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Short Cakes Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe

Queen Elizabeth Ist

"Queen Elizabeth Ist"

To make Short Cakes

Take a Pint of Ale Yest, and a Pound and half of fresh Butter, melt your Butter, and let it cool a little, then take as much fine Flour as you think will serve, mingle it with the Butter and Yest, and as much Rosewater and Sugar as you think fit, and if you please, some Caraway Comfits, so bake it in little Cakes; they will last good half a year.

Short Cakes Old Elizabethan Dessert Recipe
The above Old dessert recipe for Short Cakes is written in totally different way to today's recipe books.

  • There were no lists of ingredients - these were included as part of the text
  • Food and ingredient measurements were extremely basic - quantities were not often specified.
  • Temperature control was difficult and therefore not specified.
  • Cooking times were vague - and left to the cook to decide.
  • It was assumed that the reader would already have some knowledge of cooking

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Elizabethan Era
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