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Dessert

Fine Jumbles

Fine Jumbles are small cakes made from butter, powdered sugar, flour, eggs, ammonia carbonate, milk, and lemon oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Fine Jumbles

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter and powdered sugar together evenly, but do not make it light.

  2. Add a few drops of oil of lemon.

  3. Stir in the eggs, two or three at a time, mixing just enough to make it smooth.

  4. Add the carbonate of ammonia dissolved in the milk, then mix in the flour.

Shape and bake

  1. On a floured surface, roll out the dough into long ropes and cut into lengths of about 4 inches.

  2. Bring the ends together to form circles.

  3. Place on greased baking pans and bake in a moderate oven (350°F or 175°C).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 sugar to give the cakes a rich, tender fat base.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough as they are stirred in.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the shaped jumbles together.
Carbonate of ammonia
Leavens the dough so the jumbles rise and become light when baked.
Powdered sugar
Sweetens the dough and softens its texture when rubbed in with the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring in the eggs. Adding eggs too fast or overmixing can break the emulsion and toughen the dough. Adding them two or three at a time and mixing only until smooth keeps the texture tender.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

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