & Palmer, American giant Nabsico and later United Biscuits.
Production also moved, to factories in Liverpool, Reading and London. The biscuits – made from flour, butter, yeast and milk – also inspired an alternative currency of the same name that was introduced in Bath in 2008 and a racehorse of the 1920s.
Bizarrely this is not the first shortage of Bath Olivers to hit the headlines.
In 1984 the Guardian, the Spectator and even the New York Times ran articles on their scarcity.
They survived that crisis and those that enjoy a Bath Oliver with their cheese will be hoping they can outlast the Covid crisis of 2020 to take the place on their Christmas table.