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Dessert

Chocolate Doughnuts

Chocolate doughnuts made with eggs, butter, milk, sugar, chocolate, vanilla, flour, baking powder, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Chocolate Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

  2. Beat the eggs, then add the sugar, melted chocolate, butter, and milk.

  3. Stir in the vanilla.

  4. Add the sifted dry ingredients to form a medium dough.

  5. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut out with a doughnut cutter.

Fry and finish

  1. Fry the doughnuts in hot oil until golden brown.

  2. Once cool, sprinkle with 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 + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Chocolate + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the crumb.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough once it is mixed with liquid.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the doughnuts rise and turn lighter.
Melted chocolate
Adds chocolate flavour and colour to the dough.
Sweet milk
Adds moisture so the dough comes together softly.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil until golden brown. If the oil is too cool, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through.

“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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