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Dessert

Soda Jumbles

A dough of flour, cream tartar, soda, sugar, butter, and cold milk, rolled and baked into jumbles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Soda Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine one quart of flour, two teaspoonfuls of cream tartar, one teaspoonful of soda, two cups of sugar, and one of butter, rubbing together.

  2. Add cold milk until the dough is just stiff enough to roll and cut into jumbles.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake immediately in a quick oven.

  2. Roll the jumbles in sugar instead of flour for a nicer result.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

555Calories
13 gProtein
7 gFat
108 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 3 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Cream1 tbsp (15ml) heavy51
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By E. Putnam. 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. See the original page.

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. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once it is bound with liquid.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that reacts with the soda to help the jumbles rise.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that lightens the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the jumbles brown at the surface.
Butter (in the method)
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Milk (in the method)
Supplies the moisture that binds the flour into a rollable dough.

The step that matters

Adding the milk. Add cold milk gradually and stop once the dough is just stiff enough to roll. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and hard to cut, and overworking it develops gluten, which makes the jumbles tough instead of tender.

“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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