We've been reading A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad for the Book Group this month (our thoughts on the poems are here), and with a marked absence of culinary references within the lines themselves, I had to take a geographical link for the baking for the book.
I could, I suppose, have gone with "hop-yards" and "Ludlow beer" and made some kind of ale-infused cake, but instead I discovered Shrewsbury Cakes or Biscuits and had a go at them.
As you'll see from the recipe (I used the one given at the top of that link) they are flavoured with caraway seed, nutmeg and rosewater. I have a cold and can't taste or smell anything just now, but I'm told that these ingredients are apparent in the finished biscuits!
If you scroll further down that article you'll see that there's another version of the recipe given which coincidentally comes from A New System of Domestic Cookery by A Lady, the 1816 edition of which has just been reprinted by Persephone Books.
