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Goutte Housekeeping
a column on medieval cookery

Shrewsbery Cakes

Wulfric of Creigull

This is the last of the Jingles recipes. I guess if I want to continue this column I'll have to (gasp) come up with something original. Let me know what you'd like to see. Or if you'd rather the column died.

This was part of the last remove at Jingles '94. I went a bit insane as l had been under a lot of stress I went around the room holding a Shrewsbery Cake in my hand, chanting to the Cookie Monster song " S is for Shrewsbery, that's goutte enough for me!” ... well, it seemed terrifically funny at the time.

Shrewsbery Cakes

Take a quart of very fine flower, eight ounces of fine sugar beaten and cersed, twelve ounces of sweete butter, a Nutmegge grated, two or three spoonefuls of damaske rosewater, worke all these together with your hands as hard as you can for the space of halfe an houre, then roule it in little round Cakes, about the thicknesse, of three shillings me upon. another, then take a silver Cup or a classe some foure or three inches over, and cut the cakes in them, then strow some flower upon white papers & lay them upon them, and bake them in an Oven as hotte as for Manchet, set up your lid till you may tell a hundredth, then you shall see the white, if any of them rise up clap them downe with some cleane thing and so draw them foorth & lay them upon another till they bee could, and you may keepe them halfe a yeare the new baked are best. (The English Huswife, 1615)

Cream butter and sugar. Add water and rosewater. Mix flours, nutmeg, and salt and stir in. Turn onto breadboard and roll out to 1/4 inch or so. Cut round cakes. Bake at 350º for fifteen or twenty minutes. Cool and serve.

I used a mixture of white and wheat flour as it more closely approximates the coarser period flour. The "goutte" imprint on each Cake is a baker's mark. This had two common uses: to identify properly licensed bakers apparently innkeepers often illegally baked, and inspectors could fine the establishment if the item was not so marked. Also, it served as a way of identification in case of fraud. Underweight baked goods were a major problem and the mark on the loaf would identify the culprit. They generally used "a letter of the alphabet, an animal, a flower or an object, that the baker used to mark his breads before baking." (Françoise Desportes) As all these are common heraldic motifs, I thought it appropriate to use my SCA badge.

Sources

Beebe, Ruth Anne. Sallets, Humbles, and Shrewsbery Cakes. David R. Godine, 1976.
David, Elizabeth. English Bread and Yeast Cookery. Prospect Books, 1988.
Desportes, Frangoise. Le Pain au Moyen Âge (Bread in the Middle Ages). Olivier Orban, 1987.
Hagen, Ann. A Handbook of Anglo Saxon Food Processing and Consumption . Antony Rowe Ltd, 1992.

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