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Chocolate Jumbles
One cup sugar, one-half cup butter, one and one-half cups flour, one-third of a teaspoon of soda, one cup chocolate, two eggs, one teaspoon vanilla, a little salt. A nice white frosting improves these jumbles.
An ingredient list with no method at all, which was normal for a community-cookbook cookie. The proportions are a standard creamed butter dough; everything else has to be supplied.
- The ambiguous cup of chocolate"One cup chocolate" is genuinely unclear. In a book of this vintage it most likely means grated or melted unsweetened baking chocolate; depending on whether it was measured grated or melted, that could be anywhere from about four to eight ounces. If it meant cocoa powder the dough would be very dry with only a half cup of butter. Treat it as melted unsweetened chocolate cooled to lukewarm before it goes into the batter.
- Soda without an obvious acidA third of a teaspoon of soda is a small amount. Natural (non-alkalized) unsweetened chocolate is mildly acidic, which will react with some of it and darken the crumb; Dutch-process cocoa is alkalized and will not, so an alkaline or slightly soapy note is more likely.
- OvenNo temperature is given. A moderate oven, 350F, for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are set and the centers still look soft.
- Method implied by the listCream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs and vanilla, add the chocolate, then the flour, soda and salt. No order is stated in the original.
- ShapeJumbles were traditionally rings or coils, but a dough this soft is best dropped or chilled and rolled thin. Chilling an hour makes it manageable either way.
- "A little salt"A quarter teaspoon with a half cup of butter. If the butter is salted, skip it.
- The white frostingMost likely a plain confectioners' sugar and milk glaze or a boiled white icing; the recipe does not say which.
- YieldAbout two and a half to three dozen small cookies.
Jumbles are an old English sweet, appearing in printed receipt books by the late sixteenth century as "iumbals," "jumballs," or "jambles" — doughs stiff with sugar and egg, rolled into ropes and tied into knots or double rings. The name is often traced to gemel, the twin ring, though that link is traditional rather than proven. By the time this book was compiled the knot had mostly been abandoned and "jumble" simply meant a plain rolled or dropped cookie; the chocolate version seems to belong to the later nineteenth century, when cake chocolate became cheap and reliable enough for household baking. Its placement under Supper is a reminder that in many American homes the evening meal was the light one, and a plate of small cakes with tea was a perfectly ordinary thing to serve for it.