Shrewsbury Cakes from Shropshire

Much of my information about Shrewsbury cakes/biscuits has come from ‘The Taste of Britain’, by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown. For anyone with an interest in British foods and ingredients I recommend this book. The contents cover the produce of each region – vegetables, fruit, livestock and dairy products; and also documents traditional dishes, describing their ingredients (although no recipes are supplied), physical appearance (colour, size, weight) and their history. Brown and Mason originally drew together all of this information for an Europe-wide project that aimed to record traditional ingredients and dishes that are still grown, farmed or in production. It is therefore not an exhaustive list of traditional foods, but the book is incredibly impressive in both its breadth and its scholarship. It is also extremely readable and inspiring, making one want to go on a nationwide tasting spree.

According to Mason & Brown, Shrewsbury cakes (or biscuits) were first documented in the 1500s. The ingredients used at this time are unknown, but the cakes were renowned for their texture, being crisp and brittle. A couple of centuries later the Restoration playwright William Congreve used Shrewsbury cakes as a metaphor (“as short as a Shrewsbury cake”) within his play of 1700, ‘The Way of the World’. Another writer helped to popularise the cakes in the 19th century, . Richard Harris Barham writing as Thomas Ingoldsby penned a tale of ‘Bloudie Jacke of Shrewsberrie. The Shropshire Bluebeard - A Legend of the Proud Salopians’ (Salop is an abbreviation for the county of Shropshire). In this 1840 poem Shrewsbury cakes are attributed to Mr Pailin (“Oh, Pailin! Prince of cake-compounders! the mouth liquefies at thy very name”). If Mr. Pailin was a real person or not has not has as far I can tell been established, although a plaque on an old shop near to Shrewsbury Castle states that "This shop occupies the site of a building where Palin first made the unique Shrewsbury cakes to his original recipe in the year 1760” (alongside a quote from ‘Thomas Ingoldsby’ of 1840), and Mason and Brown write that a Miss Hill, daughter to a confectioner of the town, may have married a Mr. Palin(Pailin). Whether he was fact or fiction, Mr. Pailin's name was taken by a manufacturer, Thomas Plimmer & Sons in the town, who registered as a trademark the name ‘Pailin’s Original Shrewsbury Cakes’. Production up until the Second World War was by Phillip’s Stores Limited. Sadly, due to the rationing of key ingredients, in particular butter, the manufacture of the biscuits then finished. If anyone knows of a commercial manufacturer in the town today, please let me know.

According to ‘The Taste of Britain” the earliest written recipe for the cakes is in Eliza Smith’s ‘The Compleat Housewife’ in 1728. Ms. Smith’s recipe is for a sweet biscuit with nutmeg and cinnamon. However, my internet rummaging came up with an earlier recipe, and Florence White’s ‘Good Things in England’ (1932) has a recipe that may also predate Eliza Smith’s book. The recipe in ‘Good Things…’ come from a Colonel Plomer of Shrewsbury, and he supplied it from a family receipt (recipe) book kept from 1630 to 1750. The Plomer family recipe flavours the biscuits with caraway seeds, nutmeg, sack (or sherry) and rosewater.

The second, older, recipe I found is in Hannah Woolley’s ‘The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet’, published in 1672. She flavoured her biscuits with cinnamon and rosewater only.

I am going to follow Colonel Plomer’s recipe, and not only because he has a fine name. I do like the flavour of both caraway seeds and rosewater, so I am happy to try them out in combination in one biscuit. The Colonel’s recipe works with one pound each of flour, butter and sugar. This must make up a rather large quantity of mixture, so I shall halve the recipe.

