Jackie Burrell, Writer

The summer is hot. The headlines are castastrophic. So I’ve been taking refuge in 1849. My protagonist bakes biscuits, deals with wagon train travails and solves murders, while I type away in the pre-dawn darkness. Highly recommend. When the sun comes up, I hit the kitchen, sip coffee and bake biscuits for real. (Bonus: All that baking has dramatically upped my biscuit game. ) Then it’s back to the keyboard for more research, followed by a kitchen session with a new — or rather, very old —receipt. The results have been pretty astonishing. Who knew that vanilla is the new rosewater?

Prior to 1847, vanilla was such a luxury item, Americans flavored their baking with rosewater — because you can make it yourself for free. It’s simply water infused with rose petals. If you can steep a floral tea or brew a tisane, you can do this. Or you can try your hand at distilling it at home. (No actual still needed.)

No, I’m not writing a historic cookbook, but if my main character is going to bake up a storm on the wild frontier, she better not be doing it with baking powder or Dr. Oetker’s packets. Besides, these rabbit holes are catnip — there’s a mixed metaphor for these dog days of summer — for a former food editor and total history nerd.

I’ll get to Jumbles, today’s baking project, in a sec.

Today, mixologists use the fragrant elixir to make rosewater G&Ts, rose-scented Lemon Drops and similar riffs on the cocktail theme. Rosewater has been a prized ingredient for Middle Eastern and Indian dishes, sweet and savory, for centuries. And if you read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe as a child, you’ve encountered it, too. The fragrant liquid flavors Turkish Delight, the addictive treat that hails from the early days of the Ottoman Empire and whose modern, commercial incarnation does not taste anything like I’d hoped. (If you’ve found a delicious version outside Narnia, let me know.)

I don’t know what I was expecting from Jumbles, a ring-shaped cookie that dates back to Tudor times. It’s said the recipe came over with the Mayflower, although I’m finding it hard to believe Myles Standish arrived with cookie how-tos. Martha Washington made Jumbles for tea parties. So did Eliza Leslie, author of my fave, Seventy-five Receipts for Pastry, Cakes, and Sweetmeats (1828). I fretted over Leslie’s recipe, which called for a LOT of nutmeg, as well as things I did not have, like mace and the aforementioned rosewater. Would the latter yield cookies that taste like soap or perfume? I got sidetracked by Saveur magazine, which recommends Carlo rose water ($4.29 for 13 ounces), not Nielsen-Massey ($15 for four ounces). Hit Whole Foods for Carlo. Then pondered the wisdom of buying an entire jar of mace, when I only needed half a teaspoon. All the things.

We call this procrastination through analytical research.

Finally set aside my anxieties (a tablespoon of ground nutmeg? good god) and just baked the crispy, buttery cookies in their entirety, rosewater and all. OK, I skipped the mace. I subbed in cardamom, because it sounded like a good idea, and the usual mace substitute is nutmeg, which — look, a tablespoon of nutmeg is enough nutmeg. And I relied on Nancy Carter Crump’s revision of the recipe. Crump’s Hearthside Cooking: Early American Southern Cuisine (2009) is used by historical culinary re-enactors across the country. Crump called for one egg, not three. Perhaps eggs were smaller back in the day. The cookies were wonderful. Delicate, crisp, yummy. A tablespoon of rose water is a sublime amount. So is a tablespoon of freshly ground nutmeg. (The cardamom was perfect, btw.)

I took the easy out and shaped them by cutting holes in circles of dough. I did not twist them into Celtic knots, as I hear Paul Hollywood made a bunch of Great British Baking Show contestants do in season seven, episode eight. (He also used a medieval recipe that called for aniseed and caraway.) But you can bet Martha Mapplethorpe, a secondary character in book two, will roll her dough into slim snakes, then twist them into the traditional rings, figure eights or spirals. It’s very Martha of her.

If you want to follow suit, Eliza Leslie’s recipe is here, courtesy of Project Gutenberg. Just … use one egg. Not three.