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Dessert

Doughnuts

A fried dough confection made with eggs, sugar, milk, butter, flour, baking powder, and salt, then rolled in sugar and cinnamon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Doughnuts

Why it works: Milk and butter 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 ↓

Doughnuts

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a bowl, beat the eggs and sugar together until well combined.

  2. Add the sweet milk and melted butter, mixing until smooth.

  3. Stir in the salt and baking powder.

  4. Gradually add flour until a soft dough forms.

Fry and finish

  1. Heat deep fat in a frying pan.

  2. Drop spoonfuls of dough into the hot fat and fry until golden brown.

  3. Remove from fat and dip briefly in boiling water to remove excess grease.

  4. Place in a baking pan in a warm oven with the door open to dry for a few minutes.

  5. Roll in sugar flavored with cinnamon before serving.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Eggs
Bind the dough and add richness and structure to the batter.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown in the hot fat.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and a richer flavor in the dough.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the dough so the doughnuts rise and stay tender.
Flour
Forms the structure of the dough, giving it body so it holds its shape when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the dough in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the centre cooks. Steady heat gives a golden crust and a fully cooked interior.

“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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