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Dessert

Paper Jumbles

A sweet pastry made from sugar, butter, egg, rosewater, nutmeg, salt, and flour, chilled and baked.

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 ↓

Paper Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream together the sugar and butter until very creamy.

  2. Add the egg and mix well.

  3. Flavor with rosewater and nutmeg, then add salt.

  4. Slowly work in the flour until combined.

  5. Refrigerate the dough overnight.

Shape and bake

  1. The next morning, sprinkle a surface with a mix of flour and sugar.

  2. Roll the dough very thin and cut with a cake cutter.

  3. Place the cutouts on large, buttered baking sheets and bake.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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
Creamed with sugar to trap air and give the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown and crisp as it bakes.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the thin cutouts together as they bake.

The step that matters

Refrigerate the dough overnight. Chilling firms the butter so the dough holds its shape when rolled very thin and cut, and it lets the flour fully hydrate, which keeps the cutouts from spreading or becoming greasy in the oven.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Capersfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, egg, 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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