If you have a cold, a diet of tea and Digestive biscuits is a traditional remedy.
And yes, they’re delicious with cheese.
What is a lashing of butter, anyway? How does one lash butter?
Like whipping cream but entirely different. 
And one must also lash ginger ale. And beat eggs. Come to think of it, cooking is a bit violent, really. :eek:
If you get a digestive biscuit and some quark or cream cheese and some good jam, you’ve practically got a little mini cheesecake. Well, sort of.
They’re also similar to Graham crackers in another way, that they were originally meant as a health-obsessed person’s food but turned out to be just tan-coloured cookies. 
Little symbolic pictures of fibre.
If anyone doesn’t know what a lashing of butter is, it’s only because, in their part of the world, one slaps on some butter instead of lashing it.
I have learned something!
The digey is / was a craftily marketed biscuit - like others have said it seemed to have a wholesome, healthy, plain vibe to it when we were kids, when really it’s just a sugary snack. I say ‘was’ because now we’re all more aware of sugar in the diet [now that we’re all fat], but attitudes were different then [when we were all thin].
I live near a Mcvities factory - very pleasant aroma, think it’s the jaffa cakes though, not sure if the digestive is crafted there.
Me, I prefer Hobnobs to Digestives (both as a treat, and for tummy-soothing ability).
Although, if you’re going to add chocolate, I’ll take the Digestive…it adds nothing to the Hobnob. Kind of fucks up the texture, in fact.
Just because it has sodium bicarbonate as an ingredient doesn’t mean that it’d be antacid. When soda is used in a recipe, it’s usually already completely neutralized by some other acidic ingredient, with none left to neutralize stomach acids. Most bases are so bitter as to be completely unpalatable.
So, are soda crackers medicine?
My grandmother always had digestive biscuits at home (Canada). Sometimes a full Peak Frean’s assortment but often only Digestives. I saw them occasionally at other places but mainly at Grandma’s.
Then when I started working in long term care there were always a lot of them around, (also those wafer cookies… and almost always those horrid pink ones…) I figured it was the bran in them that made them digestive. But that older generation is bowel obessed anyway. My Grandma had a “conniption fit” if I moved my bowels at any other time except after breakfast (her prefered time) or after supper (Grandpa’s time). I once told her I had to have a b.m. in the middle od the night…the next day she phoned my mom (her daughter in law) demanding i be taken to a “doctor.for my insides”
(I miss you grandma, with your weird cookies and bowel hang-ups and misgided devotion to my health. Its been 10 years this month, you would be 102 this year.)
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Yeah, and if you add too much baking soda and leave some unreacted, you can definitely taste it in the cookie/biscuit as a salty, chalky type of taste. Not good eats.
Yes. Traditionally the English regarded ‘regularity’ as next to Godliness, and definitive of good health. Which perhaps says something about the traditional English diet… or maybe it was just a random cultural artifact. In any case, ‘digestive biscuits’ were understood to be an aid to ‘digestion’, understood to mean regular and comfortable bowel movements.
Digestives are a cross between a Maria and a piece of cardboard, says my tongue (and I say this as someone who according to doctors used to present papyrophagy). A few years ago one of those always-ongoing mergers and acquisitions brought Fontaneda and McVittles under the same ownership and someone decided to stop making María Fontaneda, start selling Digestivas Fontaneda, and make an advertising campaign which was the translation of the UK one: something along the lines of “Digestives, like we’ve always had them”. Only, in Spain we hadn’t always had Digestives: the campaign left a lot of people looking confused, the disappearance of Marías Fontaneda meant that Marías AnyOtherBrand saw raises in sales and eventually Fontaneda started making Marías again.
Well, for some reason McVitties decided to replace Marías, not by Rich Tea biscuits (which I agree do look more like Marías) but by Digestives. What I still don’t understand is why did anybody think that an advertising campaign based on the notion of “you’ve always had these cookies!” made sense for a product which, in that specific market, was new. Stupidity, probably.
Amazon sells McVitie’s. I’ll order a package the next time that I need a small add on purchase to get free shipping.
This thread has gotten me curious to try them.
Get Hobnobs, they’re delish.
Thank you for the tip.
It does seem a little odd. A very similar approach was a huge success for Werther’s Originals, though, so maybe that’s what they were thinking.