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Dessert

White Ribbon Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made with milk, sugar, flour, baking powder, lard, egg, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and nutmeg 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 ↓

White Ribbon Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, combine the milk, sugar, and salt.

  2. Stir in enough flour to create a batter, then sift in the baking powder.

  3. Add the hot lard and mix until cool.

  4. Incorporate the beaten egg into the batter.

  5. Add flour to roll out the dough and season with nutmeg.

Fry

  1. Fry in hot oil 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. Flour + nutmegtop 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. Flour + eggtop 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

Flour
Forms the batter and dough structure that holds the doughnut shape.
Baking powder
Releases gas in the dough, helping the doughnuts rise and turn light.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and a rich texture in the dough.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds structure and richness.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Adding the hot lard. The lard should be cooled to a workable temperature before it is mixed in, because very hot fat can scramble the egg or melt into the batter unevenly. Mixing until cool keeps the dough smooth and consistent.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

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