About fifteen thin round biscuits with a sugar sparkle, pricked with fork holes, on a white plate, one broken in two, beside a small unlabeled bottle of rose water and a dried rose petal on a pale blue painted table. — Shrewsbury cakes, thin pricked biscuits.

Shrewsbury Cakes (1747)

Name: Shrewsbury Cakes
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Cuisine: British
Ingredients: 1 lb all-purpose flour; 6 oz superfine sugar; 2 oz superfine sugar, for rolling; 2 large eggs; 2 tbsp heavy cream; 4 tbsp heavy cream, more if needed; 1 tbsp rose water

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Shrewsbury cakes from Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy of 1747: thin, crisp biscuits of flour and sugar bound with eggs, cream and rose water, with no butter, rolled out in sugar and baked in a quick oven.

By The Forgotten MenuPublished Oct 22, 2026

Recipe makes: About 45 to 50 biscuits
Prep: 30 min
Cook: 30 min
Total: 1 hr 45 min

The paste rests for 30 minutes before rolling. The biscuits bake in batches of about 10 minutes and crisp as they cool. Store them in an airtight tin.

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Shrewsbury cakes, thin pricked biscuits.

The story behind the recipe

Did Shrewsbury cakes have butter in them?

Hannah Glasse’s Shrewsbury cakes of 1747 have no butter in them at all. The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy binds two pounds of flour and a pound of sugar with four eggs, four spoonfuls of cream and two of rose water, and rolls the paste “into thin Cakes,” to be baked “in a quick Oven.” With no fat but the cream and the egg yolks, they bake hard, crisp and dry, a plain sweet biscuit scented with roses.

Were Shrewsbury cakes eaten in colonial America?

Glasse’s book was published in London, but it sold well in the colonies. Whether a Boston hostess set them out with tea goes unrecorded; the recipe is Glasse’s, from a book sold there. Today the inn at Mount Vernon serves Shrewsbury cakes adapted from her recipe by the historian Nancy Carter Crump for Dining with the Washingtons, made with two sticks of butter, which Glasse’s 1747 text doesn’t have. Her sugar does double duty instead: a quarter of a pound of it is taken out “to roll them in,” so the biscuits pick up a sugary crust as they are rolled.

Making it today

We halve Glasse’s amounts. Her paste is stiff, and four spoonfuls of cream to two pounds of flour may not be enough to bring it together with today’s eggs and flour, so we add more cream a spoonful at a time until it holds. The reserved sugar does the work of a dusting of flour on the board.

Pricking is ours, taken from Eliza Smith, who tells the cook to “prick them before they go into the oven.” On the table in What Was on the American Tea Table Before the Boston Tea Party?, they sit beside Glasse’s spiced Very Good Wigs (1747).

TAKE two Pound of Flour, a Pound of Sugar finely search’d, mix them together, (take out a quarter of a Pound to roll them in) then take four Eggs beat, four Spoonfuls of Cream, and two Spoonfuls of Rose-water, beat them well together, and mix them with the Flour into a Paste, roll them into thin Cakes, and bake them in a quick Oven.

Hannah GlasseThe Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (London, 1747), To make Shrewsbury Cakes, p. 141

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Ingredients

For about 45 to 50 biscuits. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for about 45 to 50 biscuits.

All-purpose flour1 lb
Superfine sugar6 oz
Superfine sugar, for rolling2 oz
Large eggs2
Heavy cream2 tbsp
Heavy cream, more if needed4 tbsp
Rose water1 tbsp

Ingredients as written here

1 lb all-purpose flour
6 oz superfine sugar
2 oz superfine sugar, for rolling
2 large eggs
2 tbsp heavy cream
4 tbsp heavy cream, more if needed
1 tbsp rose water

Equipment

Large mixing bowl
Small bowl and fork
Rolling pin
Round cutter, about 2½ inches
Two baking sheets lined with parchment paper
Wire rack

Instructions

Mix the flour and the superfine sugar in the large bowl.
In the small bowl, beat the eggs with the first share of cream and the rose water. Pour them into the flour and mix with a fork, then with your hands. Work in the remaining cream a spoonful at a time, and a little more if the crumbs won’t press together, until you have a stiff paste. Knead it briefly until smooth, wrap and leave for 30 minutes so the sugar softens it.
Heat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
Scatter some of the sugar for rolling on the work surface and roll half the paste about ⅛ inch thick, turning it once so both sides pick up sugar. Cut rounds with the cutter and set them on the baking sheets, close together, since they hardly spread. Reroll the trimmings once with the rest of the paste.
Prick each biscuit once or twice with the fork. Bake one sheet at a time for 9 to 12 minutes, until firm and just pale gold at the edges.
Leave on the sheet for 2 minutes, then cool on the rack, where they crisp. Store in an airtight tin.

Nutrition

60calories per serving

Recipe makes: About 45 to 50 biscuits
Servings: 48

Estimated per biscuit (about 48) from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients, with 6 tbsp of cream in all.

Recipe notes

When adjusting quantities

This is half of Glasse’s batch. The biscuits are thin, so bake one sheet at a time.

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.

Eliza Smith’s Shrewsbury cakes of 1739 are wetted with three eggs and “as much melted butter as will make it of a good thickness to roll” instead of cream; for a richer biscuit in that style, rub 4 oz of butter into the flour and leave out the extra cream. Orange-flower water can replace the rose water. Contains wheat, egg and milk.

Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.