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Dessert

Common Jumbles

A sweet roll made from flour, butter, sugar, eggs, spices, and rose water, baked into rings or round cakes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Eliza Leslie · From a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Common Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift a pound of flour into a large pan.

  2. Cut up a pound of butter into a pound of powdered white sugar, and stir them to a cream.

  3. Beat six eggs till very light.

  4. Pour the eggs all at once into the pan of flour.

  5. Add the butter and sugar, with a large tablespoonful of mixed mace and cinnamon, two grated nutmegs, and a teaspoonful of essence of lemon or a wine glass of rose water.

  6. Stir the mixture very hard with a broad knife.

  7. Flour your hands and spread some flour on the pasteboard.

Shape and bake

  1. Make the dough into long rolls, all of equal size.

  2. Form the rolls into rings by joining the two ends very nicely.

  3. Lay the rings on buttered tins.

  4. Bake them in a quick oven from five to ten minutes.

  5. Grate sugar over them when cool.

Make the second batch

  1. Rub a pound of fresh butter into two pounds of sifted flour.

  2. Mix in a pound of powdered white sugar, a grated nutmeg, a tablespoonful of powdered cinnamon, and four large tablespoonfuls of caraway seeds.

  3. Add a wine glass of rose water, and mix the whole with sufficient cold water to make it a stiff dough.

  4. Roll it out into a large sheet about a third of an inch in thickness.

  5. Cut it into round cakes with a tin cutter or with the edge of a tumbler.

  6. Lay them in buttered pans.

  7. Bake them in a quick oven, rather hotter at the bottom than at the top, till they are of a very pale brown.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

702Calories
20 gProtein
19 gFat
111 gCarbs

Counts 6 of 8 ingredients. The other 2 aren't in our nutrition table and add nothing above, so the real totals are higher.

What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49
Nutmeg1 tsp ground (2.2g)12
Cinnamon1 tsp ground (2.6g)6
Seednot in our table0
Macenot in our table0

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

By Eliza Leslie. Recipe from a historical cookbook (Project Gutenberg).

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creams with sugar and rubs into flour, giving the rolls richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Beaten light, they add structure and lift to the dough.
Powdered white sugar
Creamed with butter and sweetens the dough while adding tenderness.
Flour
Forms the main structure of the dough that holds the shape of the rolls.
Caraway seeds
Adds aroma and flavour to the second batch of cakes.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture very hard with a broad knife. Vigorous working of the dough develops gluten and helps the eggs, butter and flour combine evenly, which sets the texture of the baked rolls.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, sugar, egg, nutmeg, cinnamon. 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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