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Bakers' Raised Doughnuts

Yeast-raised doughnuts made from a dough of flour, milk, lard, sugar and egg whites, fried and rolled in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cinnamon and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Bakers' Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the lard in the milk until nearly cool.

  2. Add enough flour to make a thick batter and mix in the yeast.

  3. Beat well and set aside to rise until light.

  4. Gradually work in the sugar, whipped egg whites, baking soda dissolved in milk, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

  5. Add enough flour to make a stiff dough that can be rolled out.

  6. Let the dough rise again until very light.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to 1 inch thick and cut into rounds.

  2. Place a Sultana raisin in the center of each round and mold into balls, then flatten slightly.

  3. Let them stand for a few minutes before frying.

  4. Heat plenty of lard in a pot until boiling, then drop in the doughnuts.

  5. Fry until light brown, then remove with a skimmer and drain on soft white paper.

  6. While warm, roll in powdered sugar.

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. Cinnamon + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cinnamon + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,390 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Nutmeg + raisintop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  5. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the batter and then the stiff dough that gives the doughnuts their structure.
Yeast
Ferments the batter so the dough rises and becomes light and airy.
Egg whites
Whipped into the dough to add lightness and help it hold air during rising.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried doughnuts brown.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and provides the hot frying medium that cooks the doughnuts.
Baking soda
Reacts with the dough to add extra lift and a lighter crumb.

The step that matters

Let the dough rise until very light before shaping. Yeast needs time to build gas bubbles that give the doughnuts their lightness. Rolling or frying underproofed dough yields dense doughnuts, while the second rise is needed for a light, airy crumb.

“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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