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Dessert

Hickorynut Jumbles

A buttery, nutty cookie made with hickory nuts, sugar, butter, flour, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Hickorynut Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream the softened butter and sugar together.

  2. Add the eggs and mix well.

  3. Stir in the chopped hickory nuts and flour until combined.

Bake

  1. Drop tablespoons of the mixture onto a buttered baking sheet.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Nuts + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to trap air and give the jumbles a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and structure as the cookies set.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the jumbles together while baking.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown as it bakes.
Hickory nuts
Add crunch and a rich, nutty aroma to the dough.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar. Beating softened butter with sugar traps air in the fat, which lightens the dough. Butter that is too cold or too warm will not hold that air well, leading to dense or greasy jumbles.

Swap the nuts

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Nutsthe original

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