[Sca-cooks] iombils

[Robyn.Hodgkin at affa.gov.au]

Has anyone experimented with Jumbals, specifically the ones in Food and Cooking in 16th Century Britain History and Recipes. (theoretically out of The good Huswife's Jewell book 2; anyone got the original?)
 

To make Iombils a hundred: Take twenty Egges and put them into a pot both the yolks & the white, beat them wel, then take a pound of beaten suger and put to them, and stirre them wel together, then put to it a quarter of a peck of flower, and make a hard paste thereof, and then with Anniseeds moulde it well, and make it in little rowles beeing long, and tye them in knots, and wet the ends in Rosewater, then put them in a pan  of seething water, but in one warm, then take them out with a Skimmer  and lay them in a cloth to drie, this being don lay them in a tart panne, the bottome beeing oyled, then put them into a temperat Oven for one howre, turning them often in the Oven. 

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I gave these a bit of a bash last night.  I tried to make the recipe proportional to the original (I didn't want 100 of them, so quartered the recipe).   The jumbals I made were probably smaller than the recipe had in mind, as I got about 40 out of the recipe, which should have made 25. 

 

5 eggs

125 g caster sugar

3 cups flour

1 tsp aniseed

Rosewater

 

I beat the eggs till fluffy, added the sugar while still beating, then slowly sifted in the flour. Adding the aniseeds I mixed the dough by hand and formed into knots.  These had their ends dunked in rose water and put in a pot of slowly boiling water.  

 

Once they rose to the top,  I let them drain on a cloth, and then put them into the oven.  I did a bit of experimenting with these stages, trying the following combinations:

 

1. short time boiling, 15 min at 180 degrees

2. long time boiling, 15 min cooking at 180 degrees

3. short time boiling, 45 min cooking at 150 degrees

4. long time boiling, 45 min at 150 degrees

 

They were very interesting to cook - the dough went all rough in the boiling water and didn't look too good.  However once in the oven, under methods 1, 2  and 3 they swelled up again making very smooth, almost shiny surfaced knots.  Under method 4 they didn't get as smooth.  

 

They looked cute.  The taste is quite nice too, though nothing to write home about.  But texturally they were all problematic.  They were dense and chewy, and I am glad I didn't make them any larger.  If cooked for a longer time, either at low or higher heat, they did go sort of harder on the outside; the long slow cooking giving them a more even brown colour.  But the insides didn't improve really; less chewy but hard and dry and dense. I even tried making a full sized one, but that was still overly dense and chewy.

 

I decided to re-cook some of the chewier ones so that the final products are quite hard.   They will be ok as dunking biscuits (cookies for the US readers), but I certainly am not willing to serve them to anyone outside my family!

 

I cannot think of anything I could do that would change/improve the recipe without transforming it to the point where they don't resemble the original recipe any more. (a la "to the Queens taste" where they are transformed into a sort of fritter!)

 

Anyone else out there played with this recipe or have thoughts/suggestions?

 

Kiriel

ps.  Mind you I also made Bizcochos from Bridhid's translation from Granado and they worked a treat!!!  I will post up redaction and pics on my website soon. I also did Markham's "finer Jumbals" and they were great too. 

 
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