Skip to main content
Dessert

Soda Jumbles

Soda Jumbles are sweet dough pieces made with flour, sugar, butter, baking soda, and cold milk, rolled in sugar and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Soda Jumbles

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, cream of tartar, and baking soda.

  2. In another bowl, rub together sugar and butter until well combined.

  3. Gradually add cold milk to the flour mixture to form a stiff dough.

  4. Roll the dough into shapes and cut into jumbles.

  5. Roll the jumbles in sugar instead of flour for better flavor.

Bake

  1. Bake immediately in the preheated oven until 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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets as it bakes.
Cream of tartar
Acts with baking soda to produce gas, helping the jumbles rise and stay light.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas that leavens the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the jumbles and promotes golden browning in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and gives a rich flavor.
Milk
Supplies moisture that hydrates the flour and binds the dough into a stiff mass.

The step that matters

Adding the cold milk. Add the milk gradually and stop once the dough is stiff. Too much liquid or overworking the dough develops gluten, which makes the jumbles tough rather than tender.

“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.

You might also like

White CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipesOrange Bundt CakeOrange Bundt Cake349 recipesSpice CakeSpice Cake344 recipes