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Dessert

Puff-ball Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from a thick batter of eggs, sugar, milk, flour, and spices, dropped into boiling lard.

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 ↓

Puff-ball Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Beat the eggs and sugar until light.

  2. Add the sweet milk, salt, nutmeg, and mix well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the batter is thick enough for a spoon to stand upright.

  4. Stir in the baking powder.

Fry and drain

  1. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into boiling lard.

  2. Fry until golden brown and remove to drain.

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

Eggs
Add structure and richness, helping the batter hold its shape while frying.
Flour
Provides the structure that thickens the batter so it holds its shape in the fat.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, making the doughnuts light and puffy as they fry.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried exterior brown.

The step that matters

Fry in fully heated lard. The lard must be boiling hot when the batter is dropped in. Hot fat sets the outside quickly and drives the rising from the baking powder, so the doughnuts puff rather than soak up oil and turn greasy or dense.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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