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| King size Rich Tea biscuit. (Photo:Mirror) |
By Mirror
UK: It's official - Rich Tea is the king of the dunking biscuits, scientists have found.
In the most comprehensive study to date, boffins carried out extensive dunk-o-meter tests on the nation's five best loved biccies and found Hobnobs were the first to crumble.
The popular oaty biccies took just four seconds to collapse into a cuppa followed a split second later by Ginger Nuts.
And while Digestives held on for five seconds and firmer Chocolate Digestives took 11 seconds to crumple to the bottom of the cup, Rich Tea was going strong after 20 seconds.
Research led by Dr Stuart Farrimond for biscuit giant McVitie's also established the best dunking time for each variety.
According to the study, Digestives, Hobnobs and Ginger Nuts were at their best after a two second dip into a hot drink while three seconds was best for Chocolate Digestives.
Any longer and the chocolate started to drip with the biscuit beginning to wobble by nine seconds before dropping to the bottom of the mug after 11 seconds.
But Rich Tea needed more dunk time for the tea to be absorbed and it offered dunkers more flexibility with perfect dunk times from seven to 14 seconds.
Dr Farrimond, founder of science publication Guru Magazine found letting a cuppa cool for three minutes before dunking, gave each biscuit more chance of surviving the dip and doubled the dunking time before it collapsed.
For example a Hobnob lasted ten seconds in one dunk in a cooler mug of tea compared with four seconds in a freshly brewed drink.
Dr Farrimond said: "The Hobnob biscuit is suitable for short dunks only because it is an oat-based biscuit, rather than wheat based - the larger oat particles in the Hobnob provide less structural strength to the biscuit.
"A chocolate coating - or a cream filling - gives a biscuit additional strength.
"The chocolate covering on a chocolate digestive melts in the hot liquid, acting as a sticky gum to glue the surface of the biscuit together.
"A chocolate digestive lasts over six times longer than the naked digestive in prolonged dunking."
The tests found while the type of hot drink does not impact on dunking time, high fat drinks like lattes or coffee with cream make the biscuits taste better as the "fat acts to liberate more flavour molecules".
And the research also blew apart the belief that 45 degrees is the perfect dunking angle, rewriting the rule book with findings that a vertical dunk makes biscuits last longer.
Researchers found on average, biscuits dipped in tea at 45 degrees lasted 21.8 seconds before falling apart while dunking in a straight up and down movement saw the point of collapse at 27.9 seconds.
And in a bid to make dunking safer, Dr Farrimond called for a traffic light system on biscuit packets warning dunkers which varieties were high risk and likely to collapse into mugs, laps or clothing.
He said: "Given the danger of a hot biscuit falling onto a clean shirt, there should be a ‘dunk-o-meter’ traffic light advisory system for all packets of cookies and biscuits.
"A red circle would indicate short dunk of under five seconds, amber would advise a five to ten second dip and green for longer."
In the experiments biscuits were dunked to a depth of just over an inch (three centimetres) with the tea temperature at 72C.
Dr Farrimond said: "The length of time a biscuit can be dunked is roughly proportional to the amount of fat and sugar in a biscuit.
"The sweeter and more buttery a biscuit, the faster it will break apart when dunking.
"Rich Tea had the lowest proportion of sugar and fat of those biscuits tested."