225g plain flour
225g caster sugar
225g unsalted butter
5g caraway seeds
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1 egg, beaten
1 and 1/2 tbsp sherry (I only used the measure of rosewater as the mix was so wet)
1 and 1/2 tbsp rosewater

1. Preheat oven to 170C/325F/Gas 3. Prepare two large baking sheets.
2. Rub the butter into the flour.
3. Add the spices to the sugar and then tip the whole into the flour and butter mixture.
4. Add the beaten egg, and also the rosewater. I did this ahead of adding sherry, and found the mixture already to be too wet for rolling out successfully. I had to add more flour and omit the sherry altogether. I then chilled the mixture, covered, in the fridge. I left mine overnight, as I had to return to my little man, but 30 minutes would probably do it.
5. Roll out the mixture on a floured work surface. This still might take a bit of doing as the mixture is still a little sticky. Using circular fluted cutters to press out your biscuits and pop onto baking sheets.
6. Bake for approximately 20 minutes, but keep an eye on them. With all that butter and sugar disaster could quickly strike should one go off for a nice cup of tea.
7. Leave biscuits to cool for a few minutes before sliding them onto a wire cooling rack.


The biscuits were very sweet and buttery, as you might well expect considering the proportions of ingredients. The rosewater added to this sweetness, but for me the nutmeg was completely lost. Caraway seeds have a distinctive flavour and they did manage to stand up to the rest of the biscuit, and retain a voice of their own. The biscuits had a rather nice denseness and the promised brittleness manifested itself in a good clean ‘snap’. That all said, I would next time round look at reducing the amount of butter (made the mixture difficult to work) and the sugar (I like my own teeth), perhaps adapting a more standard shortbread recipe as these biscuits are a form of shortbread.

I’ve had a request for an up-to-date picture of Ellis. Just the one, but I only need to be asked once. Thank-you for indulging me my proud mumness! Here he is – 9 1/2 weeks young.

Scottish Shortbread

Shortbread is a biscuit ‘shortened’ by the prodigious use of glorious butter. The texture of the biscuit is crisp and snappable- hence ‘short’. The term 'bread' has been used interchangeably with 'cake' for many centuries (cakes, as we now know them, derive from sweetened, yeast-risen breads), and shortbread is the descendent of the short cakes baked from the the 16th century. One story has it that Scottish bakers used the name shortbread to argue the case against paying the government’s tax on biscuits (shades of Jaffa cakes v the VAT man/woman. VAT is currently not paid on cakes and biscuits, as they are deemed a necessity by UK law - the law is not always an ass it seems! - chocolate-covered biscuits, on the other hand, are considered luxuries and therefore are taxable). Short cakes were made from the same ingredients as we would use for a sweet shortcrust pastry (short, again refers to the texture), with the addition of a little yeast. The yeast in these early cakes could result in an uneven rise, remedied by the baker ‘docking’ or pricking the surface of the cake. Some modern biscuits have kept these pricked holes as decoration. Short cakes were eaten across Britain, and many local biscuits (i.e. Shrewsbury cakes, or Goosnargh cakes) are variations on the basic recipe. Shortbread, however, has a definite association with Scotland, and the best of its type has long been an export to the rest of the country, and to the rest of the world.

It is the quality of the ingredients that make shortbread so decidedly delicious, and a lightness of touch in the making. Classic shortbread is made from only flour, butter and sugar, so that gives three opportunities for buying the best, or three chances to produce a disappointing biscuit. F. Marian McNeill writes in 'The Scots Kitchen’ that,

‘Only the best ingredients should be used. The flour should be dried and sieved. The butter, which is the only moistening and shortening agent, should be squeezed free of all water. The sugar should be fine castor. Two other things are essential for success - the careful blending of the ingredients and careful firing.

The butter and the sugar should first be blended. Put eight ounces of butter and four ounces of castor sugar on a board, and work with the hand until thoroughly incorporated. Mix eight ounces of flour with four ounces of rice flour, and work gradually into the butter and sugar, until the dough is of the consistency of short crust. Be careful that it does not become oily (a danger in hot weather) nor toughened by over-mixing. The less kneading, the more short and crisp the shortbread. Do not roll it out, as rolling has a tendency to toughen it, but press with the hand into two round cakes, either in oiled and floured shortbread moulds or on a sheet of baking-paper. The most satisfactory thickness is three-quarters of an inch for a cake eight inches in diameter, or in such proportion. If you make a large thick cake it is advisable to protect the edges with a paper band or hoop, and to have several layers of papers underneath and perhaps one on top. Pinch the edges neatly all round with the finger and thumb, and prick all over with a fork. Decorate with “sweetie” almonds (for small cakes, caraway comfits may be used) and strips of citron or orange peel. Put into a fairly hot oven, reduce the heat presently, and allow the shortbread to crisp off to a light golden brown.’

