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Dessert

New Orleans Jumbles

A sweet cookie made with flour, sugar, butter, nutmeg, orange and lemon zest, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Orange and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,634 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

New Orleans 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 the dough

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Combine flour, sugar, butter, nutmeg, and grated orange and lemon rinds in a large bowl; mix until well combined.

  3. Add eggs to the dough and mix until fully incorporated.

Shape and bake

  1. Dust a clean surface with fine white sugar. Take a small piece of dough, roll it into a ring, and join the ends.

  2. Place the rings on a clean baking sheet or in a Dutch oven.

  3. Bake for a few minutes until golden, then carefully remove with a knife blade and let cool on a dish.

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. Orange + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,634 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it bakes.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the dough tender and rich.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add moisture and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the cookies brown as they bake.
Nutmeg
Contributes warm aroma and flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Removing the rings from the sheet. These cookies are delicate while still warm and soft in the centre. Letting them firm slightly before lifting them off helps them keep their ring shape and avoids breakage.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Orangethe original

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