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Shrewsbury Cakes
Place four ounces butter in a basin with four ounces sugar and three-quarters of a pound sifted flour, half a teaspoon ground cinnamon, half teaspoon baking powder, two fresh eggs and two ounces well picked currants. Knead all well together until thoroughly amalgamated. Roll out the paste on a lightly floured table to the thickness of a quarter of an inch. Cut into equal-sized round pieces of three inches in diameter. Lightly egg the surface of each, place in a lightly buttered tin, then set in the oven for twenty minutes. Remove and serve.
A plain English biscuit dough written in weights, with the oven temperature left to the cook's judgement. The proportions are stiffer and drier than a modern cookie, which is the point.
- Give the oven a numberThe original names no heat. A moderate oven, 350F, for 18 to 20 minutes suits these; they should be pale gold at the edges and still blond on top. Anything hotter browns the surface before the thick centre sets.
- Weights, converted4 oz butter is 1 stick (115 g), 4 oz sugar is a generous half cup (115 g), and three-quarters of a pound of flour is 12 oz, about 2 3/4 cups (340 g). Weigh the flour if you can; scooped cups will push this dough past workable.
- Currants are driedThese are dried Zante currants, small dark raisins, not fresh redcurrants or blackcurrants. "Well picked" means picked over for stems and grit, which mattered when dried fruit came loose from a barrel.
- Basin and pasteA basin is a mixing bowl, and "paste" here means the dough. The dough is meant to be short and firm rather than soft; if it will not hold together at all, a teaspoon of milk is enough.
- Knead lightly, not thoroughly"Knead all well together until thoroughly amalgamated" was written for a dough that was worked by hand until smooth, but with baking powder and this much flour, prolonged working toughens it. Bring it together until no dry flour remains, then stop.
- Chill before rollingTwenty minutes in the refrigerator makes the quarter-inch roll-out far easier and keeps the three-inch rounds from spreading into ovals. Reroll scraps once only.
- The egg wash"Lightly egg the surface" means a thin brush of beaten egg, applied after cutting and before baking. A heavy wash pools at the edges and scorches.
- Yield and keepingExpect around two dozen cakes at three inches. They firm as they cool and keep a week in a tin.
Shrewsbury cakes are among the oldest named biscuits in English cookery, with recipes recorded from the seventeenth century, and are long associated with the Shropshire town whose name they carry; Congreve's The Way of the World (1700) contains a well-known allusion to them, punning on their shortness. The traditional form is a rich short biscuit flavoured with rose water, caraway or cinnamon, and in the nineteenth century Shrewsbury bakers made a regional speciality of them. The currants and cinnamon here represent one version of a much older and more varied family of local recipes.