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Dessert

Fruit Jumbles

A sweet pastry made with butter, sugar, eggs, flour, spices, milk, and currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Fruit 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.

Prepare the batter

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

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

  3. Add the egg yolks and milk (with baking soda dissolved in it) to the mixture and mix well.

  4. Fold in the beaten egg whites and flour gradually.

  5. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, ground cloves, and currants, mixing until combined.

Bake

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

  2. Bake 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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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, giving the cookies a tender, rich texture.
Eggs
Egg whites add lift and structure, while yolks add richness and binding to the batter.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the drops together as they bake.
Baking soda
Reacts to lift the batter and help it brown.
Sugar
Sweetens the batter and, creamed with butter, helps create a light texture and browning.
Currants
Add chewy pockets of fruit sweetness and tartness throughout the jumbles.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites and flour. Whipped egg whites hold air that lightens the batter. Adding the flour gradually and folding gently, rather than stirring hard, keeps that air from collapsing and prevents the gluten in the flour from toughening the texture.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Cardamomfits better
  2. Allspicethe original
  3. Clovefits about as well
  4. Gingerfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, flour, egg, milk, cinnamon, nutmeg. 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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