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JUMBLES (another way)
Stir together till of a light brown colour a pound of sugar and half a pound of butter. Add eight eggs, beaten to a froth, essence of lemon or rose-water to taste, and flour enough to make the mixture sufficiently stiff to roll out. Roll out in powdered sugar, cut the paste into strips about half an inch wide and four inches long. Join the ends together so as to form rings, lay the jumbles on flat tins that have been buttered, and bake them in a quick oven.
A very large, very plain egg-rich cookie dough of the old school, leavened by nothing but beaten eggs. The proportions are given by weight, and the flour is left entirely to the cook's judgement.
- Read "light brown" as "light"Read "light brown" cautiously — sugar and butter creamed together go pale and fluffy rather than brown, and the phrase probably means light in texture and colour, or reflects the tint of less-refined period sugar. Either way, do not brown the butter.
- The flour is the unknownA pound of sugar, half a pound of butter and eight eggs will want somewhere in the region of 1 1/2 to 2 lb of flour to reach a rollable stiffness, but the original genuinely leaves it open. Add it in stages and stop when the dough holds a shape without sticking.
- Scale it downAs written this is a bakery-sized batch, several dozen rings. Quartering it — 4 oz sugar, 2 oz butter, 2 eggs — gives a manageable domestic quantity.
- A quick ovenThe recipe gives no temperature; "quick" is usually read as somewhere around 400–425F. At that heat these thin rings colour in roughly 7 to 10 minutes, so watch them from minute six; the sugar coating darkens fast.
- Rolled in sugar, not flourRolling the paste out in powdered (icing) sugar rather than flour is deliberate — it keeps the dough tender and gives the baked ring a faintly crisp, glazed surface. Use a light hand; too much sugar on the board makes the strips brittle when you bend them.
- Essence of lemon and rose-waterEssence of lemon is what we would call lemon extract or lemon oil, and is potent: a teaspoon or less in the full batch. Rose-water is milder and can be used by the tablespoon; culinary rose-water from a Middle Eastern grocer is closer to the period product than the concentrated modern flavourings.
- Forming the ringsHalf an inch by four inches is a slim strip. Press the joined ends together firmly and pinch, or they will spring apart in the oven; a dab of water or beaten egg on the overlap helps.
- Buttered flat tinsFlat tins are baking sheets. Parchment does the same job and spares you the burnt sugar residue where the coating melts onto the pan.
Jumbles are among the oldest surviving English sweet biscuits, appearing in printed cookery from the sixteenth century onward, usually as a stiff sugar-and-egg paste rolled into ropes and tied into knots or rings. The name is often linked to the knotted or twinned shape rather than to any jumbling of ingredients — earlier spellings such as jumbal and gemel have been connected to the double or interlaced ring — though the etymology is not settled. With no liquid but eggs and flavouring, and a high proportion of sugar, they dry hard and keep well, and the form survived long enough to appear here as a matter-of-course second version.