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Scotch Shortbread
4 cupfuls flour 3/4 cupful sugar 1 cupful Crisco 1 large egg 1 teaspoonful salt Sift flour and salt on to baking board. Cream Crisco, sugar and egg in basin and when thoroughly beaten turn out on board and very gradually knead in flour. Make into two smooth rounds, pinch them round the edges, prick over top with fork, lay on papered tin and bake in moderate oven thirty-five minutes. Leave on tin until cold.
Sufficient for two round cakes.
A shortbread from a Crisco-sponsored cookbook, which explains the shortening in place of butter. The dough is stiff and dry by design; resist adding liquid.
- Moderate ovenUsually taken as 350-375F. Thirty-five minutes is about right for two rounds roughly 1/2 inch thick; the recipe gives no diameter. The shortbread should be pale gold at the edges and barely coloured on top.
- CriscoOne cupful of solid vegetable shortening is about 7 oz (200 g) by weight. Modern Crisco has been reformulated to cut trans fat, though it still lists partially hydrogenated oils; it behaves much the same in this dough. An equal weight of butter gives far better flavour and a more traditional result.
- The eggClassic Scottish shortbread is flour, butter and sugar only. The egg here binds a dough made with shortening, which has no water in it, and produces something closer to a firm biscuit than to crumbling petticoat tails.
- Kneading in the flourThis is the hinge. Add the flour gradually and stop the moment the dough holds together — overworking develops gluten and the shortbread turns tough and hard rather than short.
- Papered tinA baking sheet lined with parchment. Do not grease it as well; the dough carries plenty of fat.
- Score before bakingIf you want wedges, cut the rounds most of the way through into six or eight before they go in the oven. Cold shortbread is brittle and cutting it then tends to shatter it; the wedges are traditionally separated while the round is still warm.
- CoolingLeaving it on the tin until cold is not fussiness — the round is soft when it comes out and sets as it cools. Move it early and it breaks.
- YieldTwo rounds; the recipe gives no diameter. 12 to 16 pieces. Keeps a week in a tin.
Marion Harris Neil wrote for Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, introduced in 1911, and her recipes lean on the new shortening in place of butter or lard — which is why a Scottish national bake appears here made with vegetable fat. Shortbread itself is much older, generally traced to the medieval sweetened biscuit bread of Scotland; the name refers to the shortening effect of a high proportion of fat, which coats the flour's gluten strands and leaves the crumb tender. The pinched edge and fork-pricked top are traditional finishes, the pricking often said to keep the round from blistering as it bakes. Its association with Hogmanay and with Mary, Queen of Scots is often repeated but rests on tradition rather than documentation.