SC - Period Beet Recipes (was: summer feast)

[ChannonM@aol.com]

> ... What we think of as shortbread today is OOP. To me, a shortbread is
>basically butter, flour, sugar, and a tad of salt. ...

I agree. I know of two period (or almost period) foods that closely resemble
shortbread. One is the Shrewsbury Cakes from the Elizabethan and Stuart
eras, which tend to contain a little egg yolk or white, some spices such as
nutmeg, and perhaps some rosewater. The other is the aniseed cake from
Martha Washington's book (a manuscript from c. 1650 inherited by
Washington), which has just the basic shortbread ingredients plus anise, but
the sugar comes in the form of candy coating on the anise. As far as I can
recall the original proportions, these both make a thick and lightly
sweetened dough similar to shortbread, but both have at least one added
flavoring. Shrewsbury cakes are baked as thin, broad, round cookies, while
the shape of the aniseed cake is not specified.

One could claim circumstantial evidence for period shortbread, in that
shortbread is a simplified form of these and other period recipes. But the
most that this proves is that shortbread could have been made in period, not
that it was. In any case I would guess that the word is relatively modern,
because all the similar period (English) foods are called cake.

Henry of Maldon/Alex Clark

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