They are made from dough that contains sugar, flour, egg, butter and lemon zest; dried fruit is also often added.

The original cakes, delicate and fragile in texture, are no longer made commercially.

[3] The recipe is also included in several early cookbooks including The Compleat Cook of 1658, which gives the following instructions:[4] "Take two pound of floure dryed in the oven and weighed after it is dryed, then put to it one pound of butter that must be layd an hour or two in rose-water, so done poure the water from the butter, and put the butter to the flowre with the yolks and whites of five eggs, two races of ginger, and three quarters of a pound of sugar, a little salt, grate your spice, and it well be the better, knead all these together till you may rowle the past, then roule it forth with the top of a bowle, then prick them with a pin made of wood, or if you have a comb that hath not been used, that will do them quickly, and is best to that purpose, so bake them upon pye plates, but not too much in the oven, for the heat of the plates will dry them very much, after they come forth of the oven, you may cut them without the bowles of what bignesse or what fashion you please.

"Although there are earlier references, Shrewsbury baker Thomas Plimmer claimed that he had acquired the original recipe from James Palin, who sold the cakes out of a bakeshop on Castle Street in Shrewsbury.

[6] Shrewsbury biscuits are popular in India, where they are locally produced in the Kayani Bakery located in Pune, Maharashtra.