Scottish Shortbread

Shortbread dates back to a hard, dry, sugar-dusted twelfth-century Scottish yeasted biscuit. In the mid-sixteenth century, Mary, Queen of Scots, encouraged her French pastry chefs to create a more refined version in which the yeast was traded out for butter and the dough was baked into a round, scallop-edged cake that was cut into wedges for serving. The last major change came in 1921, when British law mandated that any product labeled “shortbread” must derive at least 51 p