Shrewsbury Biscuits

There's a kind of afternoon, usually in March or October, when the sky goes the colour of dishwater and the rain settles in for the rest of the day. That's when I make these. The kettle goes on, the oven warms up, and within an hour the kitchen smells of butter and lemon and the quiet promise of tea.

Shrewsbury biscuits have been made in some form for nearly four hundred years, which is the kind of fact that should impress me more than it does. What I care about is that the recipe is honest. Butter, sugar, flour, an egg, the zest of one good lemon. Currants if you want them, cinnamon if it's that sort of day. Nothing in the cupboard you don't already have. Nothing you need to go out for.

They're a teatime biscuit in the truest sense: not too sweet, crisp without being hard, with a faint sandy crumble that asks for a cup of strong tea to go with it. The lemon is the thing. Don't skip it, don't reduce it, don't substitute. The whole biscuit hinges on that bright oily perfume the zest leaves in the butter.

I wrote it down in the notebook once: "Rainy Tuesday. Shrewsburys. Tin nearly empty by Wednesday." That's about right. They don't last, and I've stopped pretending otherwise.