SC - A Dilemma on what to cook for Dinner-HELP!

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Help!  I don't  know if this has already been discussed here, but I
couldn't find anything on it in the Florilegium.  I found this recipe
for Shrewsbury Cakes in the Meridies A&S pages, by Mistress Evelyn
Demond; unfortuately she gives only a redaction, and I don't have
either of the source texts she mentions.  So first, here is the recipe
as it is given there:


This version is adapted from Sallets, Humbles, and Shrewsbury Cakes,
and Dining With William Shakespeare.
  
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter (margarine must taste like butter)
1 1/2 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp rosewater or orangewater (vanilla works)
2 cups sifted unbleached four

Cream butter and sugar until fluffy.  Add rosewater.  Sift flour with
nutmeg.  Stir dry ingredients into butter-sugar mixture until blended. 
Chill ten minutes for ease of handling.  Roll dough into one inch balls
and press them down on a cookie sheet to make circles.  Bake at 350
degrees until slightly brown (you want a "white" cake).  Cool on a wire
rack.  Store in an airtight tin.


Now, I tried this recipe, twice.  And as given, the resulting mixture
is so dry, there's no way I could "roll" it into anything -- it just
crumbled apart.  I tried it warm, I tried it cold, there wasn't enough
moisture or fat or something to hold it together.  I added an egg (just
going by cookie dough contents), and then a little milk, and it got
moist enough to shape; actually, by then it was a little sticky, so I
flattened them with a glass bottom dipped in sugar -- worked well,
tasted pretty good.  But not the original recipe.  

So, am I missing something?  Is the recipe missing something?  Should
it be 2 Tblsp rosewater/orangewater (that sounds like a pretty strong
flavor)?  Does anyone have the (secondary?) sources listed, and/or the
original sources these might have been redacted from?  In general I'm
an okay cook with a recipe to start from, but I'm not experienced
enough redact on my own; could someone please help?

I know cookies as we know them weren't common in period, but I LOVE
them, and I do tons of them at Christmas to send to all my busy
siblings and their kids.  I was kind of hoping for a recipe that I not
only could slip in for them, but take along to events, so I was SO
happy to see something like a period cookie recipe, but I can't get it
to work yet!  If you help me, I'll mail you some at Christmas, I
promise!

- -- Harriet


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