Skip to main content
Dessert

Jackson Jumbles

A sweet baked cake made with flour, sugar, butter, pearl ash, cream, eggs, and optional spice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Jackson Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, rub together the flour and butter until well combined.

  2. Add the sugar, pearl ash dissolved in cream, eggs, and your choice of spice. Mix until all ingredients are well incorporated.

Bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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

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

  2. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Flour
Provides the main structure of the dough once it is mixed and baked.
Butter
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps the surface brown during baking.
Pearl ash
Acts as a leavening agent, helping the cakes rise and spread in the oven.

The step that matters

Dissolving the pearl ash in the cream. Pearl ash must be fully dissolved before it goes into the batter, otherwise undissolved pieces can leave pockets of uneven rise and bitter spots in the baked cookies.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonthe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Jalapenofits less well

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

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes