Scottish Shortbread and Gunpowder Tea: An 18th-Century Treat

National Park Service.

Shortbread in the old cookbooks is not quite the shortbread we know. It was still rich with butter, but it often held nuts and dried fruits, called sweetmeats, and frequently caraway seeds. And it was leavened with barm, the yeasty froth from beer making. The park couldn't get proper period barm, so it used a substitute that gave the same results.

A historic shortbread recipe from A New and Easy Method of Cookery by Elizabeth Cleveland, 1755.

The recipe, updated

Ingredients

• 3 to 3¼ cups flour
• ¼ cup sugar
• 3 sticks butter
• barm: ½ cup water, 1 heaping tablespoon flour and ¼–½ teaspoon instant yeast, mixed and left to sit for about 8 hours before baking
• sweetmeats

Method

1. Melt the butter, take it off the heat, let it cool to lukewarm, then stir in the barm.
2. In a medium bowl, mix 3 cups of flour with the sweetmeats, then the sugar.
3. Add the butter and barm and stir until combined. If the dough is too soft to roll, add the remaining ¼ cup of flour.
4. Roll it out on a floured board to about ¼–⅜ inch thick and cut into shapes.
5. Bake at 350° for about 15–20 minutes, until lightly golden at the edges.

The finished shortbread. National Park Service/Sandi MD.

Tips from Sandi, a park volunteer at Moores Creek National Battlefield

• Her sweetmeats: ¼ cup candied orange peel, ¼ cup candied lemon peel, ⅓ cup currants and about a tablespoon of caraway seeds.
• Plump the currants in hot water for about 20 minutes, and drain them well before adding them to the dry ingredients.
• Chill the dough while the oven heats, and roll out half at a time so it doesn't get too soft.
• A 2-inch round cutter gave her about 48 cookies.

Gunpowder tea

Gunpowder tea, an Asian tea popular in the 18th century and enjoyed throughout the colonies, is named for how its dried, rolled leaves look. The leaves unfurl in hot water, so many companies now sell it in bags to keep it from clogging the pot or cup. The park chose it to mark St. Barbara's Day, the feast of the patron saint of artillerymen.

Sources

• National Park Service, Fort Stanwix National Monument and Moores Creek National Battlefield, "Scottish Shortbread & Gunpowder Tea," part of the series "Festive Foods of the Fort": https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/scottish-shortbread-gunpowder-tea.htm
• The recipe's modern conversions were revised by Moores Creek volunteer Sandi.
• Words on this page from people and organisations outside the federal government are paraphrased; rewritten in hubnx's own words.