Jumballs / Iumbolls

Spiced shortbread. ​Gluten Free. Coriander/Cilantro Free. 

Background
These have a long history and are popular in my re-enactment group. Usually they are made with glutinous flour and coriander seeds, but as I am a celiac and allergic to coriander, I have replace them with gluten free flour and fennel seeds.

These come from Sir Hugh Platt ‘Delightes for ladies’, which is translated on page 48 of ‘A Miscellany’ (10th Edition) by David Friedman and Elizabeth Cook.

To Make Iumbolls
Take ½ a pound of almonds being beaten to paste with a short cake being grated, and two eggs, two ounces of caraway seeds, being beaten, and the juice of a lemon: and being brought into paste, roll it into round strings: then cast it into knots, and so bake it in an oven and when they are baked, ice them with rose water and sugar, and the white of an egg being beaten together, then take a feather and gild them, then put them again into the oven, and let them stand in a little while, and they will be iced clean over with a white ice: and so box them up and you may keep them all the year.

• ¼ lb almonds
• 1 egg
• 1 oz shortbread
• 1 t[easpoon] rose water
• 1 oz [ounce] caraway seeds
• ½ c[up] sugar
• ½ lemon, juiced
• ½ egg white

I decided I wanted to focus on the flavour without the icing so I adapted this recipe from My Lady Chanworths receipt for Jumballs  which is sourced from a 1690-1802 recipe book LJS 165 and instead of making lozenge size biscuits, I have used a biscuit press I was gifted by my dear friends Mestra Acacia de Navarre and Master Drake Morgan.

My recipe makes 4 dozen biscuits. 

Ingredients
Dry

• 225g white sugar
• 340g gluten free plain flour
• 55g almond flour
• 1.5 teaspoons of fennel seeds
• 1 teaspoon of caraway seeds

Wet

• 225g salted butter (melted)
• 5mils/1 teaspoon strong rosewater (Queen brand)
• 2 egg yolks (beaten)

Materials

• Large mixing bowl
• Small mixing bowl
• Small microwave safe bowl (for melting butter)
• Fork (for beating eggs)
• Mixing spoon
• Rolling pin
• Scales
• Baking paper
• 2-4 baking trays
• Mould or cutter if using one

Method

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees Celsius.
2. Sieve sugar, plain flour and almond flour into a large mixing bowl.
3. Stir through fennel and caraway seeds
4. Mix wet ingredients together
5. Slowly mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients and combine until it crumbs.
6. Press into two balls of dough.
7. Refrigerate for an hour.
8. Roll out each ball of dough to about 1cm thickness on a lightly floured surface.
9. Press/cut into the shapes you want
10. Place on baking paper on a baking tray. 
11. Bake for 12 minutes (they will be brown on the edges) on centre shelf of the oven. NOTE: You will need either need to rotate your trays or have four baking trays as this makes 4 dozen biscuits and you need to make sure you give them lots of space to spread out on the tray as they cook.
12. Let them cool on the tray.
13. Put them in an airtight container for storage. 

Crumbed mixture

Shaped dough

What I will try next time
The flavour was a bit too subtle for me, I would have preferred a stronger flavour of rosewater and spice. I don’t much like the flavour of caraway seeds, but the fennel is lovely. I think it would be nice to try cardamom and fennel seeds and double the rosewater in my next batch. I am sure each cook had their own version of a buttery spiced shortbread, so I would like to develop my own. More modern recipes, particularly in America, commonly have recipes for honey jumballs.

Also, it would be nice to try the icing next time from the Sir Hugh recipe.

Finally, 4 dozen biscuits is too many for my household so I would look to halve the recipe.

With these adjustments, that would mean my ingredients and change in method for the next batch will be:

• 110g white sugar
• 170g gluten free plain flour
• 30g almond flour
• 1.5 teaspoons of fennel seeds
• 3 teaspoons ground cardamom

• 110g salted butter (melted)
• 10mils/2 teaspoons rosewater
• 1 egg yolk (beaten)

I would also like to cast them into knots and the icing would be the following beaten together.

• 1 teaspoon rose water
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ egg white

Then cooked again.
Then a very thin layer of icing sugar and rosewater (only) would be applied.