Scottish Shortbread (Petticoat Tails)
Butter, sugar, flour and a little rice flour rubbed together cold, pressed into a round, scored into 16 wedges and baked low and slow to a pale biscuit color.
Shortbread is Scotland's best-known biscuit: roughly one part sugar, two parts butter and three to four parts flour, with no leavening (Wikipedia:). It was a luxury kept for Christmas, Hogmanay and weddings. The first printed recipe is usually credited to Mrs McLintock, a Scotswoman, in 1736 (Wikipedia, citing The Telegraph), but the Manuscript Cookbooks Survey describes the matching "To Make Short Bread" recipe as an unsweetened, yeast-leavened ancestor of modern shortbread, and notes that the manuscript is virtually identical to McLintock's 1736 Glasgow book. The wedge-shaped "petticoat tails" are long linked with Mary, Queen of Scots; Wikipedia says the evidence for any link between her and shortbread is sparse, and that the name is now thought to describe the decorated edges looking like petticoats.
📖 Where is it from?: Mexican Wedding Cookies vs Russian Tea Cakes vs Snowballs →
Why it works the kitchen science
Cold butter rubbed in, not creamed
Keeping the butter in tiny cold pieces gives a short, sandy crumb instead of a cakey one, and without any liquid little gluten forms.
Rice flour and a low oven
Rice flour has no gluten and adds a fine crunch, and 300°F lets the round bake through slowly so it stays pale and tender.
Step by step
- Step 1
Heat the oven to 300°F with a rack in the middle. Have ready an 8-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.
- Step 2
Whisk the flour, rice flour and sugar in a large bowl.
- Step 3
Grate the frozen butter over the dry mixture, then rub it in with your fingertips until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Stop before it forms a dough.
- Step 4
Tip the crumbs into the pan and press them firmly and evenly, smoothing the top.
- Step 5
Prick the surface all over with a fork, then score it into 16 wedges with a sharp knife, cutting only partway through.
- Step 6
Bake 40 to 50 minutes, until the round is a pale biscuit color and firm at the edges. Do not let it brown.
- Step 7
Cool in the pan on a rack 5 minutes, sprinkle with sugar if you like, lift out the round, cut along the score lines while warm and cool completely on the rack.
Scottish Shortbread (Petticoat Tails)
Serves 8 (2 wedges each) · 16 wedges (one 8-inch round) · 1 hr 10 min total
Dough
- 3/4 cup (95 g) all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup (30 g) white rice flour (or cornstarch)
- 1/4 cup (50 g) granulated or superfine sugar
- 1/2 cup (1 stick, 113 g) cold salted butter, frozen if possible (or unsalted butter plus 1/4 tsp salt)
To finish (optional)
- 1 tsp granulated sugar, for sprinkling
Method
- Heat the oven to 300°F with a rack in the middle. Have ready an 8-inch tart pan with a removable bottom.
- Whisk the flour, rice flour and sugar in a large bowl.
- Grate the frozen butter over the dry mixture, then rub it in with your fingertips until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Stop before it forms a dough.
- Tip the crumbs into the pan and press them firmly and evenly, smoothing the top.
- Prick the surface all over with a fork, then score it into 16 wedges with a sharp knife, cutting only partway through.
- Bake 40 to 50 minutes, until the round is a pale biscuit color and firm at the edges. Do not let it brown.
- Cool in the pan on a rack 5 minutes, sprinkle with sugar if you like, lift out the round, cut along the score lines while warm and cool completely on the rack.
Adapted from Joy of Baking (Stephanie Jaworski), "Scottish Shortbread Cookies," as written for one 8-inch round of 16 wedges. The page cites F. Marian McNeill's "The Scots Kitchen" (1929) and "Recipes from Scotland" (1946) and Claire MacDonald's "Sweet Things" (1984). For comparison, King Arthur's "Classic Scottish Shortbread" replaces the rice flour with ground oats and bakes at 350°F. joyofbaking.com. Ingredient list follows the source; the method is in our own words.
Tips
- Cut while warm; a cold round shatters.
- Shortbread keeps a week in an airtight tin and King Arthur says the flavor improves as it ages.
- No tart pan? Press the dough into a parchment-lined 8-inch cake pan and lift it out with the paper.
The rules people argue about
What the sources agree on, what they don't, and what is just a good story.
- Mary, Queen of Scots, made shortbread famous. Folklore: Wikipedia calls the evidence sparse and quotes historian Emma Kay (2020) finding no authentic link.
- The first printed recipe was in 1736. Disputed wording: Mrs McLintock's 1736 book is the first printed Scots shortbread recipe (Wikipedia), but the Manuscript Cookbooks Survey says that recipe was unsweetened and yeast-leavened, closer to a bread.
