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Dessert

Soda Jumbles

Soda Jumbles are sweet dough cookies made with flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, sugar, butter, and milk, rolled in sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Soda Jumbles

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the dough

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

  2. In a large bowl, mix the flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  3. In another bowl, cream together the sugar and butter until smooth.

  4. Combine the wet and dry ingredients, adding cold milk until a stiff dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into jumbles.

  2. Roll the jumbles in sugar before placing them on a baking sheet.

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

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure of the dough as its proteins and starch set in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda to help the cookies rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release carbon dioxide, helping the jumbles rise.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, rolled on the outside, helps the jumbles brown and crisp slightly.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and tenderness, and creaming it with sugar traps air for a lighter texture.

The step that matters

Adding cold milk gradually. Too much liquid makes the dough sticky and spreading, while too little leaves it crumbly. Adding milk a little at a time until a stiff dough forms gives cut shapes that hold their form in the oven.

“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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