Skip to main content
Dessert

Plain Raised Doughnuts

A doughnut made with flour, sugar, spices, yeast, and milk, then fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cinnamon and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,536 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Plain Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the flour and salt together.

  2. In another bowl, combine the sugar, cinnamon, mace (or nutmeg), and allspice.

  3. Mix the spiced sugar into the flour mixture.

  4. Make a well in the center of the flour and add the yeast.

  5. Pour the warm milk into the well and mix to form a soft dough.

  6. Knead gently on a floured surface until just combined.

Rise

  1. Let the dough rise overnight or for 5-6 hours during the day.

  2. Gently knead the dough again and let it rise for a second time.

Shape and fry

  1. Prepare to fry by heating lard in a deep frying pan to 3 inches deep.

  2. Roll out the dough to about ½ inch thick and cut into strips of 6 inches.

  3. Shape each strip into a doughnut and fry until golden brown.

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. Cinnamon + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Mace + allspicetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Cinnamon + macetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the gluten structure that gives the doughnuts their body.
Yeast
Produces gas during rising, making the dough light and airy.
Sweet milk
Hydrates the flour and adds moisture and softness to the dough.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and moisture, and helps the surface brown during frying.
Lard
Fat for frying that browns the outside and carries heat evenly.

The step that matters

Second rise. Yeast needs time to build gas and relax the gluten; rising fully before frying keeps the doughnuts light rather than dense and greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cinnamon, allspice, milk. 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.

You might also like

Cinnamon RollsCinnamon Rolls71 recipesCinnamon CakeCinnamon Cake42 recipesWhite CakeWhite Cake431 recipesPound CakePound Cake373 recipes