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Dessert

Bayside Jumbles

A buttery, nutmeg-flavored cookie made with sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Bayside 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 the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter.

  3. Add the eggs and mix gently by hand until combined.

  4. Dissolve the baking soda in a little water and add it to the mixture.

  5. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll out.

  6. Chill the dough in the refrigerator for a few hours.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll the dough out thinly and cut into shapes with a scalloped cutter.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

  3. Remove from the oven and sprinkle with sugar.

  4. Allow to cool before serving.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown during baking.
Butter
Provides fat for tenderness and a rich flavor in the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to help it rise and spread slightly and promote browning.
Flour
Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut into shapes.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll out. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves the dough sticky and hard to cut cleanly. Chilling afterward firms the fat so the shapes hold their edges in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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