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Dessert

Almond Jumbles

A sweet almond cake made with sugar, flour, butter, milk, eggs, rose water, and chopped almonds.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and almond are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,673 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Almond Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Make the batter

  1. Stir in the beaten egg yolks, milk, flour, rose water, and chopped almonds.

  2. Gently fold in the beaten egg whites until just combined.

Shape and bake

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture onto buttered paper in ring shapes.

  2. Bake immediately 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. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Butter + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,245 recipes

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

  4. Rose + almondtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,465 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add richness, while the whipped whites give lift and a light structure.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the jumbles together as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavor, and helps the sugar cream to a light texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown as it bakes.
Almonds
Add texture and a nutty aroma throughout the jumbles.
Baking soda
Reacts with the batter to produce gas that lifts and lightens the jumbles.

The step that matters

Fold gently, then bake immediately. Beaten egg whites lose air and the baking soda loses its gas over time, so the batter should be folded gently to keep air in and baked right away for the best rise.

“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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