Why it works: Flour and buttermilk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,721 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Dough Nuts
Ingredients
Directions
Make the dough
Sift the flour into a pan.
Make a hole in the center and add sugar, buttermilk, eggs, butter, baking soda, and flavoring.
Mix well to form a very smooth dough.
Roll out the dough and cut into desired shapes.
Fry
Fry in boiling lard until golden brown.
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.
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Flour + buttermilktop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,721 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Sugar + buttermilktop 9% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together2,973 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together92,116 recipes
Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
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Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together106,462 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
- Flour
- Provides the structure that holds the dough together and sets when fried.
- Sugar
- Adds sweetness and helps the fried surface brown.
- Buttermilk
- Its acidity reacts with baking soda and softens the crumb for a tender texture.
- Eggs
- Add structure and richness, binding the dough.
- Butter
- Adds fat for richness and a tender, moist texture.
- Baking soda
- Reacts with the acidic buttermilk to produce gas that makes the doughnuts rise.
The step that matters
Fry in boiling lard until golden brown. The fat must be hot enough to set the outside quickly. If it is too cool, the doughnuts absorb excess fat and turn greasy. If it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks through.
Swap the orange
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, buttermilk, egg, butter):
- Raisinfits better
- Vanillafits better
- Lemonfits better
- Orangethe original
Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, buttermilk, egg, 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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