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Dessert

Excellent Jumbles

A buttery, nutmeg‑flavored cookie made with cream and baking soda.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Excellent 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 the dough

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

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

  3. Add the cream, baking soda, egg, and nutmeg; mix well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to handle.

Shape and bake

  1. Shape the dough into rings and place them on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake in the preheated oven 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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
Creaming with sugar traps air and adds richness and tenderness to the cookie.
Sugar
Creamed with butter for a light texture and sweetness, and helps the cookies brown.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, softening the dough and making the cookie tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough's acidity to produce gas that helps the cookies rise and spread.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the shaped rings together during baking.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to handle. Adding flour in small amounts lets you stop at the right stiffness. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves dough too soft to shape into rings and causes it to spread.

“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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