Jane Grigson suggests having in the kitchen a jar of plain flour mixed with rice flour or cornflour with a 3:1 proportion so that you have this to hand for biscuit making and for light sponge cakes. She helpfully notes that the proportion of ingredients for shortbread are 3:2:1 - flour:butter:sugar.

Advice also comes from ’The Baker’s Repository of Recipes - With Special Reference to Scottish Specialities’, published post-WWII by The British Baker to help reinvigorate the baking trade by providing a comprehensive collection of national recipes:

‘Flour, butter, sugar, and sometimes eggs, was the order of the day at one time, but in shortbread making the type of ingredient used is the chief essential.

There are no spices, fruits, etc., to counteract in the matter of flavour, therefore a good-flavoured butter comes first in importance. Flour would seem to be of next importance, and a very soft flour is not to be recommended. A top-grade winter or blended flour is usually selected. Sugar chosen is usually somewhat hard in the grain.

The ingredients may be well chosen yet the results desired not obtained. This may be caused in the method of making up the dough. Good judges declare shortbread is often spoiled by overworking or overmaking the dough.

The butter, sugar and eggs should be roughly creamed, the flour added, and the dough just formed.

Finally, the baking must be correct. An oven of moderate temperature is used, but the exact temperatures have to be noted from experience. The thickness and type of shortbread being baking govern the baking temperature.’

There are variations on the classic recipe - Ayrshire shortbread also includes cream and eggs, Pitcaithly bannock has chopped sweet almonds and citron peel mixed in with the flour and is decorated with peel. Petticoat tails are a thin form of shortbread baked in a distinctive circular shape with a smaller circle cut from the centre, and then the remainder divided up. Shetland Bride’s Bonn/Bun is flavoured with caraway seeds and baked upon a girdle. I am keen to try out this girdle-cooked shortbread, but I feel that I should give the ‘original’ recipe a go first.

My ingredient quantities came from ‘A Cook’s Tour of Britain’, by the WI and Michael Smith (just a little more butter than Jane Grigson’s ratios), and the method I employed was from Marcus Wareing’s ‘How to Cook the Perfect...’

110g slightly salted butter (or unsalted butter with a pinch a salt) - use direct from fridge
50g caster sugar
150g plain flour
50g rice flour/ground rice

1. Sift the flour into a bowl (along with the salt if you are using unsalted butter), and stir in the ground rice and sugar.
2. Put the bowl of dry ingredients on the scales and return the dial/reading to zero and (here is the clever bit) grate in 110g butter from a chilled block .
3. Work the grated butter quickly into the flour by rubbing first with the fingertips, and then between the palms of the hands. Once the mixture resembles breadcrumbs, stop.
4. Press the mix into a 20cm by 20cm square baking tin and level the surface. Chill in the fridge for about an hour.
5. Heat oven to 160C/320F/Gas 3, and then bake shortbread until light golden (about 40 minutes, but keep an eye on it).
6. Remove from oven and prick all over with a fork, then mark out into pieces (squares or fingers) cutting through to the bottom of the tin. Dust liberally with caster sugar, and then leave to cool in tin.

I thought the idea of grating in chilled butter was a good one, and one that I have since also used for pastry making. It means that the butter needs very little work to properly introduce it to the flour. Putting a bowl-load of buttery flour ‘crumbs’ into the baking tin required faith that the end result would be a biscuit and not crumble topping, but, what do you know, my shortbread was appropriately ‘short’ and the texture was good. The shortbread was very butter-rich, and the scent of butter was also strong (but that might be down to the warmth of my kitchen). The biscuits were perhaps a little sweet for my taste, but that could simply be due to a over-exuberant sugar sprinkle.

