I do not know which came first, the roast chicken or the boiled egg, but pastry in the shape of letters is the very same alphabet biscuit from your childhood breakfasts, only larger and richer

I do not know which came first, the roast chicken or the boiled egg, but pastry in the shape of letters is the very same alphabet biscuit from your childhood breakfasts, only larger and richer. In Germany today such baked goods are sometimes called Russisch Brot, supposedly because the Dresden baker Ferdinand Hanke saw such biscuits in one of the bakeries on Nevsky Prospect when he visited Saint Petersburg in 1844. The treat became very popular in Germany, and fairly soon many tradesmen began producing similar biscuits. Russisch Brot exists in neighbouring Austria too, where it is covered with chocolate and icing. An interesting legend, of course. Only this picture of 1615 by the German painter Peter Binoit (one is tempted to read Binoit as Benois) may shake the tidy tale of a Russian borrowing. Such letters are an old delicacy made in Austria and Germany for Christmas; they were used to decorate the Christmas tree and in some places were called the biscuit of patience, because children had to wait for Christmas Eve before they were allowed to treat themselves