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 ↓
96 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
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Make the dough
Beat the sugar and butter together until creamy.
Add the well-beaten eggs and mix well.
Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream and add it to the mixture.
Flavor the dough as desired.
Shape and bake
Roll out the dough on a floured surface.
Dust the dough with granulated sugar before cutting with an oval cutter.
Place the cut jumbles on a baking sheet and bake until golden brown.
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.
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown in the oven.
- Butter
- Provides fat that makes the dough rich and tender.
- Eggs
- Bind the dough and add structure as they set.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the sour cream's acidity to lift the dough and aid browning.
- Sour cream
- Adds moisture and acidity that activates the baking soda.
- Flour
- Provides the structure that lets the dough be rolled and cut.
The step that matters
Dissolve the baking soda in the sour cream. Baking soda must be fully dispersed to leaven evenly. Dissolving it in the acidic sour cream first spreads it through the dough, preventing pockets of unreacted soda that can taste bitter or soapy and uneven rising.
“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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