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Dessert

Aunty Taylor's Jumbles

A sweet cake made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, nutmeg, and rose brandy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg 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 ↓

Aunty Taylor's 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 the butter and sugar together until light.

  2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

  3. Stir in the flour, nutmeg, and rose brandy to taste.

Bake

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

  2. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until light 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. Flour + nutmegtop 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. Nutmeg + rosetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Rose + brandytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together560 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

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 richness and tenderness.
Sugar
Creams with butter for lightness and adds sweetness and browning.
Eggs
Add structure and binding, helping the dough hold together as it bakes.
Flour
Provides the structure that sets the jumbles as they bake.

The step that matters

Creaming the butter and sugar until light. Beating air into the fat and sugar creates the lift and tender crumb the cookies depend on. Under-creaming leaves a dense, heavy texture.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Allspicefits less well
  4. Clovefits less well

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