Tunbridge Wells Wafers (or Romary Biscuits)

The family bakery of Alfred Romary was responsible for the wafer biscuit exported from the Kent spa town of Tunbridge Wells (Royal Tunbridge Wells, if you please) and sent out to Macy’s of New York, food stores in Belgium and Paris, and up to London for sale in Harrods, Fortnum & Mason, Morel Bros. Cobbett & Son Ltd., and Jacksons of Piccadilly - all purveyors of fine foods. Queen Victoria visited Alfred’s shop just before Christmas 1876, and liked the wafers so much that she granted the company a Warrant of Appointment to Her Majesty, and subsequent monarchs continued the custom - high praise indeed. Framed letters proudly displayed on the shop walls were orders for biscuits from the Queens of Yugoslavia, Spain and Romania. Tunbridge Wells Wafers were clearly enjoyed by discerning women of grand quality – do all Queens like a biscuit with a cup of tea?

Alfred Romary set up in business in 1862 at 26 Church Road, Tunbridge Wells. Initially he was classified as a ‘Water cake maker’, but it was his wafers that made his name famous around the globe. In 1926 A. Romary & Co. became a limited company when W. A. P. Lane bought it. According to Dorothy Hartley in ‘Good Things in England’ the company was sold onto Freeman’s Norwich Hollow Biscuits prior to 1932, the year her book was published. I could find no corroboration of this in the other material I read, but Romary’s did at some stage start making and selling Freeman’s Norwich Hollow biscuits (a type of rusk). In 1935 Rowntree purchased the company and built a new factory in Tunbridge Wells, although some baking continued to be carried out at Romary’s bakery in Church Road. Rowntree stopped making the Tunbridge Wells Wafers locally in 1957, a result of wartime and post-war rationing. However, in 1963 production restarted at Rowntree’s factory in Glasgow (because the Queen liked the biscuits, apparently), and continued until 1981. A final batch of biscuits was made for the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer. Rowntree was acquired by Nestle in 1988, so the Tunbridge Wells Wafers original recipe must lie deep in the archives of this Goliath.

What made Tunbridge Wells Wafers so good that they met with royal approval? (Maybe Duchy Originals should pick up the baton and manufacture them now.) Romary’s themselves described the biscuits in a trade advertisement: ‘As thin as lace, of a flavour so delicate as to be indefinable. The clubs serve them with port, but they are also excellent with ices or at afternoon tea. Many people prefer them to sweets and chocolate. In two flavours, Sweet and Ginger.’ ‘Good Things in England’ (1932) says of Romary’s Tunbridge Wells Wafers: ‘There are Ginger wafers, Royal wafers, water biscuits, Old English stone-ground wheaten wafer biscuits, etc., all unique and delicate eating, quite different from the ordinary biscuits however good; and distinctively English.’ Mary Ann Pike writing in ‘Town & Country, Fare & Fable’ (1978) states; ‘The wafers are about 3 inches in diameter, very delicate and lacy, and are good with cheese as well as wine.’

Wafer biscuits can be cooked by heating the raw mixture between two metal plates (think thin waffles), but Romary’s cooked their biscuits on metal trays in ovens. The paste was rolled to wafer thinness by hand, and continued to be so even after Rowntree introduced mechanisation. A spiked roller was used to make the perforations so the biscuits could be made rapidly, and quickly sent to the oven for baking. The booklet I obtained from Tunbridge Wells Museum and Art Gallery says that ‘trap ovens’ were used. Does anyone know what a trap oven is?

Although Romary’s Tunbridge Wells Wafers were a proprietary recipe, I found on my bookshelves not one, but two possible recipes for the biscuits (and thereby proving the point that, yes, I did need to buy that book). The first is a recipe titled ‘Tunbridge Wells Cakes’, in Dorothy Gladys Spicer’s collection ‘From an English Oven’ (1948). However on closer examination her recipe is for a shortbread type biscuit flavoured with caraway seeds. It looked as if it would produce a biscuit similar to the Shrewsbury Cakes I have recently posted about, and I was pretty certain that this is not what Romary’s famous wafers would have been like. I subsequently came across another recipe for Tunbridge [Wells] Cakes on the internet - this on a site relating to the era of Jane Austen (see no. 29) - the recipe (sourced from one of two cookbooks written between 1749 and 1796) is identical to the one in ‘From an English Oven’, and predates Romary’s Tunbridge Wells Wafers by 100 years. It would be interesting to learn more about this older biscuit – perhaps they were enjoyed by genteel Regency visitors attending the Spa?

