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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A sweet fried doughnut made with butter, lard, yeast, sugar, and optional currants.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Rub the butter and lard into a quart of sifted flour.

  2. Add the salt and spices if desired.

  3. Pour the warm water into the flour, then add the beaten eggs and sugar.

  4. Mix everything together and add enough flour to form a soft dough.

  5. Let the dough rise overnight.

Shape and fry

  1. Knead the dough again in the morning and let it rise on the molding board until it begins to rise again.

  2. Roll out the dough and cut it into rings or twists.

  3. Fry the doughnuts 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + curranttop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,856 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter and lard
Fat that coats flour particles, giving the doughnuts a tender, flaky-short texture and richness.
Eggs
Add structure and richness, and help bind the soft dough.
Yeast
Produces gas as it ferments, making the dough rise and become light.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast and adds sweetness and golden browning during frying.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the dough its structure and shape.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise overnight. Yeast needs time to ferment and build gas and flavor; a slow, cool rise develops texture, and under-proofed dough will fry up dense.

Swap the currant

The recipe marks currant as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, sugar, flour):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, 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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