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 ↓
Doughnuts
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Sift the flour with salt, sugar, cream of tartar, baking soda, and nutmeg.
Beat the egg and mix it with the sour milk.
Work the butter into the sifted ingredients, then add the milk and egg mixture.
Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut out with a doughnut cutter.
Fry and finish
Fry the doughnuts in deep fat until golden brown.
Once cool, sprinkle with powdered sugar.
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.
Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it
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.
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Butter + milktop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together81,283 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together41,516 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together18,623 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together43,450 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 of the dough once its starch and proteins set during frying.
- Sour milk
- Its acidity reacts with the leavening to help the doughnuts rise and stay tender.
- Egg
- Binds the dough and adds richness and structure.
- Butter
- Adds fat for tenderness and flavour.
- Cream of tartar
- Acts with baking soda to produce gas for lift.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic sour milk and cream of tartar to leaven the dough.
The step that matters
Fry the doughnuts in deep fat until golden brown. Frying at the right temperature sets the outside quickly, browning it while the interior cooks through. Fat that is too cool soaks in oil and turns greasy; fat that is too hot browns the outside before the centre is cooked.
Swap the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, milk, cream, sugar, egg):
- Nutmegthe original
- Cinnamonfits about as well
- Capersfits less well
- Jalapenofits less well
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, milk, cream, sugar, egg. 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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