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Dessert

Soda Jumbles

Soda Jumbles are sweet dough pieces made with flour, sugar, butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 the dough

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

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

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

  4. Add the flour mixture to the sugar and butter, then add cold milk until a stiff dough forms.

Shape and bake

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

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

  3. 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 jumbles together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the dough.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the jumbles brown in the oven.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the baking soda to lift it.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in the cream of tartar to produce gas for rising.
Cold milk
Moistens the flour and butter so they bind into a stiff dough.

The step that matters

Bake immediately in the preheated oven. Cream of tartar and baking soda start producing gas as soon as they are mixed with liquid. Baking right away keeps that lift in the dough rather than letting it fade before the jumbles reach the heat.

“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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