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Dessert

French Crullers

A fried dough pastry made with butter, sugar, water, flour, and eggs.

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 ↓

French Crullers

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Mix butter, sugar, and water in a large bowl until well combined.

  2. Gradually add flour and mix until smooth.

  3. Incorporate eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

Fry and serve

  1. Prepare greased paper cut to the size of your cruller pot.

  2. Spoon the mixture onto the paper.

  3. Turn the paper upside down into boiling grease.

  4. Remove the paper after half a minute, leaving the crullers in the grease.

  5. Fry until they turn a nice yellow color.

  6. Serve 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. 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

Flour
Provides the structure that holds the dough together as it fries.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind and set the dough during frying.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the dough.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crullers brown evenly.

The step that matters

Remove the paper after half a minute, leaving the crullers in the grease.. Once the dough is set in hot fat, it releases from the paper; removing the paper too early can tear the shape, while leaving it too long keeps it greasy and blocks even frying.

“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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