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Dessert

Grandmother’s Doughnuts

A sweet fried doughnut made with sugar, butter, nutmeg, eggs, milk, flour, baking powder, and coated in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Grandmother’s Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter, then add the grated nutmeg and pinch of salt, mixing well.

  2. Beat the eggs and add them to the mixture without separating yolks and whites, then stir in the milk.

  3. Sift the flour with baking powder twice, then gradually add enough to thicken the batter for rolling.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to ½ inch thick and cut into pieces 3 inches long by 2 inches wide, then make 4 gashes in each piece at equal intervals.

  2. Heat oil in a deep pan until hot enough to brown a bit of bread in 60 seconds.

  3. Carefully lower the dough pieces into the hot oil and fry until golden brown.

Finish and store

  1. Drain on coarse, porous paper and roll in powdered sugar once cooled.

  2. Store in a covered stone jar.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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).

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 richness and structure as they set in the frying oil.
All-purpose flour
Forms the main structure of the dough so it can be rolled and holds its shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the batter, helping the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Butter
Adds fat and tenderness to the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps brown the surface while frying.
Milk
Adds moisture so the flour can form a workable dough.

The step that matters

Frying the dough pieces. If the oil is not hot enough, the dough absorbs oil and becomes greasy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks. Keeping the oil steady at frying temperature gives a golden exterior and a cooked centre.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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

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