Name: The Bunuelos Mould
Ingredients: 1½ cups flour; 1½ pints milk; 1 egg; 1 pinch sugar; ¼ teaspoon salt; 3 teaspoons baking powder; lard for frying

Why it works: Flour and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

The Bunuelos Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

Mix flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt together and sift.
Beat the egg and mix it with the milk; beat again.
Add the egg mixture to the dry ingredients and stir thoroughly until the batter is thick like pancake batter.

Fry

Heat lard in a deep pan for frying.
Dip the mould into the batter to cover the bottom.
Shake the mould gently in the hot lard until the buñuelo floats away.
Fry until golden brown.
Remove with a fork.
Repeat the process until all the batter is used.

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.

Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together78,219 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together92,116 recipes

Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).
Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together88,785 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Milk + sugartop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together77,875 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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: Forms the main structure of the batter once it is set by frying.
Egg: Binds the batter and adds richness and structure to the fried dough.
Baking powder: Releases gas during frying so the buñuelo puffs and becomes light.
Milk: Moistens the flour and gives the batter its fluid, pourable consistency.
Lard: Conducts heat for frying and helps the surface turn golden brown.

The step that matters

Shake the mould gently in the hot lard until the buñuelo floats away. The batter must be thick enough to hold its shape yet fluid enough to release. Gentle shaking in hot fat lets the dough detach and float, while rough handling can tear it or cause it to stick and fry unevenly.

“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.