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Shingles
1/2 cup butter. 1 1/2 cups sugar. ½ cup boiling water ½ teaspoon soda Five Roses flour to stiffen Vanilla.
Beat the butter and sugar together, dissolve the soda in boiling water and mix. Add flour till very stiff, and roll as thin as possible. Cut in pieces 3 inches wide and 5 inches in length. Flavor to suit taste. These will be very crisp.
A thin rolled cookie of the plainest sort — creamed butter and sugar, soda slaked in boiling water, and flour worked in until the dough will take a very thin roll. The name comes from the shape: flat rectangles cut to look like roof shingles.
- The hinge is thinness"Roll as thin as possible" is the whole point of the recipe; the crispness comes from the sheet, not from any leavening. Aim for about 1/16 inch, rolling on a lightly floured board or between sheets of parchment, and expect to work in batches so the dough does not warm and stick.
- Flour "to stiffen"The original gives no flour quantity at all, leaving it to the cook's judgment. Add flour a spoonful at a time until the dough is firm and dry enough to roll without tearing, then stop — extra flour past that point tends to make the shingles hard rather than crisp.
- Soda and boiling waterDissolving the soda in liquid before mixing distributes it evenly through the dough, and hot water helps it go into solution. There is no acid among the ingredients given, so the soda contributes browning and a slight lift rather than real rise. Half a teaspoon is all that is called for; more can leave a soapy taste.
- CuttingCut with a knife or pastry wheel into 3 by 5 inch rectangles as directed, and transfer them flat to the sheet. They spread very little. A pricked surface, docked with a fork, keeps them from blistering.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven direction of any kind, not even a baking instruction; the crispness at the end implies it. As a modern starting point, thin rolled dough of this sort will take about 350F for roughly 6 to 10 minutes — watch from the first minutes, as the edges color quickly.
- FlavoringVanilla is the only flavoring named, and "flavor to suit taste" leaves the choice open; lemon extract, almond or grated nutmeg would all suit. A teaspoon of extract is a reasonable amount, though the page gives no butter or sugar quantity to scale from.
- SaltNo salt is called for, and butter of the period was often salted. If you use unsalted butter, a quarter teaspoon of salt with the flour will keep them from tasting flat.
- StoringCool completely on a rack and keep in a tin. Anything this thin goes soft with the first humid day; a few minutes back in a low oven will re-crisp them.
Shingles belong to the large family of plain rolled "cookies" that filled the biscuit tin in Canadian and American kitchens — cheap, keeping well, and made from butter, sugar and flour with nothing that had to be bought specially. The name is often said to be borrowed from the roofing shingle, describing the shape rather than a place or a person, as ladyfinger does. Its appearance in the Five Roses Cook Book, compiled from recipes contributed by users of Five Roses flour, is typical of that book's method: the contributors wrote as they cooked, assuming the reader knew what a stiff dough looked like and how hot her own oven ran, which is why the quantity of flour and the baking time are left to judgment here.