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Dessert

Potato Doughnuts

Potato doughnuts made from mashed potatoes, sugar, milk, butter, eggs, flour, baking powder, and sweet milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Chicago. Bethany union church. Woman's society. [from old catalog] · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 ↓

Potato Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the potato base

  1. Combine one cup mashed potatoes, two cups sugar, three tablespoons melted butter, one cup sweet milk, and two eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add five cups flour and four teaspoons baking powder; flavor to taste; mix until combined.

  3. Put sugar in potatoes while hot and beat well.

Make the dough and bake

  1. Combine one and one-half cups white sugar, three-fourths cup butter, three eggs, three tablespoons sweet milk, and two teaspoons baking powder in a bowl.

  2. Add enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled.

  3. Sprinkle dough with sugar, cut into shapes, and bake.

Nutrition, whole recipe (rough)

994Calories
32 gProtein
26 gFat
157 gCarbs
What these numbers assume: 6 portions
IngredientPortion assumedkcal
Flour1 cup (125g) all-purpose455
Potato1 medium (173g) baked161
Milk1 cup (244ml) whole149
Butter1 tbsp (14g)102
Egg1 large egg (50g)78
Sugar1 tbsp (12.5g) granulated49

One typical portion per ingredient; the recipe's quantities are not counted. A rough guide only, not for medical or dietary planning.

By Chicago. Bethany union church. Woman's society. [from old catalog]. 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. See the original page.

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. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

  3. Potato + teatop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

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

  4. Milk + teatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together738 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 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
Builds the structure that holds the dough together and gives the doughnuts their body.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure as they set in the heat.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the finished doughnuts.
Baking powder
Releases gas during cooking so the doughnuts rise and become light.
Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and softness, keeping the doughnuts tender.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown when baked.

The step that matters

Add enough flour to form a dough that can be rolled. The potato mixture is soft and sticky. Too much flour makes the doughnuts dense and tough, while too little leaves the dough too wet to shape and roll cleanly.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Potatothe original
  2. Arrowrootfits about as well
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Capsicumfits about as well

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