A Shrewsbury cake or Shrewsbury biscuit is a classic English
dessert
Dessert is a course (food), course that concludes a meal; the course consists of sweet foods, such as cake, biscuit, ice cream, and possibly a beverage, such as dessert wine or liqueur. Some cultures sweeten foods that are more commonly umami, ...
, named after
Shrewsbury
Shrewsbury ( , ) is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire (district), Shropshire, England. It is sited on the River Severn, northwest of Wolverhampton, west of Telford, southeast of Wrexham and north of Hereford. At the 2021 United ...
, the county town of
Shropshire
Shropshire (; abbreviated SalopAlso used officially as the name of the county from 1974–1980. The demonym for inhabitants of the county "Salopian" derives from this name.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West M ...
. They are made from
dough
Dough is a malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from flour (which itself is made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops). Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes ...
that contains
sugar
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose
Glucose is a sugar with the Chemical formula#Molecular formula, molecul ...
,
flour
Flour is a powder made by Mill (grinding), grinding raw grains, List of root vegetables, roots, beans, Nut (fruit), nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredie ...
,
egg
An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the ...
,
butter
Butter is a dairy product made from the fat and protein components of Churning (butter), churned cream. It is a semi-solid emulsion at room temperature, consisting of approximately 81% butterfat. It is used at room temperature as a spread (food ...
and
lemon zest; dried fruit is also often added. Shrewsbury cakes can be small in size for serving several at a time, or large for serving as a dessert in themselves.
History
The earliest known written reference for Shrewsbury cakes dates to 1602. The original cakes, delicate and fragile in texture, are no longer made commercially. These cakes were very different from the modern Shrewsbury biscuits which are still handcrafted in Shrewsbury.
The playwright
William Congreve
William Congreve (24 January 1670 – 19 January 1729) was an English playwright, satirist, poet, and Whig politician. He spent most of his career between London and Dublin, and was noted for his highly polished style of writing, being regard ...
mentioned Shrewsbury cakes in his play ''
The Way of the World
''The Way of the World'' is a play written by the English playwright William Congreve. It premiered in early March 1700 in the theatre in Lincoln's Inn Fields in London. It is widely regarded as one of the best works of Restoration comedy ev ...
'' in 1700 as a simile: "Why, brother Wilfull of Salop, you may be as short as a Shrewsbury cake, if you please. But I tell you 'tis not modish to know relations in town".
The recipe is also included in several early cookbooks including ''The Compleat Cook of 1658'', which gives the following instructions:
Although there are earlier references, Shrewsbury baker Thomas Plimmer claimed that he had acquired the original recipe from James Palin, who sold the cakes out of a
bakeshop on Castle Street in Shrewsbury.
Bridget Atkinson (1732–1814) left two recipes for Shrewsbury cakes, as part of her large collection of recipes that were used at her home in
Temple Sowerby
Temple Sowerby is a village and civil parish in Cumbria, northern England. It is close to the main east–west A66 road about east of Penrith, Cumbria, Penrith in the River Eden, Cumbria, Eden Valley. At the United Kingdom Census 2011, 2011 ce ...
,
Cumbria
Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial county in North West England. It borders the Scottish council areas of Dumfries and Galloway and Scottish Borders to the north, Northumberland and County Durham to the east, North Yorkshire to the south-east, Lancash ...
. A third recipe for Shrewsbury cakes, given by Lady Darcy, was added to the recipe book by her brother-in-law, Matthew Atkinson.
The recipe also appears in early American recipe collections. One 19th century American recipe is made with the
creaming method to combine butter and sugar, typical for
butter cake
A butter cake is a cake in which one of the main ingredients is butter. Butter cake is baked with basic ingredients: butter, sugar, Egg (food), eggs, flour, and leavening agents such as baking powder or baking soda. It is considered one of the q ...
s, then adding eggs, rosewater, flour and nutmeg.
Other countries
Shrewsbury biscuits are popular in
India
India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
, where they are locally produced in the Kayani Bakery located in
Pune
Pune ( ; , ISO 15919, ISO: ), previously spelled in English as Poona (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name until 1978), is a city in the state of Maharashtra in the Deccan Plateau, Deccan plateau in Western ...
,
Maharashtra
Maharashtra () is a state in the western peninsular region of India occupying a substantial portion of the Deccan Plateau. It is bordered by the Arabian Sea to the west, the Indian states of Karnataka and Goa to the south, Telangana to th ...
.
A popular biscuit in New Zealand is also called a Shrewsbury biscuit, but this is similar to a
Jammie Dodger in the UK and has no known relation to the original Shrewsbury biscuit except in name.
See also
*
Geographically indicated foods of the United Kingdom
*
List of cakes
A list is a set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of the list-maker, but ...
References
{{Reflist
External links
HistoryRecipe on BBC
British desserts
English cuisine
Biscuits
British cakes
Foods featuring butter
American cakes
Butter cakes