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Dessert

Extra Good Raised Doughnuts

A sweet, leavened doughnut made with bread sponge, milk, shortening, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, and lemon extract, fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Extra Good Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. Scald the milk and mix in the shortening until melted.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then combine it with the bread sponge to form a batter.

  3. Allow the batter to rise until light, about 8 hours.

  4. In the evening, add sugar, beaten eggs, cinnamon, and lemon extract, mixing until the dough is stiff like biscuit dough.

Shape and fry

  1. In the morning, shape the dough into small balls and let them rise again.

  2. Once risen, fry the doughnuts in hot fat for 5 to 6 minutes until golden.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

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

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

  4. Cinnamon + flourtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

What each ingredient does

Bread sponge
Ferments the dough so it rises and becomes light and airy.
Eggs
Add structure and richness to the dough, helping it hold its shape when fried.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the dough and gives a soft crumb.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown when fried.
Milk
Adds moisture and richness to the dough.

The step that matters

Let the batter rise until light. The long slow rise lets the bread sponge's yeast develop gas and flavor. If the dough is under-risen, the doughnuts will be dense; if over-risen, they can collapse or absorb excess oil when fried.

Swap the lemon

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

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

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