Skip to main content
Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from a sweet milk batter with butter, sugar, egg, bread sponge, and lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Warm the milk in a pan on the stove.

  2. Add the butter and sugar to the warm milk, stirring until the butter melts.

  3. Mix in the beaten egg and bread sponge gently.

  4. Set the mixture in a warm place to rise until puffed up.

  5. Mix down the dough until stiff and let it rise again until very light.

Shape and fry

  1. Carefully turn out the dough, handling it as little as possible.

  2. Cut the dough into pieces instead of rolling it.

  3. Drop the pieces into hot lard to fry.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bread sponge
Its yeast develops the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Egg
Adds structure and richness, helping the dough hold its shape while frying.
Butter
Adds fat, giving the doughnuts a tender texture and richer flavor.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the crust brown during frying.
Sweet milk
Provides moisture and softness to the dough.

The step that matters

Handling the dough gently during the final rise and shaping. Overworking the risen dough knocks out the gas bubbles that make it light, so the doughnuts turn out dense. Turning it out and cutting rather than rolling keeps the air in the dough.

“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.

You might also like

Bread PuddingBread Pudding153 recipesSoft Ginger BreadSoft Ginger Bread85 recipesOrange Potato BreadOrange Potato Bread80 recipesBrown Bread PuddingBrown Bread Pudding47 recipes