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Dessert

Sweet Milk Doughnuts

A sweet doughnut made from milk, flour, sugar, eggs, and butter, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Sweet Milk Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix 3 cups of flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg.

  2. In another bowl, beat the eggs well and add the sugar.

  3. Alternately add the flour mixture and milk to the egg mixture, then add melted butter or lard and beat well.

  4. Add the last cup of flour as needed and beat thoroughly.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out a portion of the dough to ½ inch thick.

  2. Cut into shapes and fry in deep fat until golden.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Pastry flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together once it is rolled and fried.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough while adding structure and colour.
Baking soda
Reacts with the cream of tartar to produce gas that leavens the doughnuts.
Cream of tartar
Acidifies the dough so it reacts with baking soda, helping the doughnuts rise.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown to a golden colour.
Butter or lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a softer crumb in the finished doughnut.

The step that matters

Adding the last cup of flour. Dough made with a leavening acid and soda should be mixed only until combined, since overworking develops gluten and makes the doughnuts tough. Add flour only as needed so the dough stays soft enough to roll without becoming dense.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, cream, milk, butter. 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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