So I don't know if you've heard this but they're not making shortbread any longer...
>_> .... <_< ....
Luckily for us we have a 250 year old recipe
so we can make our own shortbread. So thank you to Trade coffee for sponsoring this video
as we make shortbread for the Scottish new year this time on Tasting History.
So today's recipe comes from 1779 from a Scottish cookbook called
'Cookery and Pastry As Taught and Practiced by Mrs. Macver' teacher of those arts in Edinburgh.
I apologize now for going in and out of a bad Scottish brogue throughout this video.
Now while this isn't the first shortbread recipe, that being about 40 years before this one,
it is almost identical and I chose this one because I love the word choice that Mrs. Maciver uses, it's just charming.
"Take a peck of flour and four pounds of butter English, or three pounds Scots weight,
put the butter on to come a -boil; make a hole in the flour and pour the boiling butter in it;
work the flour and butter a little while together; pour in a mutchkin of good yeast amongst the paste;
work it together, but not too much; divide the paste, and roll it out oval;
then cut through the middle, and plait it at the ends. If you make it sweet, allow a pound of sugar to the peck of flour at least;
if you want it very rich, put in citron, orange peel, and almonds, strew white carvy on the top.
Remember to prick it well on top."
So when I first read it I read it as muNchkin of yeast. You need a muNchkin of yeast. What is that?
It's actually a munchkin of yeast which was a Scottish unit of volume in the 17th and 18th century that's equal to about 425 milliliters.
We won't need near that much because I am cutting this recipe way back.
The other word that threw me was carvy.
'You strew white carvy on top if you want it rich.'
I couldn't figure out what that was until I said it in my bad Scottish brogue.
She strew carvy. Carvy is caraway
and I actually confirmed that with some old Scottish dictionaries. It is caraway and they used caraway
sometimes on Scottish shortbread at this time.
"Cookies and bakes, shortbread with carvy nicely done, and oatmeal cakes."
Now what really makes this recipe stand out from modern shortbread is the addition of yeast,
so I'm really curious what that's going to do to the texture.
Also in modern shortbread there's pretty much always sugar and in her base recipe she does not include sugar.
It's an option if you want to make it sweet.
She also gives the option to add the almonds and the candied citron and candied peel as well as the caraway seeds.
I'm not going to add those because I'm curious about the texture compared to modern shortbread and I don't want anything to interfere with that
but I am going to be adding sugar.
Now shortbread no matter how you make it can tend to be rather dry,
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and with your coffee in hand all you'll need for this recipe is:
4 cups or 480 grams of flour, 2 and a half cups or 285 grams of melted butter,
a quarter cup or 50 grams of sugar, and a yeast mixture made with two teaspoons of dried yeast
mixed into a quarter cup of water with a tablespoon of flour added in.
Mix it up and then just let it sit for about 30 minutes.
At that point if it's nice and frothy then you can start boiling your butter on the stove.
Now you want it boiling but you don't want it to burn so keep it moving around the pot as you cook it.
Then pour it into a bowl with the flour and mix it into a dough.
Also if you are going to use almonds or candied peel add it to the flour before you add the butter.
Also so you don't burn your hands don't use your hands for this first mixing,
go ahead and use a spatula or a spoon.
Once everything is incorporated and the dough has cooled down so that it's warm but not scalding add in the yeast mixture,
then mix it a bit, then add in the sugar and work the dough for another two to three minutes, or until it's nice and smooth,
and then you can shape the dough.
Now the thing is I could not make heads or tails
of what she is trying to describe in this recipe. She says to roll it out the pieces out into ovals
and "then to cut through the middle and plait at the ends."
I cannot picture this process and I went through quite a bit of dough trying to figure out what she meant.
I made cuts every which way, I tried plaiting it every way and I don't know how you plait dough that isn't in strands
and I don't know how she gets strands from what she's describing.
If someone knows what she means
please tell me in the comments because I would love to know.
I got very, very frustrated trying to shape this dough and so I ended up just doing ovals.
Whatever you do though make sure to prick or dock the dough before sliding it into the oven
at 325 degrees Fahrenheit or 165 Celsius for about 35 minutes.
