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Dessert

Plain Jumbles

Plain Jumbles are small pastry pieces made from butter, sugar, flour, eggs, lemon, and cream, baked until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,318 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Plain Jumbles

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the butter and sugar until smooth.

  2. Sprinkle in the salt and add the eggs one at a time, mixing well.

  3. Stir in the lemon rind and juice, then the cream with dissolved baking soda.

  4. Gradually mix in the flour until fully incorporated.

  5. Refrigerate the dough overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. The next morning, cut the dough into pieces and roll into cylindrical shapes.

  2. Use a jumble squeezer to squeeze onto a board covered with sugar.

  3. Cut into 2-inch lengths and roll lightly in sugar.

  4. Place on well-buttered flat pans and bake at 400°F (200°C) 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. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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

Butter
Creams with sugar to give the dough richness and a tender, crumbly texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and, as a coating, adds a crisp sugary crust.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the oven.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, keeping the cookies tender and rich.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic lemon to lift the dough and promote browning.
All-purpose flour
Provides the main structure that sets as the jumbles bake.

The step that matters

Bake until golden. Baking soda and sugar brown quickly at high heat, so jumbles can go from pale to over-browned fast. Watching for even golden color keeps them tender instead of dry or bitter.

“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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