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Dessert

Soda Doughnuts, with Butter and Eggs

A fried doughnut made with soda, butter, eggs, sour milk, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Soda Doughnuts, with Butter and Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat lard in a kettle, but do not let it get too hot.

  2. Cream the butter in a bowl.

  3. Mix the cinnamon and mace into the creamed butter.

  4. Beat the yolks of the eggs in a separate bowl.

  5. Beat the whites of the eggs until stiff.

  6. Combine the yolks and whites.

Make the dough

  1. Sift in the sugar while beating well.

  2. Add the creamed butter to the center of the flour.

  3. Pour the egg and sugar mixture over the butter and begin to beat.

  4. Gradually add the sour milk and work into a dough.

  5. Roll out the dough.

  6. Cut into doughnut shapes.

Fry

  1. Fry the doughnuts in the heated lard 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the structure that holds the dough together and lets the doughnuts keep their shape.
Eggs
Add richness and structure, and the whipped whites lighten the dough.
Sour milk
Reacts with the baking soda and adds moisture and tang to the dough.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to produce gas that leavens the doughnuts.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor in the dough.

The step that matters

Heat the lard gently. Lard that is too hot will brown the outside of the doughnuts before the centre cooks through. Keeping the fat moderately hot lets the dough cook evenly and turn golden without burning.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, cinnamon, butter, egg, 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.

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