Best Jumbles
2 cupfuls sugar 1 cupful Crisco 4 eggs 4 cupfuls flour 3 tablespoonfuls milk 1 teaspoonful salt 3 teaspoonfuls baking powder 1 teaspoonful almond extract 1 teaspoonful rose extract Cream Crisco and sugar thoroughly together, then gradually add eggs well beaten, now add milk, extracts, flour, salt and baking powder. Mix and out lightly on floured baking board; cut into circles with doughnut cutter, lay on Criscoed tins and bake in moderate oven from seven to ten minutes or till light brown. These cookies will keep fresh two weeks, and if milk is left out, a month.
Sufficient for seventy jumbles.
A stiff rolled cookie dough, essentially a shortbread lightened with baking powder and scented with almond and rose. The instructions are terse and one word is a typo: "mix and out lightly on floured baking board" means roll out.
- Moderate ovenConventionally read as about 350-375F. The recipe wants seven to ten minutes, until light brown, so watch the first tray and use it to calibrate the rest.
- CriscoThe book was written to sell it, and modern all-vegetable shortening behaves the same way. Butter can be substituted cup for cup, but the cookies will spread more and brown faster, so shorten the bake.
- Rose extractNot the same strength as rose water. If you only have rose water, a teaspoon of it will be nearly undetectable here; use a tablespoon or more, and expect the dough to be slightly wetter.
- Almond extractA full teaspoon in this quantity of dough is assertive but not excessive. Use extract, not bitter almond oil, which is a different and far stronger product.
- Only three tablespoons of milkThat is correct, not a misprint. The dough should be firm enough to roll and cut without slumping; if it cracks badly, add milk a teaspoon at a time rather than by the tablespoon.
- The doughnut cutterJumbles were traditionally made as rings. The recipe gives no cutter size, so size to taste; a plain round works, and if the cookies come out thicker give them a minute longer.
- Yield and thicknessSeventy cookies from four cups of flour implies a fairly thin roll and a modest cutter. Rolled thicker you will get noticeably fewer and a softer, cakier cookie.
- KeepingThe two-week and one-month claims assume a tin in a cool larder and a genuinely dry, thin cookie. They do keep well, but expect a warm kitchen to shorten that and the aromatics to weaken over time.
Jumbles are one of the oldest surviving English cookie names, appearing in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century receipt books as "jumballs". The origin of the name is uncertain, though it is often linked to knotted or interlaced shapes, since early versions were rolled into ropes and tied into rings and true-lover's knots before baking. The flavourings here follow that tradition: rose water and almond were common perfumes of English sweet baking long before vanilla became cheap and common in American kitchens. What is new in this version is the fat. A Calendar of Dinners was written by Marion Harris Neil and published by Procter & Gamble to promote Crisco, the hydrogenated vegetable shortening introduced in 1911, so an old cookie appears here with a branded modern ingredient and the verb "Criscoed" applied to the baking tins.