[Sca-cooks] A little article I wrote on Le Menagier's sausages...

[Gretchen Beck]

--On Tuesday, March 24, 2009 6:21 PM -0700 David Friedman
<ddfr at daviddfriedman.com> wrote:

>> Cool
>> (Oh and we can date shortbreads dated to 1597 now.
>> The DSL includes a quotation dated 1597 for:
>> Four schort breid and ane buist of confeitis; )
>> 
>> Johnnae
> 
> 
> That tells us that there was something called "schort breid" in 1597. It
> doesn't tell us what it was. We can date "gingerbrede" back to the 14th
> century--but not what we call "gingerbread." At least not so far as I
> know.
> 
> What's the earliest actual recipe for shortbread that we have?


Well, this one's called short cakes instead of short bread, but with the
exception of the egg yolk, this sounds pretty close. It's from A good
huswifes handmaide for the kitchin 1594

To make short Cakes.

	Take wheate flower, of the fairest ye can get, and put it in an earthen
pot, and stop it close, and set it in an Oven and bake it, and when it is
baken, it will be full of clods, and therefore ye must serse it through a
search : the flower will have as long baking as a pastie of Venison. When
you have done this, take clowted Creame, or els sweet Butter, but Creame is
better, the take Sugar, Cloves, Mace, and Saffron, and the yolke of an Egge
for one dozen of Cakes one yolke is ynough : then put all these forsaid
things together into the cream, & te[m]per the[m] al together, the[n] put
the[m[ to your flower and so make your Cakes, your paste wil be very short,
therefore yee must make your Cakes very little : when ye bake your cakes,
yee must bake them upon papers, after the drawing of a batch of bread.

FWIW, while (as far as I know), there are no extent Scottish recipes from
our period, food laws suggest that the schort breid described is, in fact,
similar to what we know today as shortbread. The same DSL entry also
contains:


    [In 1597 it was enacted that] short-bread should not have less than
half ane pund of butter to the peck [and] to be sauld at xvi d

toodles, margaret