- "Petticoat tails" comes from the French petites gatelles. Disputed: one suggestion (Wikipedia); the Dictionaries of the Scots Language, as cited by Wikipedia, favor the petticoat-edge explanation.
- Real shortbread has rice flour. Disputed: Joy of Baking's Scottish recipe adds rice flour and Wikipedia says rice flour or semolina makes it grittier; Wikipedia's basic definition, and King Arthur's plain shortbread, use only flour, butter and sugar.
- Never add vanilla. Folklore: plain Scottish recipes skip it, but King Arthur's everyday shortbread uses it.
Every other cookie
Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies
The recipe that started it all: a butter, white sugar and brown sugar drop cookie loaded with semisweet chips and walnuts, baked hot and fast until just golden.
Cantucci (Biscotti di Prato)
Tuscany's twice-baked almond cookies: a lightly sweet egg dough packed with whole unpeeled almonds and a hint of orange, baked as logs, sliced on the diagonal and baked again until crisp.
Nuremberg Elisenlebkuchen
Nuremberg's soft spice cakes: whipped egg whites, sugar and honey folded with ground hazelnuts, almonds, candied peel and Lebkuchen spice, spread on wafers, dried overnight and glazed with chocolate or sugar.
Moravian Spice Cookies
North Carolina's paper-thin holiday cookies: a molasses, brown sugar and shortening dough with cloves, ginger and cinnamon, chilled overnight, rolled as thin as you dare and baked in minutes.
Swedish Pepparkakor
Sweden's thin, snappy Christmas gingersnaps: butter, dark syrup and sugar melted with ginger, cinnamon, cloves and cardamom, rested a full day, rolled thin and baked for 5 minutes.
Linzer Augen (Linzer Cookies)
Upper Austria's favorite Christmas cookie: a short almond and lemon dough cut into rounds, half of them with peepholes, sandwiched with apricot or red currant jam and dusted with sugar.
Danish Vaniljekranse (Vanilla Wreaths)
The Danish Christmas cookie behind the famous blue tin: a rich butter dough with ground almonds and a whole vanilla bean, piped through a star tip into little rings and baked crisp and golden.
Mexican Polvorones (Mexican Wedding Cookies)
Crumbly pecan snowballs: butter, shortening, ground pecans and powdered sugar pulsed into a short dough, rolled into balls, baked golden and buried in more powdered sugar.
Snickerdoodles
Soft, slightly cakey sugar cookies made tangy with cream of tartar, rolled in cinnamon sugar and baked hot until they crackle on top.
New York Black and White Cookies
Big, soft, cakey 4-inch cookies with a hint of lemon, iced half in vanilla and half in chocolate, the New York deli classic.
Old-Fashioned Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
The oat-box classic: butter, brown sugar and cinnamon with three cups of rolled oats and a cup of raisins, baked just until light golden for chewy middles.
Chinese Almond Cookies
Crumbly, lightly sweet bakery cookies made with lard, butter and toasted almond flour, crowned with a whole almond and brushed with egg for a shiny golden top.
Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
One bowl, no flour, about 30 minutes: peanut butter, brown sugar and an egg with a few chocolate chips, flattened, baked 8 to 10 minutes and pulled while the tops just crinkle.
Levain-Style Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies, Inspired by Levain Bakery
Six-ounce mounds of brown-butter dough loaded with semisweet chips and toasted walnuts, chilled overnight and baked cold so they stay tall, crusty outside and molten inside. Inspired by, not official.
Meatballs of the World
Italian-American Meatballs
Big, tender meatballs braised for an hour in red sauce over spaghetti. The one most Americans grew up with.
Pallottine (Abruzzo Meatballs)
Tiny meatballs, smaller than a marble, tossed right through square spaghetti alla chitarra. No bread at all.
Swedish Meatballs (Köttbullar)
Small, soft meatballs browned in butter, in a cream sauce made from the same pan, with lingonberry jam on the plate.
Danish Frikadeller
Pork meatballs shaped with a spoon and fried slowly in butter, crusty outside and soft in the middle.
Königsberger Klopse
German meatballs that are never fried: poached, then served in a creamy white sauce with capers.
Spanish Albóndigas in Almond Saffron Sauce
The tapas bar classic: small meatballs in a golden sauce thickened with fried almonds and bread.
Mexican Albóndigas with Chipotle and Mint
Soft meatballs with rice and fresh mint inside, simmered in a smoky tomato and chipotle broth.
Izgara Köfte (Turkish Grilled Meatballs)
Small, flat meatballs kneaded hard, rested cold, and charred on a hot grill pan.
Lion's Head Meatballs
Big, soft pork meatballs, stirred into a sticky paste, fried to set, then braised in a savory sauce.
Chicken Tsukune
Japan's chicken meatball: kneaded sticky, grilled on skewers, glazed with sweet soy tare, dipped in egg yolk.