or Bisque, in Cookery, a rich sort of broth or soup, made of pigeons, chickens, force-meat, mutton-gravy, and other ingredients. The word is French, formed, as some think, from biscota; because the bisque, consisting of a diversity of ingredients, needs several repeated coctions to bring it to perfection. There is also a demi-bisque, made at a low expense, in which only half the ingredients are used; and a bisque of fish, made of carps minced with their roes and livers.

BISKUIT, or Biscuit, a kind of bread prepared by the confectioners, of fine flour, eggs, and sugar, and rose or orange water; or of flower, eggs, and sugar, with aniseeds and citron peel, baked again and again in the oven, in tin or paper moulds. There are divers sorts of biscuits; as seed-biskuit, fruit-biskuit, long-biskuit, round-biskuit, Naples biskuit, sponge-biskuit, &c.

Sea-Biskuit is a sort of bread much dried by passing the oven twice, to make it keep for sea-service. For long voyages they bake it four times, and prepare it six months before the embarkation. It will keep good a whole year.

To preserve sea-biskuit from insects, Mr Hales advises to make the fumes of burning brimstone pass through the casks full of bread. Biskuit may be likewise preserved a long time, by keeping it in casks well calked, and lined with tin.

The ancients had their biskuit prepared after the like manner, and for the like use, as the moderns. The Greeks called it ἀπὸ διπλῶς, g. d. bread put twice to the fire. The Romans give it the name of panis nauticus, or capta. Pliny denominates it vetus aut nauticus panis tusus atque iterum coctus. By which it appears, that, after the first baking, they ground or pound it down again for a second. In some middle-aged writers, it is called paximus, paximus, and panis maximus. Among the Romans we also meet with