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Dessert

Common Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with sugar, lard, eggs, sour milk, baking soda, nutmeg, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Common Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix sugar, melted lard, beaten eggs, sour milk or cream, baking soda, and nutmeg.

  2. Add flour gradually until the dough is easy to roll.

Shape and fry

  1. Heat lard in a deep pan until boiling.

  2. Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.

  3. Fry the doughnuts in the hot lard 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. 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
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the crumb.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic sour milk or cream to produce gas, helping the doughnuts rise.
Sour milk or cream
Adds moisture and tenderness, and its acidity activates the baking soda.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown during frying.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and serves as the hot frying medium.

The step that matters

Fry in hot lard until boiling. If the lard is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy and heavy. Frying at high heat quickly sets the outside so the inside cooks through without soaking up oil.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

More doughnuts recipes

Raised 110Plain 25Potato 18German 17Isle of Wight 16Sour Milk 14 See all 168 →

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