Mix ½ pound of butter with ¼ pound of sugar, ½ cup of chopped nuts and ½ cup of shredded citron; then work in 1 pound of sifted flour with 2 teaspoonfuls of baking-powder. Make a loaf a half inch thick and bake in a moderate oven until done.
This is shortbread by another name: a stiff, eggless, liquid-free dough pressed into a slab rather than a batter poured into a tin. Knowing that changes how you handle it.
- The hinge: no liquid is comingWith a pound of flour against half a pound of butter and no egg or milk, the mixture will look like dry crumbs long after you expect a dough. Keep working it with your hands until the warmth of your palms brings it together; adding water would turn shortbread into a biscuit.
- Weights in cupsHalf a pound of butter is two sticks (225 g); a quarter pound of sugar is about half a cup; a pound of sifted flour is roughly four cups. Weigh the flour if you can, since sifted flour is lighter by volume and cup measures vary widely.
- "Moderate oven"350°F. For a half-inch slab this means about 30 to 40 minutes, until the surface is pale gold and firm at the centre; shortbread should not brown much beyond the edges.
- CitronCandied citron, the thick white peel of a citrus fruit preserved in syrup, was a staple of period baking and is now mostly a Christmas-season item. Candied orange or lemon peel substitutes cleanly at the same volume.
- The baking powderTwo teaspoons in a pound of flour is a light hand and will give little real lift at that proportion. Traditional Scottish shortbread uses none at all; leaving it out will not ruin the loaf.
- Shaping and cuttingPress the dough into an even half-inch slab on a lined sheet or into a shallow pan, prick it all over with a fork, and score it into fingers or wedges before baking. Cut along the scores while it is still hot, then cool on the tray, or it will shatter.
- YieldA pound of flour makes a large slab, roughly a 9-by-13-inch sheet, and cuts into about 24 fingers. It keeps a fortnight in a tin.
The book's habit is to attach a nationality to each day's dish, and "Scotch" here signals the shortbread tradition: butter, sugar and flour in a descending ratio, worked cold and baked as a thick round or slab rather than dropped as cookies. Shortbread is generally traced to Scottish festive baking, where the round pressed cake was scored into "petticoat tails" before baking. The nuts and citron are a departure from the plain three-ingredient Scottish version, which has neither. Note too the confidence of "bake until done," a phrase that assumes a cook who reads her own oven rather than a dial.