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Dessert

Virginia Jumbles

A sweet cookie made with brown sugar, eggs, lard, nutmeg, sour milk, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Virginia 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make and shape the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix together the brown sugar, eggs, lard, grated nutmeg, sour milk, and baking soda.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff but not too stiff.

  3. Flatten the dough, sprinkle with sugar, and cut into desired shapes.

Bake

  1. Place on a baking sheet and bake 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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Nutmeg + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the cookies brown and stay tender.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure as they set in the oven.
Lard
Provides fat that tenderizes the cookies and gives a rich texture.
Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda so the cookies rise and soften.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas, helping the cookies rise.
Flour
Forms the dough's main structure, setting as the cookies bake.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be added gradually until the dough is stiff but not overworked. Too much flour makes the cookies dry and tough, while too little leaves them spreading and fragile.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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