jumbal, jumble
(ˈdʒʌmb(ə)l)
Also 7–8 jumball.
[perh. orig. the same as gimbal 1, gimmal 1.]
A kind of fine sweet cake or biscuit, formerly often made up in the form of rings or rolls; now in U.S. ‘a thin crisp cake, composed of flour, sugar, butter, and eggs, flavored with lemon-peel or sweet almonds’ (Cent. Dict.).
| 1615 Markham Eng. Housew. ii. ii. (1660) 97 To make the best Jumbals, take the whites of three Eggs..a little milke and a pound of fine wheat flowre and suger together finely sifted, and a few Anniseeds..make them in what forms you please, and bake them in a soft oven upon white papers. 1678 Phillips (ed. 4), Jumbals, a sort of Sugared past, wreathed into knots. 1694 Motteux Rabelais v. xxvii, O' Tuesdays, they us'd to twist store of Holy-bread..Jumbals and Biscuits. 1769 Mrs. Raffald Eng. Housekpr. (1778) 274 To make Barbadoes Jumballs. 1860 O. W. Holmes Elsie V. vii. (1891) 110 There were..hearts and rounds, and jumbles, which playful youth slip over the forefinger before spoiling their annular outline. 1892 Mrs. Beeton's Bk. Househ. Managem. xl. 1125 California jumbles... sugar,..butter,..flour,..grated lemon-peel..whites of 4 eggs. 1923 Chesterton Fancies versus Fads ii. 21 It involved eating jumbles (a brown flexible cake now almost gone from us). 1974 Daily Tel. 29 Apr. 16/7 Miss Lane mentions the absence from the glossary of such terms as cracknells, jumbells, trencher⁓bread, etc. |