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Dessert

Whig Jumbles

A sweet biscuit made with butter, sugar, sour cream, eggs, baking soda, flour, nutmeg, topped with almonds and coarse sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and almond match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,115 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Whig 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.

Prepare the dough

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  3. Add the sour cream and eggs, mixing well.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a small amount of water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Gradually stir in the flour and nutmeg until a soft dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop heaping teaspoons of dough onto buttered paper in baking pans.

  2. Top each jumbles with a blanched almond and a few coarse sugar lumps.

  3. Bake 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. Nutmeg + almondtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,115 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar to trap air, giving the jumbles a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Creaming with butter adds structure and sweetness, and helps the cookies brown.
Sour cream
Adds moisture and acidity, producing a soft, tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the oven.
Baking soda
Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to help the jumbles rise and brown.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the dough into soft cookies as it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown. Baking soda and sugar brown quickly, so color is a better guide than time. Pulling the jumbles once golden keeps them soft; overbaking dries them out and makes them hard.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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