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Dessert

Sweet Milk Doughnuts

A sweet doughnut made from milk, eggs, flour, sugar, and spices, then fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and cinnamon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,917 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Sweet Milk Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Cream the beaten eggs and sugar together.

  2. Add the milk and melted shortening to the egg mixture and mix well.

  3. Combine and sift the flour, baking powder, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt, and lemon rind.

  4. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and blend until smooth.

Shape and chill

  1. Chill the dough until it is easy to handle.

  2. Roll the dough on a floured surface to ½ inch thickness and cut into shapes.

Fry

  1. Heat shortening to 385°F (196°C) and fry the doughnuts for 2 to 3 minutes, browning them on one side.

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. Nutmeg + cinnamontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,917 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Cinnamon + lemontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,950 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + cinnamontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Add structure and richness, and bind the dough with moisture.
Bread flour
Its gluten forms the structure that holds the doughnut's shape.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps it brown during frying.
Milk
Adds moisture that hydrates the flour and softens the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas that makes the dough rise and become lighter.
Shortening
Adds fat for tenderness and serves as the frying medium.

The step that matters

Frying at 385°F (196°C). Keep the shortening near 385°F (196°C) throughout frying. Oil that is too cool soaks into the dough and makes doughnuts greasy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the centre cooks.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, flour, sugar, nutmeg, milk, cinnamon):

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, flour, sugar, nutmeg, milk, cinnamon. 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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