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Dessert

Common Cruller

A fried dough treat made with sugar, shortening, water, yolkaline, baking soda, cream of tartar, flour, hartshorn, and vanilla flavor.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

Common Cruller

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, mix the sugar and cottolene until well combined.

  2. Add water and yolkaline, stirring until dissolved.

  3. In a separate bowl, combine baking soda, cream of tartar, and flour.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, mixing until a dough forms.

  5. Incorporate hartshorn and vanilla flavor.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the dough into crullers and 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. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Flour + vanillatop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Cream + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,301 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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.
Cottolene
Adds fat, which gives the cruller a tender, moist crumb.
White sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during frying.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acid in cream of tartar to release gas, helping the cruller rise.
Cream of tartar
Acts as an acid that reacts with baking soda to leaven the dough.

The step that matters

Incorporate the dry ingredients gradually. Adding flour slowly and mixing only until a dough forms keeps the dough tender. Overmixing develops gluten, which makes the crullers tough and dense.

Swap the vanilla

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillathe original
  3. Strawberryfits less well
  4. Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, flour. 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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