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Dessert

Jumbles

A sweet almond dough made with wheatmeal, sugar, milk, butter, ground almonds, and rosewater, rolled, cut, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Jumbles

Oven, in the book's wordsA gentle oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a gentle oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream the butter in a large bowl.

  2. Add the wheatmeal, castor sugar, milk, ground almonds, and a little rosewater, and mix thoroughly.

Shape and bake

  1. Roll out the dough and cut it into desired shapes.

  2. Bake in a gentle oven at 300°F (150°C) until lightly 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Milk + almondtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,800 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Sugar + almondtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,679 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Wheatmeal
Provides the flour structure that holds the biscuit together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderises the crumb and carries flavour.
Castor sugar
Sweetens the biscuit and helps it brown lightly in the oven.
Ground almonds
Add nutty flavour and a tender, slightly moist texture.
Milk
Adds moisture so the dough binds and rolls out smoothly.

The step that matters

Bake in a gentle oven until lightly golden. Low, gentle heat dries and sets the biscuits evenly without scorching. Sugar and almonds brown quickly at higher temperatures, so the colour is the cue to watch for and remove them promptly.

Swap the almond

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

  1. Almondthe original
  2. Cocoafits about as well
  3. Pecansfits less well
  4. Peanutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, milk, butter. 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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