Granny Stark’s Shortbread Cookies

Photograph: Jim Vaughan, www.kilda.org.uk

St Kilda: Caolas an Duin separates Dun from Hirta.

3 cups flour

1 cup rice flour

1 cup sugar

1 pound butter

Cream butter and sugar, mix in flour*.

Shape into 4 cylinders

Refrigerate until firm

Slice into rounds

Bake at 300 for 1 hour.

My lovely and admirable friend Shelly is Queen of this Recipe (her title and authority inherited directly from her Granny Stark) and she writes, “We used to make it by mixing all of the ingredients by hand on the kitchen counter. I now just put it all in the stand mixer and mix it until it seems right. I think Granny Stark would have done the same if she had had such a mixer.”   Granny Stark brought this recipe from Scotland to Canada, and it made its way from there on to California, to Shelley’s mother’s kitchen, to Shelley’s own kitchen, and finally, generously, to my kitchen counter. There is clearly something to love about a recipe whose only flavor is butter.

*Shelley was very strict when she taught me this recipe!  She said I was not allowed to make it if I didn't use the rice flour. But clearly she has become open to the electric mixer in these modern times, so feel free to use one too.  If God can change the Pope’s mind about evolution, I suppose Shelley can change her mind about mixing shortbread.  But if you make Granny Stark’s shortbread, don’t mess with the rice flour.

Here is my favorite Scottish tune (St Kilda Wedding, although it did not escape my attention that the next tune in the set is about butter), by played by my favorite Scottish fiddler, to go with some tea and my favorite Scottish shortbread:

Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas playing “St. Kilda Wedding and Brose & Butter”.

I fell in love with the tune St. Kilda Wedding the first time I heard and I wondered, “Who is this St. Kilda?  And what was she up to getting married, being a Saint?”

Turns out St. Kilda is a tiny archipelago in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. It was inhabited by people choosing to live in this chilly Northern clime, enduring bone-aching wild winds made of howl, sea spray, and cold, and getting through dark winter days sheltered by stone walls and companionship. Their mountaintop shoots straight up from a surging sea. The islands of St Kilda served as an almost unimaginably beautiful roost for these brave souls, the sheep that had hung out with them from times harkening back to the Bronze Age, and some very lively seabirds (who apparently owned the place). For thousands of years they co-existed, until one sad day in August 1930, the last 36 islanders requested evacuation to the mainland. The influenza epidemic of World War I had found its way to St Kilda’s tiny harbor more than a decade before, leaving the population decimated; I suspect they were a people living too close to their memories to bear it.  It is now among the world’s most beautiful and loneliest (unless you happen to be a seabird, then its hopping) World Heritage Site: St. Kilda.

Shortbread is a biscuit whose origin was Scottish, and seems to have first taken form in short cakes savored in the 16th century, although some sources hint it is much older. I think it must have been born of a time when the good people of Scotland were getting serious about butter.  I’m about to introduce you to some charming folk who passed through 17th century Scotland, when shortbread was served in celebration at Christmas, or for a wedding, much as it is now.  I think it is fair to imagine our heroes in the stories below enjoyed shortbread, though perhaps Granny Stark’s rice flour was replaced with oat flour (but don’t you risk it!), Surely Martin Martin, Gent, had some of his Granny's shortbread with his tea at Christmas time, and perhaps Rev. Campbel enjoyed some at the wedding feast on the 17^th of June, 1697, while the good people of St. Kilda were dancing around to a lively rendition of St. Kilda’s Wedding on pipes. Perhaps Thomas Ross, while taking his new friend around Glasgow, shared with him some shortbread and a cup of tea as a special treat, so they could sit a spell and contemplate the Miracle of the Wheel (though come to think of it, they might have preferred whiskey for that occasion).

Some notes taken from: A Late Voyage to St Kilda

By Martin Martin, Gent, 1698

The inhabitants (of St. Kilda) are about two hundred in number, and are well-proportioned; they speak the Irish language only; their habit is much like that used in the adjacent isles, but coarser. They are not subject to many diseases; they contract a cough as often as any strangers land and stay for any time among them, and it continues for some eight or ten days; they say the very infants on the breast are infected by it.

They have a great genius for music and mechanics. I have observed several of their children that before they could speak were capable to distinguish and make choice of one tune before another upon the violin; for they appeared always uneasy until the tune which they fancied best was played, and then they expressed their satisfaction by the motions of their head and hands.

Both sexes have a genius for poesy, and compose entertaining verses and songs in their own language, which is very emphatical.  They observe the festivals of Christmas, Easter, Good Friday, and that of All Saints. Upon the latter they bake a large cake, in form of a triangle, furrowed round, and it must be all eaten that night. They are hospitable, and charitable to strangers, as well as the poor belonging to themselves, for whom all the families contribute a proportion monthly, and at every festival each family sends them a piece of mutton or beef.

The inhabitants of St. Kilda excel all those I ever saw in climbing rocks; they told me that some years ago their boat was split to pieces upon the west side of Borera Isle, and they were forced to lay hold on a bare rock, which was steep, and above twenty fathoms high. Notwithstanding this difficulty, some of them climbed up to the top, and from thence let down a rope and plaids, and so drew up all the boat’s crew, though the climbing this rock would seem impossible to any other except themselves.

St. Kilda, Glasgow museum:

The natives are generally ingenious and quick of apprehension; they have a mechanical genius, and several of both sexes have a gift of poesy, and are able to form a satire or panegyric ex tempore, without the assistance of any stronger liquor than water to raise their fancy. They are great lovers of music; and when I was there they gave an account of eighteen men who could play on the violin pretty well without being taught: they are still very hospitable, but the late years of scarcity brought them very low, and many of the poor people have died by famine. The inhabitants are very dexterous in the exercises of swimming, archery, vaulting, or leaping, and are very stout and able seamen; they will tug at the oar all day long upon bread and water, and a snush of tobacco.

Mr. Campbel, the minister, married in this manner fifteen pair of the inhabitants on the seventeenth of June, who immediately after marriage, join’d in a country dance, having only a bagpipe for their musics, which pleased them exceedingly.

One of the inhabitants of St. Kilda, being some time ago wind-bound in the isle of Harris, was prevailed on by some of them that traded to Glasgow to go thither with them. He was astonished at the length of the voyage, and of the great kingdoms, as he thought them, that is isles, by which they sailed; the largest in his way did not exceed twenty-four miles in length, but he considered how much they exceeded his own little native country.

Upon his arrival at Glasgow, he was like one that had dropped from the clouds into a new world, whose language, habit, &c., were in all respects new to him; he never imagined that such big houses of stone were made with hands; and for the pavements of the streets, he thought it must needs be altogether natural, for he could not believe that men would be at the pains to beat stones into the ground to walk upon. He stood dumb at the door of his lodging with the greatest admiration; and when he saw a coach and two horses, he thought it to be a little house they were drawing at their tail, with men in it; but he condemned the coachman for a fool to sit so uneasy, for he thought it safer to sit on the horse’s back. The mechanism of the coach wheel, and its running about, was the greatest of all his wonders.

When he went through the streets, he desired to have one to lead him by the hand. Thomas Ross, a merchant, and others, that took the diversion to carry him through the town, asked his opinion of the High Church? He answered that it was a large rock, yet there were some in St. Kilda much higher, but that these were the best caves he ever saw; for that was the idea which he conceived of the pillars and arches upon which the church stands.