'Color of Wet Mud!' Oreos Invade England

• • •

Britain is more than just a "biscuit market," warns Stuart Payne, author of "A Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down." "There is a long history and culture in the way we consume our biscuits, and Oreo will have an uphill struggle convincing us to change our ways," he says.

We Brits are biscuit-mad. The British Department of Trade and Industry estimates that $3.1 billion is spent on biscuits here annually, and one newspaper estimated that the average Briton eats 1.5 tons of biscuits and cakes in his lifetime. There's the aforementioned chocolatey Bourbon; the Custard Cream, a vanilla-flavored biscuit with a baroque design stamped on it; the Rich Tea, a plain biscuit perfect for dunking in hot tea or coffee; the Jammie Dodger, a round shortbread sandwich of sticky raspberry jam. (My mouth watered as I typed that sentence.)

"Some of these biscuits have a history of 150 years," says Mr. Payne. He describes British biscuits as "thoroughbreds" specially designed – in a Darwinian process of the survival of the dippiest – over generations to suit British tastes. For example, he notes, "Our love of tea-dipping has influenced the selection of flour and the temperature at which biscuits are baked. Our biscuits are built for dunking."

Yet the Oreo, because of its high-sugar content, is "woeful" when it comes to being dunked in tea, he says. "In my experience, it dissolves. It's not a survivor in tea terms like the British biscuit is."

Eating biscuits in a certain way is part of British culture, says Payne. It goes back to the days when lots of people worked in factories, and the only thing they could squeeze into their 10-minute breaks was "a cup of tea and two Rich Tea biscuits." Biscuits had to be sturdy and satisfy hunger.

Payne's not convinced that Oreo can take on such a deep-rooted culture in which only the toughest, tea-complementing biscuits survive, in a society where offering someone a plate of Rich Tea, Custard Creams, or Jammie Dodgers is a way of expressing friendship, love, and concern.