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Dessert

Habtin Jumbles

A cinnamon cookie made with flour, brown sugar, butter, egg whites, brandy, and rolled in fine sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and cinnamon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,341 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Habtin 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.

Make the dough

  1. Sift 1 teaspoon of baking soda into a large bowl with the flour.

  2. Add the brown sugar, softened butter, cinnamon, 4 egg whites, and brandy.

  3. Mix all ingredients until well combined.

Shape the cookies

  1. Sprinkle fine sugar on a clean surface.

  2. Roll a piece of dough into a ball, then coat it in sugar and shape it into a ring.

  3. Place the rings on a baking sheet, leaving space between them.

Bake and cool

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) until light brown.

  2. Let them cool slightly before carefully removing with a knife.

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. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + brandytop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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 main structure as its proteins and starch set during baking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and its molasses helps the cookies brown.
Butter
Adds fat that makes the cookies tender and rich in flavor.
Eggs
Egg whites bind the dough and help hold the cookies together as they bake.
Cinnamon
Adds warm aroma and spice flavor to the dough.
Brandy
Adds aromatic flavor to the dough.

The step that matters

Bake until light brown. Sugar browns quickly near the end of baking, so the cookies can go from golden to dark fast. Pulling them when they are light brown keeps them from turning bitter and dry.

Swap the cinnamon

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

  1. Cinnamonthe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Allspicefits less well

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

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