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Dessert

Lemon Jumbles

A lemon-flavored shortbread cookie made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, eggs, baking soda, and lemon juice and rind.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

  2. Add the sweet milk, eggs, baking soda, lemon juice, and lemon rind; mix well.

  3. Make the dough as soft as possible and roll it very thin.

Bake

  1. Sprinkle sugar on top before baking.

  2. Bake in a quick oven at 400°F (200°C) until lightly 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. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Adds richness and tenderness, helping the cookies stay short and crisp.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown and crisp as it bakes.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidity of the lemon to lift the dough and encourage browning.
Lemon juice and rind
Add acidity and bright aroma, and help the baking soda react.

The step that matters

Roll the dough very thin. A very thin dough bakes quickly and evenly, so it can turn crisp and golden before it dries out or burns. Keeping it soft, as the method asks, helps it roll thin without tearing and keeps the cookies tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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