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Dessert

Excellent Jumbles

A buttery cookie flavored with nutmeg, made with cream, baking soda, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Excellent 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

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

  2. In a bowl, cream together the butter and sugar.

  3. Add the cream, baking soda, egg, and nutmeg; mix well.

  4. Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to shape.

Shape and bake

  1. Form the dough into rings and place on a baking sheet.

  2. Bake until golden 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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
Creams with the sugar to give the dough richness and a tender texture.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown while creaming aerates the butter.
Cream
Adds moisture and fat, softening the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough's acidity to help it rise and brown.
Egg
Binds the dough and adds structure as it sets in the oven.
Flour
Provides the structure that stiffens the dough so it holds its shape.

The step that matters

Gradually add flour until the dough is stiff enough to shape. Flour absorbs liquid and builds gluten and starch structure. Adding too much at once or too little leaves the dough either tough and dry or too soft to hold the rings' shape in the oven.

“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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