Cocktail dunkers

The simple act of dunking a biscuit into a hot cup of tea is so natural (at least to those of us in the civilised parts of the world) that it is easy to forget that someone had to invent this process. It began, of course, with Donchad (known in English as Duncan), Earl of Fife back in the 1100's who wanted a simple way to eat and drink simultaneously whilst playing backgammon.

The Earl of Fife was, however, a teetotaller and therefore did not contemplate other potential dunking situations. It is perhaps for this reason that dunking shortbread into cocktails is considered rather a faux pas in most circles. Another reason is that the result is generally disgusting, and tends to leave a visible and unattractive sediment of biscuit sludge at the bottom of your mohito.

Clearly, there is a much-needed gap in the market when it comes to cocktail dunkables which are both highly absorbent and complementary to various spirits. The usual foodstuffs in cocktails - such as olives or pieces of fruit on cocktail sticks - fail to meet this need, as they are insufficiently absorbent and take several minutes to take up any flavour from the drink; clearly, one will have finished and ordered another long before this happens.

MaxCo. is therefore working around the clock to develop a range of cocktail-dunking comestibles. So far, we have had modest success with pieces of coconut, micro-perforated with lasers to create a network of cocktail-absorbing holes. I can modestly claim that the result is a flavour sensation, but only with the sort of cocktails that vulgar people drink at Christmas parties. Urgent research is needed to perfect the sintered olive biscuit, the Sierpinski lemon finger, and the microporous cocktail onion. Donations to the research fund may be made through the usual channels.