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Dessert

French Crullers

A fried dough ring made from milk, water, lard, flour, and eggs, finished with vanilla icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

French Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a pot, combine the milk and water with the lard and bring to a boil.

  2. Sift the flour and stir it into the boiling mixture, then remove from heat.

  3. Let the mixture cool slightly, then work in the eggs until the mixture is firm but not too soft.

Shape and fry

  1. Transfer the dough to a piping bag fitted with a large star tip.

  2. Pipe rings onto greased parchment paper the size of your frying pan.

  3. Carefully drop the rings into hot oil for frying.

  4. Remove the parchment paper after a short time and turn the crullers several times until golden brown.

Finish

  1. Once cooked, ice with vanilla icing.

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 + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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 starch structure that holds the dough together and lets the crullers puff.
Eggs
Add moisture and structure, helping the dough set firm during frying.
Lard
Adds fat for tenderness and richness in the choux-style dough.
Milk
Provides liquid and milk solids that add flavor and help browning.

The step that matters

Working in the eggs. Eggs must be added to a cooled mixture so they do not scramble, and the dough must be firm but not too soft. Too-soft dough will spread and fail to hold its ring shape in the hot oil.

“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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