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Dessert

Nancy's Doughnuts

A sweet doughnut made with sugar, milk, eggs, butter, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Nancy's Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix sugar, sweet milk, eggs, melted butter, baking soda, and cream of tartar in a bowl.

  2. Gradually add flour until the dough is soft enough to roll out.

  3. Roll out the dough.

  4. Cut the dough into desired shapes.

Fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan.

  2. Fry the doughnuts 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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as it sets in the frying fat.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to release gas, lifting the dough so the doughnuts puff.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with the baking soda, producing lift and a tender crumb.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough enough body to roll out and cut.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown during frying.

The step that matters

Fry the doughnuts until golden brown. Fat that is too cool lets doughnuts soak up oil and turn greasy, while fat that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks. Frying at a steady, moderate heat cooks the dough through and gives an even golden colour.

“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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