Patersons Shortbread Reviews 

VILE, the "nations favourite" is a straight up LIE. The only time it would be edible, is in an Apocalypse. Need to take your shitty shortbread off the shelves and buy back the packets I get substituted when no other good shortbread is available!

Another company that puts poison in its food. Palm oil kills due to the high saturates. Not to mention the murder of orangutan babies. Sustainable palm means they murdered the orangutans years ago as opposed to recently btw, that's the only difference! Avoid this once nice, but now abysmal heart killing product.

Completely inedible.... Disgusting greasy palm oil flavour with a back taste of salt.... Thus company has completely sold out as a brand and it's going under because their products are being pulled from shelves in major supermarkets.... Why oh why do they think they can fool people with crap ingredients. !!!

Im not sure you can improve the shortbread while cost is key.
My opinion is not of an expert critic, just my own taste. Poor flavour, too much like some generic shop, own brand biscuit.
Apart from price there is nothing positive to say. Sadly I would pass this brand and leave it on the shelf. Believe me patersons the price just isn't worth the sacrifice.

I'd rather they used ten pence worth of butter than rapeseed oil, and charged ten pence more for the product. So many companies seem to do this, spend decades building a reputation then slash the quality and cost of the ingredients to make a short-term gain.

Revolting. Tastes like cheap oil . Had to throw whole box in bin as they just not pleasant

So disappointed. I’d always bought them and never had an issue. Not sure when the ingredients changed but the difference is night and day compared to the older recipe. Now it’s the most bland shortbread I’ve ever tasted. I won’t be purchasing this brand of shortbread anymore which is a shame because it was always the one I chose in the past.

Nice tin, says Buttery Shortbread on it, so id high expectations. Soooo disappointed, they are just blah, tasteless and boring.

I'm not quite sure what this is but it certainly isn't shortbread. As an expat based in China, I took my wife and 6-year-old daughter back to Scotland for the first time. I asked my parents to prepare some shortbread and this is what they produced. I cannot believe it's legal to sell this stuff as shortbread! Tesco value is multiple times better!

People whining about a little bit of oil in this shortbread BUT failing to realise that the product is CHEAP. What do you expect? If you want all butter, luxury shortbread, then spend a little more.

Patersons made a business decision. To maximise profit at the expense of the customer. I also have a pack of cookies here too. They also contain oils, but if I wanted to buy luxury cookies with all natural ingredients, then that's what I would do. You get what you pay for folks.

Overall this shortbread is very average. Is it amazing? Not really. Is it edible? Yes! Is it the best? Definitely not, but in reality it really isn't as bad as people are saying. Patersons made a business choice. If you want real shortbread, then buy real shortbread, or take personal responsibility and read the ingredients. It's not completely unheard off to use oil in biscuits, shortbread or cookies. If you want all natural, then read the ingredients. Sad people.

These are fantastic I dip them in chocolate for my kids and I love them with a coffee.
Highly recommend.

Last night, my husband tried one of the Patersons shortbread cookies that we received for Christmas and spat it out right away. He had almost shared with the dog who refused to eat it. It stank so bad, like paint thinner. We had to air out the room and bag the cookie outside. Obviously rapeseed oil is the culprit,I agree with the other posters. I will not trust Patersons in the future.

Not great at all. Really hard and no matter how long I dip them in my coffee, the coffee doesn't soak in.

I bought the 870g box on boxing day 2025. The smell and taste is rancid. I can't eat them, can I be refunded?

Butter Is The 3rd LAST Ingredient In This Abomination . These Are NOT Traditional Shortbread Biscuits & Should STOP Using That Word In Their Description . RAPESEED OIL Does Not Taste Like Butter & Doesn't Have The Same Qualities As Butter. Taste Is Not Pleasant .

They don't even taste like shortbread, Cheap supermarket ones are better, They are plain and no taste whatsoever, Thank god I got them at well reduced price after Xmas even at that not worth it to be honest.

These are no longer the buttery tasting biscuits of my childhood.

Looking at the packaging they have replaced some of the butter element with rapeseed.

This has made the biscuit dull, tasteless, and far too hard to eat for a shortbread. I would even go so far as to say they should no longer be advertised as shortbread, given the change to the ingredients.

Perhaps call them "Tasteless Bricks"

Bought in Tesco. These are vile. How can they be called shortbread? I brought them back to Tesco and got a refund. Bought Walkers which has a buttery taste.

Someone brought these to an event. I thought "lovely", but I was barely able to finish the first mouthful, and dropped the rest of the biscuit into my bag. Someone else went into kitchen, and spat out her mouthful and washed her mouth out. We put the rest of the biscuits into the bin. I took those left in the sellophane wrapper home, and isolated them in a plastic container in case they were toxic. They stank to high heaven but not of shortbread. I did live! The shortbread is now in the food recycling bin (transferred outside in the fresh air just prior to bin collection to avoid the smell). Absolutely disgusting. Some of us checked the sell by date on the cardboard packaging - July 2022 - which probably did not help. They have clearly had quite a journey and life, having come with someone (still in ignorance of the problem, such is our tact) from Hereford. I think the smell is probably the rapeseed oil. Never again, any Paterson's biscuits! Thankfully Walker's shortbread still tastes good, notwithstanding shrinkflation.

If you like dry, tasteless cardboard then buy these. If you like shortbread, run for your life, they're awful. It's not surprising that Iceland were selling them off cheap, nobody wants them 😫🤢