And while that bakes let us ponder what makes shortbread short bread.
Hmmmm?
Short bread.
Peculiar name, not the short part. The short part means it is short which is the crispy
kind of crumbly texture and that comes from the heavy addition of a lot of shortening in this case butter.
Today when we say shortening we usually mean like Crisco or vegetable shortening
but shortening is any fat that is a solid at room temperature: lard, butter, tallow, all the good stuff.
No, what I find odd is the bread part.
Now I understand if you consider this Caledonian confection a cookie or biscuit or even a cake
but bread? Hardly.
But it may have that name because at one time it probably was bread.
Shortbread likely started out in the Middle Ages as leftover bread that was baked at a low temperature for a long time
to dry it out extending its shelf life similar to the hardtack that we made a while back.
*CLACK CLACK*
By the way I still have some of that hardtack, and when it's a year old coming up very soon
I am going to use it to make a recipe which is how hardtack should be used.
You don't just eat it so be on the lookout for that year old hardtack, wish me luck.
Now over time this rock-hard bread
changed into something that was more palatable and nobody really knows when that happened.
It's possible that it took place during the Auld Alliance which started in 1295
is a pact between the kingdoms of Scotland and France against England under the reign of Edward Longshanks Hammer of the Scots.
For context he was the king in Braveheart which
for all of its historical faults, and there are very, very many, I do love that movie.
Anyway, Scotland and France hated England and for about 300 years they teamed up
and sometime during this period
butter was introduced to this hard bread.
Which completely makes sense because any time a lot of butter is added to a dish
there's usually some Frenchman behind it,
God bless them.
Now this change in the recipe made it so shortbread was really no longer bread
but it's said that the bakers of Scotland refused to change the name
because the sale of bread was taxed lower than that of biscuits and other confections.
If that's true then in essence the name shortbread is just a way to evade some taxes.
Now this tax dodging biscuit was probably eaten throughout the Middle Ages by many people but it never really made it into the history books,
not until the 16th century when it found a celebrity to give it an endorsement.
And in Scotland at the time there was no greater celebrity than Mary Queen of Scots,
the Beyonce of the House of Stuart.
Tradition says that during her reign Mary was an avid eater of shortbread,
specifically petticoat tails, that's when shortbread is baked in a large circle and then cut as one would cut a pizza.
They're often made in molds like this one so that you get a wonderful embossed design on the petticoat tails,
and nobody really knows from where the term petticoat tails came in relation to shortbread.
Some people say that it was a corruption of the old French "petites gastelles"
meaning little cake but it could have also simply been that they resembled women's petticoats
especially the ones worn around the Elizabethan era.
Whatever the reason this was and still is today one of the traditional ways of shaping shortbread.
The other ways are either in a tray bake, you kind of bake the whole thing and then while it's still hot you cut it into fingers
or just in round cookies.
None of those ways are what Mrs. Maciver is trying to describe in her recipe, at least I don't think so.
Now we don't know exactly what was in the shortbread of the time of Mary Queen of Scots,
but it likely had yeast and by the 18th century when recipes started being written down
they pretty much all did include yeast.
That went away during the 19th century
with the addition of an egg which stuck around for most of the Victorian Age and then that went away
leading to the modern shortbread which is just flour, sugar, butter.
What more do you want?
So with a pedigree that includes Mary Queen of Scots there's no denying that shortbread is as Scottish
as Sean Connery in a kilt.
In fact the 19th century Scottish historian Thomas Henderson called shortbread
"The triumph of Scottish baking on the old national lines."
But why its association with this particular time of year? I mean you can eat shortbread at any time of year
but traditionally it was served at weddings and at yuletide.
Now one reason was probably because with the amount of butter that was in it
it was a rather expensive treat and so saved for special occasions.
Though when it comes to the Scottish weddings it may have been used because it crumbles so well.
In 1818 Edinburgh magazine described a ritual "When they reach the bridegroom's door...
some cakes of shortbread are broken over the bride's head...
it is a peculiar favor to obtain the smallest crumb of this cake which is known by the name of dreaming bread,
as it possesses the talismanic virtue of favoring such as lay it below their pillow with a nocturnal vision of their future partner for life."
