Cookies are often served with beverages such as milk, coffee, or tea and sometimes dunked, an approach which releases more flavour from confections by dissolving the sugars,[4] while also softening their texture.

In many English-speaking countries outside North America, including the United Kingdom, the most common word for a crisp cookie is "biscuit".

From 1808, the word "cookie" is attested "...in the sense of "small, flat, sweet cake" in American English.

[9] There was much trade and cultural contact across the North Sea between the Low Countries and Scotland during the Middle Ages, which can also be seen in the history of curling and, perhaps, golf.

[citation needed] Cookies are most commonly baked until crisp or else for just long enough to ensure a soft interior.

Despite its descent from cakes and other sweetened breads, the cookie in almost all its forms has abandoned water as a medium for cohesion.

Thus a cake made with butter or eggs in place of water is much denser after removal from the oven.

[citation needed] Rather than evaporating as water does in a baking cake, oils in cookies remain.

These gases are primarily composed of steam vaporized from the egg whites and the carbon dioxide released by heating the baking powder.

[citation needed] Cookie-like hard wafers have existed for as long as baking has been documented, in part because they survive travel very well, but they were usually not sweet enough to be considered cookies by modern standards.

[12] The first documented instance of the figure-shaped gingerbread man was at the court of Elizabeth I of England in the 16th century.

[16] The decorative biscuit tin, invented by Huntley & Palmers in 1831, saw British cookies exported around the world.

According to The Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms, a smart cookie is "someone who is clever and good at dealing with difficult situations.