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Dessert

Lemon Jumbles

A lemon-flavored cookie dough made with butter, flour, sugar, eggs, baking soda, cream of tartar, and lemon juice and zest.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Lemon Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Beat the yolk and white of the egg separately.

Make the dough

  1. Mix the yolk with sugar, milk, and creamed butter.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg white.

  3. Sift the flour, baking soda, and cream of tartar together, then add to the mixture.

  4. Add the lemon juice and grated rind, mixing until stiff.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Bake in shallow pans until golden.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg
Yolk enriches and binds the dough, while the separately beaten white adds lightness.
Butter
Creamed butter adds fat for tenderness and a rich, short texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the cookies together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic lemon juice and cream of tartar to help the cookies rise and brown.
Cream of tartar
Acidic ingredient that works with baking soda to leaven the dough and adds tang.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity and bright flavor, and reacts with the baking soda to aid rising.

The step that matters

Mixing until stiff. Overmixing after the flour and acid are added can develop too much gluten, making the cookies tough. The dough should be mixed just until it holds together, so the texture stays tender.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sugar, flour, butter, milk, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, flour, butter, milk, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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