The second recipe looked closer to the mark, as this was quite different in terms of method and ingredients and I reckoned it would produce a biscuit not too far removed from the brandy snap - so definitely a contender for the description ‘delicate and lacey’. This latter recipe is in Section IV (‘Cereals’) of Andre Simon’s ‘Concise Encyclopedia of Gastronomy’ (published by The Wine and Food Society in 1945), the recipe is ascribed to Doris Lytton Toye, who wrote for Vogue magazine at that time. I decided to go with this recipe, but I would love to hear from anyone with an ‘authentic’ recipe. I baked once, and then had to refine the recipe and instructions as my first batch of biscuits was not a happy one. Ingredients and method are my revised versions:

Tunbridge Wells Wafers

150g plain flour
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
55g treacle (I had to decide whether this meant black treacle or golden syrup, as the term ‘treacle’ has in the past been used for both substances. I went with golden syrup as I felt that black treacle biscuits would be more of an acquired taste and golden syrup more of a crowd-pleaser, but please feel freee to try black treacle if that tickles your tastebuds.)
55g butter
55g caster sugar or soft brown sugar

1. Preheat oven to 150C/300F/Gas 2 (D. L. T. suggests cooking in a ‘very moderate oven’, so this is my approximation of that instruction – we have a fan oven).
2. Prepare two baking sheets by lining with greaseproof paper.
3. In a medium sized saucepan melt the butter, treacle and sugar. Don’t allow the mixture to become too hot - as soon as the ingredients have blended remove from the heat.
4. Sift the flour, baking powder and ginger into a bowl. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the warmed mixture, stirring to combine after every spoonful and mix to a paste. D. L. T. recommends that it is easier to handle the paste if it is used while still warm.
5. Divide into three portions. On a floured surface roll out each portion as thinly as you can. I found that the best way to work was to roll the dough out directly onto the baking sheet, use my 3 inch metal cutter to mark out the biscuits, and then to remove the surplus dough. This meant that I didn't have to try and move very thin pieces of dough.
6. Bake for about 10 minutes.
7. Allow to cool for a few minutes only, before transferring to a wire rack.

Doris Lytton Toye states that wafers are the ‘thinnest and lightest of biscuits’, but I have to tell you that initially this recipe produced a biscuit with neither of these qualities. The liquid and the dry elements of the dough did not marry well, the mixture appeared too dry and was impossible to form into a smooth paste.


I decided to add a little milk to bind the dough, which helped, but I struggled to roll the dough out as the mix continued to crumble apart. In the end I managed to use my rolling pin to both compress and roll enough of the dough to form a dozen biscuits, but there was no way of rolling to wafer thinness. The resulting ‘wafer’ was crisp to the point of hard, and although the flavour was not bad, it couldn’t make up for the tooth-snapping texture.


Compared to the brandy snap recipe I previously cooked (successfully), that uses a similar method of melting together sugar, syrup and butter, the proportion of flour seemed very high. Was the recipe in error, or was there a flaw in my technique? I had a look at a few brandy snap recipes, and I noticed that they instructed that you add the dry ingredients to the wet, whereas the recipe in 'Cereals' the contrary was the case. By working a spoonful of flour at a time into the warmed butter, treacle and sugar mixture I was able to form a smooth paste, and stop adding flour once the correct consistency had been acheived - this meant I had about 25g of flour left over - the 150g in the ingredient list above is my adjusted amount.


My adjusted recipe produced a far lighter biscuit, which still had a degree of rigidity, but in a thinner biscuit this translated into 'snap', or a delicate brittleness. The biscuits had a good tangy gingeryness. Look at how the light travels through my second wafer, compared to the sunlight neutralising first version. Now which do you think her majesty would prefer - and which would go to the corgis?



With thanks to Ian Beavis at Tunbridge Well’s Museum and Art Gallery, Karen Tayler at Tunbridge Wells Library, and ‘Anke’ at www.anke.blogs.com, all of who helped with information. Tunbridge Wells Museum sell a booklet entitled ‘Tunbridge Wells Biscuits – The Story of Romary’s’ – yours for £2.25 – please contact the museum to purchase a copy.