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Dessert

Cocoa-nut Jumbles

A sweet dough made with cocoa-nut, butter, flour, eggs, rosewater, and sprinkled with loaf sugar, baked into rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Cocoa-nut 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.

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter into the flour until combined.

  2. Add the beaten eggs and rosewater, mixing until smooth.

  3. Gradually incorporate the grated cocoa-nut to form a stiff dough.

Shape and bake

  1. Flour your hands and work surface, then divide the dough into equal portions.

  2. Shape each portion into rings and place them on buttered pans, ensuring they are spaced apart.

  3. Sprinkle loaf sugar over the rings and bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for 5 to 10 minutes.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  3. Cocoa + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-undecalactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together in rings.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the heat.
Grated cocoa-nut
Supplies bulk, moisture and flavour, stiffening the dough into a shapeable mass.

The step that matters

Gradually incorporate the grated cocoa-nut to form a stiff dough.. Adding the coconut slowly lets it blend evenly, so the dough reaches a stiff, shapeable consistency without becoming dry in some spots or too loose in others.

Swap the cocoa

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Chestnutfits better
  4. Cocoathe original

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