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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast‑raised doughnut made with sugar, eggs, milk, water, butter, lard, yeast, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg or cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine sugar, beaten eggs, sweet milk, water, and the butter-lard mixture.

  2. Add the yeast foam and mix well.

  3. Let the mixture sponge at noon, then add baking soda, salt, and nutmeg or cinnamon. Mix again and let it stand until morning.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into shapes.

  2. Let the doughnuts rise on a bread board until very light.

  3. Fry in hot lard and roll in sugar.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add structure and richness, binding the dough and helping it hold its shape.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Butter and lard
Add fat, giving the doughnuts tenderness and a rich mouthfeel.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the dough brown when fried.
Baking soda
Reacts to add lift and help the doughnuts rise further.

The step that matters

Let the doughnuts rise until very light. Yeast needs time to produce enough gas to lighten the dough. Underproofed doughnuts stay dense and may absorb more oil when fried, while overproofed ones can collapse.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, egg, milk, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Gingerfits less well
  4. Parsleyfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, milk, butter. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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