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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with sweet milk, lard, sugar, eggs, nutmeg, and flour, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Combine sweet milk, lard, white sugar, yeast, eggs, nutmeg, and salt in a large bowl.

  2. Add flour gradually until a thick batter forms.

  3. Let the batter rise until very light.

  4. Knead the dough well.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll the dough out.

  2. Cut the dough with a biscuit cutter.

  3. Remove the center with a canister top.

  4. Place the cut doughnuts on a floured board to rise again.

  5. Once they are light, fry them in hot lard.

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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Milk + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,685 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough and help it hold its shape.
Lard
Adds richness and tenderness to the dough and carries the heat for frying.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps feed the yeast, aiding browning in the fryer.

The step that matters

Let the doughnuts rise again before frying. Frying before the shaped doughnuts are fully light traps dense, heavy dough that absorbs more fat. Yeast needs time to produce gas and expand the dough, so letting them become light first gives a tender, airy interior.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Jalapenofits less well
  4. Turmericfits less well

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