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Dessert

Old-fashioned Yankee Doughnuts

A yeast doughnut made with milk, sugar, butter, lard, and sponge yeast, rolled, fried, and coated in powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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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 ↓

Old-fashioned Yankee Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. In a large bowl, combine milk, sugar, butter, lard, and yeast.

  2. Add flour gradually until a stiff dough forms.

  3. Cover and let the dough rise until light.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough to ¾ inch thick and cut into shapes.

  2. Let the cut doughnuts stand on a board until they rise again.

  3. Heat lard in a deep pan and fry the doughnuts until golden brown.

  4. Remove from oil and coat with powdered sugar while still warm.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Forms the stiff dough that gives the doughnuts their structure.
Sponge yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and turn light.
Eggs
Add richness and help bind the dough.
Lard
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and carries the frying heat.
Sugar
Sweetens the dough and helps the surface brown during frying.

The step that matters

Frying the doughnuts until golden brown. Oil must be hot enough to set the outside quickly; if it is too cool, doughnuts absorb grease and turn heavy and oily. Too hot and the outside browns before the inside cooks.

“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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