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Dessert

Crullers with Baking Powder

A fried pastry made from flour, baking powder, butter, sugar, eggs, milk, lemon extract, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Crullers with Baking Powder

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Sift the baking powder into the flour.

  2. Cream the butter and sugar with the egg yolks and whole eggs.

  3. Add lemon extract and mace.

  4. Mix all ingredients together to form a smooth dough.

Shape and fry

  1. Cut the dough with a doughnut cutter or cruller cutter.

  2. Twist them.

  3. Fry the crullers until golden brown, similar to doughnuts.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it fries.
Baking powder
Releases gas during frying, lightening the crullers' texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during frying.
Egg yolks
Add richness and emulsify the dough for a smooth texture.
Whole eggs
Help bind the dough and add structure.

The step that matters

Fry the crullers until golden brown. Frying at the right temperature cooks the centre through while the outside browns. If the oil is too cool, the crullers absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if too hot, the outside darkens before the inside sets.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

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