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Dessert

Water Cure Jumbles

A sweet cookie made with butter, sugar, sweet milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Water Cure 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

  2. Add sweet milk, cream of tartar, and baking soda, mixing well.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of batter onto a greased baking sheet.

  2. Bake for 12-15 minutes or 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,399 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds tenderness and richness to the cookies.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it helps create a light texture and adds sweetness and browning.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture to the batter and helps bind the dough together.
Cream of tartar
Acidic, it reacts with baking soda to help the cookies rise and stay tender.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to produce gas that lifts the batter.

The step that matters

Creaming butter and sugar. Beating softened butter with sugar until light and fluffy traps air bubbles that expand in the oven. Under-creaming yields dense jumbles, while over-softened butter can make the batter greasy and spread too much.

“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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