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Dessert

Honey Jumbles

Honey Jumbles are sweet treats made with powdered sugar, honey, ginger, lard, cinnamon, mace, baking soda, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,380 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Honey Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the powdered sugar and cinnamon.

  2. Add the honey, ginger, and lard to the mixture.

  3. Flavor with mace and stir in the baking soda.

  4. Combine until well mixed and form into small jumbles.

Bake

  1. Place on a baking sheet and bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until golden brown.

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. Cinnamon + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,380 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Cinnamon + honeytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Honey + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and a fine, dissolving body to the dough.
Honey
Adds sweetness and moisture, helping the jumbles stay soft and browning.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture in the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the honey's acidity to help the jumbles rise and spread.

The step that matters

Stir in the baking soda. Baking soda needs an acid to react and produce gas. Mixing it evenly through the dough ensures the jumbles rise uniformly rather than in patches or not at all.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cinnamon, honey, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cinnamon, honey, ginger. 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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