Another Regency recipe: Shrewsbury Cakes.

Homemade Shrewsbury Cakes.  Elizabeth Urbach.

San Jose's South Bay Ladies' Tea Guild recently enjoyed afternoon tea at their Regency Tea and costume workshop, with a menu that featured recipes from Jane Austen's lifetime.  Afternoon tea as a codified meal wasn't known in her day, but tea was a very popular beverage just the same.  It was served in the morning with breakfast, after an early dinner at 5 (as part of evening entertainment), or with a late supper (after a ball or late night party).  Antique cookbooks mention many recipes as "good to eat with tea" so these were featured for the tea guild's menu.  While some flavors are an acquired taste today, here is one item that tastes as good to our palates as it did to Jane Austen's: Shrewsbury Cakes.

“To make Shrewsberry Cakes.—Take two pounds of fine flour, put to it a pound and a quarter of butter (rub them very well) a pound and a quarter of fine sugar sifted, grate in a nutmeg, beat in three whites of eggs and two yolks, with a little rose-water, and so knead your paste with it, let it lay an hour, then make it up into cakes, prick them and lay them on papers, wet them with a feather dipt in rose-water, and grate over them a little fine sugar; bake them in a slow oven, either on tins or paper.”
-- from Project Gutenberg's English Housewifery Exemplified, by Elizabeth Moxon (1764)

A Regency Tea, fit for Jane Austen herself.

The Republic of Pemberly.

Jane Austen, one of the most famous female authors of the western world, has many fans in the United States and England.  She kept diaries and wrote many letters, as well as her well-known novels, and her writings record her love for tea and the fact that preparing breakfast and tea for her family was part of her domestic chores every day.  She also wrote that she bought her family’s tea from Twinings in London, when she visited her wealthy older brother in town, which means the modern Jane Austen fan can drink almost the same tea she did! 

Since many recipe books were written and published during Jane Austen’s lifetime, there is a wealth of information about the kinds of food that people would enjoy with their tea.  Google Books is a really good source for these antique cookbooks, and although the recipes need some re-working for modern use, they are still capable of producing delicious results.  The South Bay Ladies’ Tea Guild is preparing to have their own Regency Tea later this month, featuring some of these period recipes: