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Shrewsbury Cakes
Sift one pound of powdered sugar into two pounds of flour; add a grated nutmeg, or a little powdered cinnamon, and an ounce of caraway-seeds. Mix all thoroughly, then beat in two eggs, the whites and yolks separately, and as much dissolved butter as will form a stiff paste. About eight ounces of butter will be enough. Roll the pastry out to the thickness of the eighth of an inch, cut it into round cakes, prick these, and bake on floured tins in a quick oven. If liked, a few currants can be used instead of seeds. Time to bake the cakes, fifteen to twenty minutes. Probable cost, 10d. per pound.
A large Victorian batch of a plain, crisp caraway biscuit. Two things need attention before you start: the oven and the sugar.
- The oven contradicts itselfThe oven and the timing pull against each other. A Victorian "quick oven" is usually reckoned at somewhere around 400-450F, but a biscuit rolled to an eighth of an inch will colour very fast at that heat, while the recipe allows fifteen to twenty minutes -- which points to something nearer 350F. Take them out when the edges are just colouring and the centres still look pale.
- Powdered sugarIn this period the term means sugar ground fine, the equivalent of modern caster sugar. It is not confectioners' sugar, which contains cornflour and will give a chalkier, softer biscuit.
- Dissolved butterMelted, not creamed. Melting is what makes this dough short and sandy rather than aerated, so do not substitute the modern creaming method; let the butter cool slightly so it does not scramble the eggs.
- The egg whitesThere is no raising agent at all in the recipe. The eggs are the only thing that could contribute any lift, and two eggs to two pounds of flour will not contribute much. The instruction is simply to beat whites and yolks in separately; handle the paste lightly once they are in.
- Scale it downTwo pounds of flour with a pound of sugar and half a pound of butter yields something over three and a half pounds of dough, a very large batch by modern standards. Quartering the recipe gives a manageable tray or two.
- CarawayAn ounce is about four tablespoons, an assertive amount by current taste. Half that is plenty if caraway is unfamiliar; the currant version noted at the end is the gentler option.
- Pricking mattersThe docking holes stop the thin rounds from blistering and doming. Prick right through to the tin.
- KeepingWith this little butter they bake hard and dry and keep for weeks in a tin, which is the point of the recipe. They soften quickly if left out in a humid kitchen.
Shrewsbury cakes are one of the older named English biscuits, associated with the Shropshire town since at least the seventeenth century; Congreve is commonly cited as having a character in The Way of the World (1700) called "as short as a Shrewsbury cake", a pun on shortness of manner, which suggests the biscuit and its texture were already proverbial. Early versions are flour, sugar, butter and egg with a spice -- rosewater, nutmeg, cinnamon or caraway -- and no leavening, so the whole character of the thing rests on the fat and the thinness of the rolling. Caraway seed, ubiquitous in English baking from the Tudor period onward, gradually fell out of favour in the twentieth century. A cost of tenpence a pound is given, the sort of detail that placed the recipe firmly among the economical everyday baking a household could turn out in quantity and store.