Sometimes they would put a little sweet in the bread but if you touched the sweet
then that meant that you were going to be an old maid.
Womp womp.
But when it comes to Yule the tradition of eating shortbread goes much further back.
The custom is thought to have descended from the eating of the Yule bannock in pagan days.
The bannock was a flat unleavened cake in a round shape that often had the ends kind of twisted going around it
so that it resembled the sun perfect for the solstice.
And some early descriptions of shortbread include this shape,
and this sun-shaped shortbread would be enjoyed throughout the season but especially on Hogmanay or the Scottish new year.
By the way I don't think I've ever come across any word that has been spelled as many ways
as this word. It was first written in 1443 spelled 'Hognonayse'
and over the centuries has been spelled in all of these ways and I'm pretty sure most of them
just come from English people trying to figure out what the word was through a thick Scottish brogue,
then giving up and spelling it pretty much however they wanted.
Anyway one tradition that has been associated with hogmanay since time immemorial is first footers,
or "Those who go visiting from house to house in the wee sma' 'oors of New Year morning."
Often it was simply whoever first showed up to the house, usually a friend or a family member,
but at different times and different places in Scotland
there were specific people who went from house to house to house almost as some sort of like New Year's duty,
and I'm really hoping that this is not the case any longer but as recently as a hundred years ago
in parts of Scotland and on the Isle of Man it was considered good luck
if the person who came to your door had dark hair and a dark complexion,
and it was unlucky if that person had blonde or red hair
and many folklorists think that superstition dates back all the way to the time of the Vikings
because at that point if someone showed up to your doorstep with blonde or red hair
they usually had an axe in their hand.
Anyway these first footers often came with a gift,
either some shortbread or a black bun and that sometimes it could be salt or a piece of coal,
or a glass of whiskey. I know which one I would prefer.
Tangent, that black bun is a sort of dark black fruit cake that has pepper in it and then is wrapped in pastry,
and it was originally meant for twelfth night but then when the Puritans banned Christmas in the 1600s
they moved the cake to Hogmanay and I really want to try it simply because of
how some 19th century authors wrote about it.
One was a poem from around 1900 called "Invocation to the Black Bun'
and it ends "Fierce raisin devils and gay current sprites hold lightsome leap-frog in a pastry hell."
What an exciting dish! And the great Robert Louis Stevenson while writing about the lead up to Hogmanay
in 19th century Edinburgh wrote "For weeks before the great morning, confectioners display
stacks of scotch black bun- a dense, black substance, inimical to life-
and full moons of shortbread adorned with lots of peel or sugar plum in honor of the season and the family affections."
And while it's that dense black substance and inimical to life that I'm curious to try one of these days,
for today it is the full moons of shortbread for us.
So you'll know your shortbread is ready when the edges just start to brown, then take them out of the oven and let them cool completely,
and here we are 18th century Scottish shortbread.
So I feel like they do puff up a little bit more than modern shortbread
but it doesn't really hold that shape because you're not working it enough
to get the gluten going, and she says don't knead it too much. So
not exactly why sure why- they put in the yeast and maybe that's why it's not in there anymore,
but let's give it a shot anyway.
So it's definitely short. I mean it really crumbles so the texture is already
quite similar just by the look of it to modern shortbread.
Maybe a little bit different I think because of the the melted butter.
Let's give it a shot.
*monch munch*
The texture is actually quite different, I need coffee.
So the flavor is very similar.
It's not as sweet because there's probably not as much sugar as they use today
but what's really different is the texture.
At first it feels the same but it literally just dissolves in your mouth
which at first is kind of cool and then it turns into like paste and it's really hard to eat.
It's good but you can't you have to have something to drink with these.
It's like eating glue... o_o
in a good way... as long as you have something to wash the glue down with.
I mean the flavor is very nice though so-
I could probably eat these.
So thank you again to Trade for sponsoring this video and make sure to follow me on Instagram [@tastinghistorywithmaxmiller]
and I will see you in the new year.
Have a happy Hogmanay and I'll see you next time on Tasting History.