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Scotch Shortbread (No. 3)
¼ pound fresh butter 2 ounces fine sugar ½ ounce cornstarch 6 ounces Five Roses flour.
Knead cornstarch and sugar into the butter, then gradually knead in flour.
Roll out into a round. Pinch the edges with fore-finger and thumb, prick over top with fork, cut in eight. Place on baking dish and bake in moderate oven 20 minutes. Leave on tin to harden.
NO NO other flour has received such emphatic commendation. No other flour has such enthusiastic advertisers among Canadian housewives. "I would not be without FIVE ROSES flour in my home for any price. I would not trade one bag of FIVE ROSES flour for three of any other."-Mrs. R., Birdhill, Man. not sure about their being good, but I am sure of the FIVE ROSES." -Mrs. J. I., Edmonton, Alta. "I use FIVE ROSES flour. It has never been any trouble in making cake."-E. V. C., St. John, N.B. "We use FIVE ROSES and never had a failure with it yet." "I have used your flour for seven years and find it splendid for both bread, cakes and pastry. I always refuse the 'just as good,' as I am (Full Names on Request) -G. T., Toledo, Ont.
A three-ingredient shortbread plus cornstarch, worked by hand rather than creamed. The weights convert cleanly, and the method matters more than any of them.
- The weights in cups¼ lb butter is about 115 g (one US stick, or a quarter of a 454 g Canadian block). 2 oz sugar is about ¼ cup; ½ oz cornstarch is roughly 2 tablespoons; 6 oz flour is about 1⅓ cups. Weighing gives a far more reliable result than measuring shortbread by volume.
- "Fresh butter" means unsalted"Fresh butter" means butter not salted for keeping -- in this period butter was routinely salted to preserve it, so recipes specified fresh when they wanted it sweet. Use unsalted, and add a pinch of salt with the sugar if you like.
- Knead, do not creamThe hinge of the recipe. The butter should be pliable but cool, and the flour worked in only until the dough coheres. Creaming air into the butter or overworking the flour gives a puffed, tough biscuit instead of the short, sandy crumb.
- What the cornstarch doesIt dilutes the gluten in the flour and keeps the texture crumbly. It is worth keeping rather than replacing with more flour.
- Oven temperatureA moderate oven is usually reckoned around 350°F (175°C). For a round about ½ inch thick, 20 minutes at that heat gives pale gold edges; if your round is thicker, drop to 325°F and go 30-35 minutes so the centre dries out before the rim colours.
- Cut in eight before bakingScore the round through into eight wedges while raw, then bake it whole. The wedges are separated along the scored lines once cool — these are the classic petticoat tails.
- Leave on the tinShortbread is still soft when it comes out and sets as it cools. Moving it early breaks the wedges; leave it undisturbed until fully cold.
- YieldOne round of eight wedges, from about 12½ oz of dough. It keeps a week in a tin and freezes well.
- The text after the recipeEverything from "NO other flour" onward is advertising copy for Five Roses flour, not part of the method. Ignore it.
Shortbread is Scottish, and the form here — a pricked round with pinched edges, scored into eight wedges — is the one usually called petticoat tails, a name often said to derive from the French *petites gatelles*, though that etymology is traditional rather than documented and may simply describe the flared shape of a petticoat panel. The *Five Roses Cook Book* was published by the Lake of the Woods Milling Company as a promotional volume, its recipes collected from Canadian housewives who wrote in, which is why the page runs straight from the last instruction into testimonials initialled with place names and marked "Full Names on Request".