Name: Another Recipe for Jumbles
Ingredients: 1 pound all-purpose flour; 1 pound unsalted butter; 1 pound granulated sugar; 1 tablespoon ground nutmeg; 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon; 1 tablespoon ground mace; ⅓ cup mixed wine and brandy; Juice and grated rind of 1 lemon; 6 large eggs

Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon 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 ↓

Another Recipe for Jumbles

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the dough

Cut the butter into the flour until crumbly.
Add the spices, sugar, wine, lemon juice, and lemon rind.
Beat in the eggs and stir until a soft dough forms.

Shape and bake

Shape the dough into rings, coat with sugar, and place in well-greased pans.
Bake in a hot oven 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.

Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together11,917 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Nutmeg + macetop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together6,557 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,623 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Wine + brandytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,427 recipes

Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).
Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,341 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

All-purpose flour: Provides the structure that holds the crumbly dough together.
Unsalted butter: Cut into the flour to create a tender, crumbly texture.
Granulated sugar: Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown as it bakes.
Large eggs: Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set.

Swap the mace

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

Clovefits better
Cardamomfits better
Allspicefits better
Macethe original

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