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Dessert

Sour Milk Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with sour milk, sour cream, eggs, sugar, and spices, rolled and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg 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 ↓

Sour Milk Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine sour milk, sour cream, eggs, and sugar.

  2. Add baking soda and baking powder, mixing well.

  3. Gradually add flour until the dough is firm enough to roll.

  4. Flavor the dough with nutmeg, cinnamon, or vanilla as desired.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Fry in hot oil 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. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

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

  3. Cream + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

Sour milk
Its acidity reacts with the baking soda to produce gas that lifts the dough.
Sour cream
Adds fat and moisture, giving the doughnuts a tender, rich crumb.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness to the crumb.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown when fried.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk to release carbon dioxide for lift.
Baking powder
Provides additional rising through carbon dioxide release during frying.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour should be added gradually so the dough becomes firm enough to roll without becoming tough. Too much flour dries the dough and develops gluten, producing dense doughnuts.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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