Dunking (biscuit)

Dunking (biscuit)

To dunk is to dip a biscuit (or cookie), bread, buttered toast, cake, or doughnut into a beverage, especially tea, coffee, or cold milk. Dunking releases more flavour from confections by dissolving the sugars, while also softening their texture. Dunking can be used to melt chocolate on biscuits to create new rich flavours not tasted before.

Dunking is a popular way of enjoying biscuits in many countries including especially the USA and in the United Kingdom. A popular form of dunking in Australia is the "Tim Tam Slam", also known as 'tea sucking'. The physics of dunking is driven by the porosity of the biscuit and the surface tension of the beverage. A biscuit is porous and, when dunked, capillary action draws the liquid into the interstices between the crumbs.

Dunking became popular in the United States with the creation in East Hanover, New Jersey of the Oreo in 1912 an entire year before Marcel Proust's mention of the act. The Oreo company's main tone of their television commercials is a person, usually children, enjoying dunking an Oreo.

The most popular biscuit to dunk in the UK is the chocolate digestive, although it is unclear whether this refers to milk or dark chocolate, or both. The UK Inventor; Christopher Martin Wilson was the first to design the "Oval-shaped" biscuit called 'Dunkers' which fit into tea and coffee cups. This product was later manufactured by Northumbrian Fine Foods and sold in most major supermarkets.

In South Africa and in India, rusks are a popular food for dunking in both tea and coffee.

In the United Kingdom & Ireland, buttered toast is often dunked in a soft boiled egg.

Dunking is also used as a slang term for intinction: the Eucharistic practice of partly dipping the consecrated bread, or host, into the consecrated wine, by the officiant before distributing.