12 trivia bits about cookies (or bisoketto, if you’re Japanese).

(1)

“Cookie” comes from the Dutch word koekje, meaning “small cake.” They’re called biscuits in England, galletas in Spain, and keks in Germany.

(2)

Cookies probably originated in 7th-century Persia, the first culture to cultivate sugar.

(3)

Best-selling cookie in the United States: Oreos for three out of four quarters of the year…but in the first quarter, Girl Scout Cookies are #1. (For each $5 box of cookies a Scout troop sells, they receive about 50 cents.)

(4)

The “creme filling” in Oreos is primarily high fructose corn syrup and vegetable oil.

(5)

In Uruguay, Chips Ahoy! are called Pepitos!

(6)

Fig Newtons were created in the 1890s as a digestion aid. Medical “wisdom” held that many health problems were caused by poor digestion, and that fruit and bland bread could help.

(7)

Product placement? According to the cartoon “Mickey’s Surprise Party” (1939), Mickey Mouse’s favorite cookie is the Fig Newton.

(8)

Flop Fig Newton flavors from the 1980s: grape, cherry, blueberry, and apple.

(9)

In the late 1800s, American cookbook writers considered cookies a lowly cousin of the more important cake, and generally included only a few cookie recipes, with odd names such as kinkawoodles, graham jakes, tangle breeches, and jolly boys. The only one that’s lasted: snickerdoodle.

(10)

Today you can buy Baskin-Robbins ice cream and Starbucks coffee in grocery stores. The first “restaurant-branded” item on supermarket shelves: Famous Amos, which expanded from chain stores to packaged cookies in 1980.

(11)

June 23 is National Pecan Sandies Day.

(12)

Shortbread cookies are believed to have originated in Scotland. That’s how Lorna Doone shortbreads got their name—she’s the Scottish heroine of an 1869 novel by British author R.D. Blackmore.