I started something on Twitter about food
Excited to announce that Australia’s iconic Tim Tam was “available widely in the U.S.”, Mashable made an egregious error:
On behalf of Australians everywhere, I responded:
And, that kicked off an interesting conversation (where I got trolled) about what we call stuff versus what Americans call it. Here goes:
Biscuits
In Australia (and the rest of the Commonwealth), biscuit is a broad term for all sorts of baked, flour-based, (typically) snacks. Most often, these are sweet, but we also have savoury biscuits. These things are usually called crackers or cookies in the US, but a cookie in Australia is only one specific type of biscuit (like those eaten by the Cookie Monster).
American biscuits are close to what we call scones except that whereas scones are eaten as a snack or tea break in Aus, they’re often served with the evening meal in the US — at least that’s what I found while travelling there.
Also, Tim Tams themselves have established a website called “It’s Not a Cookie”.
Chips
Keeping with the ‘broad’ category approach, Australians label as chips both things that Americans call fries and crisps. We do use the term fries as well, especially in American fast food chains, and Australian hot chips are usually thicker cut than thin fries.
Oh, and to confuse it further, we also have wedges, which are thick cut chips with the skin on, deep fried and usually thick coated in salt or some other mix of spices. Wikipedia tells me these are sometimes called jojos or mojos in the US (really?)
Bread
What Americans call bread has way too much damn sugar.
