A biscuit of flour, butter and sugar, baked pale and snapped into fingers or wedges. Edinburgh's everyday with-tea bake and the standard tourist gift home from Princes Street.

Shortbread descends from medieval Scottish biscuit bread, twice-baked yeast bread that gradually shed its yeast in favour of butter through the 1500s. Mary Queen of Scots is credited (apocryphally) with refining the Edinburgh version into a triangular Petticoat Tail wedge. The Edinburgh confectioners and modern Border Biscuits codified the three-ingredient ratio (one-to-two-to-three by weight) through the early twentieth century. The Edinburgh shortbread tin became the standard Princes Street tourist gift in the 1950s; the buttery snap remains the working baseline.

3 editor picks for Scottish shortbread in Edinburgh, ranked by editorial score. All Edinburgh signature dishes · Scottish shortbread across every city.