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Turtulongs, Fine, for Breakfast

A sweet doughnut made by boiling butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and salt batter in rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Turtulongs, Fine, for Breakfast

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, mix the butter, powdered sugar, flour, eggs, and salt until well combined.

  2. Bring a pot of clean water to a boil.

Shape and boil

  1. Roll the batter into pieces about 4 inches long and as thick as your little finger.

  2. Join the ends of each piece to form two round rings.

  3. Carefully place the rings in the boiling water, cooking a few at a time.

  4. Once they float to the top, remove them and transfer to a bowl of cold water.

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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + eggtop 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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the dough a tender, flavourful crumb.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the rings together during boiling.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Powdered sugar
Adds sweetness and fine texture to the dough.

The step that matters

Carefully place the rings in the boiling water, cooking a few at a time.. Adding too many rings at once drops the water temperature and makes them soggy and uneven. Boiling briefly before baking sets the outside so the rings keep their shape.

“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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