Jumbles
Are cookies in ring shapes, of various degrees of richness of mixture. Commonly they are only cut in rings with a ring cutter; properly they should be made with a sack and tube.
Take a lady-finger tube and file the edge into saw teeth and press out the jumble dough in a ribbed cord, of which form rings on the baking pans. The cooky mixtures may be used, or this: 1 pound of sugar. 12 ounces of butter. 8 eggs. Flavor of lemon or orange. 2 pounds or little less of flour. No powder.
A professional bakeshop formula, given by weight and assuming a pastry bag. The dough is stiff, unleavened and meant to hold a ribbed shape, so the flour is added to feel rather than to a fixed number.
- "A sack and tube"A sack is a pastry bag, and the tube is the metal piping tip. The instruction to file saw teeth into a lady-finger tube is how a nineteenth-century shop made its own star tip; any large open-star tip does the same job today.
- Weigh, do not measure1 lb sugar is about 2 1/4 cups, 12 oz butter is 3 sticks, and 2 lb flour is roughly 7 cups. Scaling is far more reliable here, since the dough has to be stiff enough to keep its ribs.
- The eggsEggs of the period generally ran a little smaller than modern large eggs, so eight modern large eggs is a reasonable stand-in. Either way it is a great deal of liquid for the fat and sugar, which is why the flour load is so heavy.
- "2 pounds or little less"The vagueness is deliberate. Add flour until the dough pipes in a clean ridged cord without slumping; too much and the tube will clog or the ribs will tear, too little and the rings spread flat.
- "No powder"No baking powder and no soda. Jumbles rise only from the eggs and creamed butter, which is what gives them their dense, short, biscuit-like bite. Do not add leavening to compensate for a heavy dough.
- Flavour"Flavor of lemon or orange" would most likely have been an oil or extract, though the recipe does not say. Grated zest from two or three fruits works, though it will speckle the surface; a teaspoon or so of extract keeps the piped ribs clean.
- OvenThe recipe gives no oven guidance. A moderate oven, around 350-375F for 10-14 minutes, suits a piped cookie of this size; bake until the ribs are set and the edges just colour.
- Shaping and yieldPipe rings about 2 1/2 to 3 inches across, joining the ends neatly. The full batch is a bakery quantity, upwards of six dozen; it halves and quarters without trouble.
Jumbles are one of the oldest continuously baked English sweets, appearing in printed receipt books from the late sixteenth century as "jumbals" or "iumballs" - stiff, egg-rich doughs rolled into cords and tied into knots, rings and true-lover's knots. The name is often traced to gemel, from the Latin for twin, a reference to the double or interlaced ring shapes, though that derivation is traditional rather than settled. They crossed to America early and stayed in the repertoire well into the twentieth century, gradually collapsing into a plain ring-cut cookie - exactly the shortcut this author complains about. The insistence that they "properly should be made with a sack and tube" places this squarely in the professional bakeshop: a piped, ribbed ring was a mark of a trained hand, and a filed lady-finger tube was an improvised tool from the days before decorating tips were sold in full sets.