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Dessert

Jumbles

A light, nutmeg-flavored cake made with butter, sugar, egg, flour, cream, and baking soda.

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

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 the batter

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

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together.

  3. Beat the yolk of the egg.

  4. Add the yolk to the creamed mixture.

  5. Stir in the nutmeg, cream, and baking soda.

  6. Beat the egg white until stiff.

  7. Fold the stiff egg white into the mixture.

  8. Gradually add the sifted flour until the mixture is stiff.

Bake and serve

  1. Spoon the mixture into buttered ring molds.

  2. Bake in the hot oven until golden.

  3. Remove from the molds.

  4. Cool on a plate.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Nutmeg + creamtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Flour and butter 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

Egg
The yolk enriches and binds the batter, while the whipped white lightens its texture.
Butter
Creamed with sugar, it traps air and adds richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Creamed with butter, it adds sweetness and helps the cake brown in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the batter as it bakes.
Baking soda
Releases gas in the batter, helping the cake rise.

The step that matters

Folding in the stiff egg white. Folding gently keeps the air beaten into the egg white, which gives the batter lift. Stirring hard would deflate it and produce a denser cake.

“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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