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Dessert

Crullers or Wonders

Crullers are fried dough pastries made from eggs, lard or butter, sugar, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Crullers or Wonders

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the eggs, melted lard or butter, and sugar until well combined.

  2. Gradually add sifted flour until the mixture is very stiff and can be rolled out thin like pie crust.

Shape

  1. Roll the dough to about 1/8 inch thick and cut into squares measuring 3 inches long and 2 inches wide.

  2. Make several slits lengthwise in each square, stopping 1/4 inch from the edges.

  3. Using your fingers, pull the dough through every other slit to create a twisted shape.

  4. Place the crullers on a board edge-wise and dent them lightly.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot lard until they are a light 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. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Butter + sugartop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness as they set in the frying fat.
Melted lard or butter
Adds fat for tenderness and flavor, keeping the crullers rich and short.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown during frying.
Sifted flour
Provides the structure that lets the stiff dough be rolled thin and hold its twisted shape.

The step that matters

Adding the flour. Flour must be added gradually until the dough is very stiff. Too little leaves it too soft to roll thin and twist, while too much makes the crullers tough and dry.

“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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