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Dessert

Almond Jumbles

Almond Jumbles are buttery, sweet cookies studded with blanched almonds and granulated sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond 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.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter and sugar together until smooth.

  2. Add the egg yolks, then the beaten egg whites, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the fruit juice and cornstarch.

  4. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough thinly and cut with a jumble cutter.

  2. Sprinkle the tops with blanched almonds and granulated sugar.

  3. Press lightly with a rolling pin, place on greased pans, and bake at 350°F (175°C) 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Peach + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peachtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together860 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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
Creams with sugar to give the dough richness and a tender crumb.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the jumbles.
Cornstarch
Softens the crumb, giving the cookies a tender, delicate texture.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the soft dough together for shaping.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown as they bake.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms. Adding too much flour makes the dough stiff and dry, producing tough jumbles. Adding it slowly lets you stop once the dough is soft enough to roll thinly.

Swap the peach

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Peachthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sugar, 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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