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Dessert

Potato Doughnuts

A fried doughnut made from mashed potatoes, sugar, butter, milk, eggs, flour, and baking powder.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Potato Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the dough

  1. While the mashed potatoes are still hot, mix in the sugar and beat well.

  2. In a large bowl, combine the melted butter, sweet milk, and eggs.

  3. Add the potato mixture to the bowl and mix until combined.

  4. In another bowl, whisk together the flour and baking powder.

  5. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture, stirring until a dough forms.

Shape and fry

  1. Roll out the dough and cut into doughnut shapes.

  2. Fry in hot oil until golden brown.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

Mashed potatoes
Add moisture and a tender, soft crumb to the dough.
Eggs
Bind the dough and add structure and richness.
Flour
Provides the main structure that holds the dough together.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lifts the dough so the doughnuts rise lightly.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the doughnuts brown as they fry.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a tender texture.

The step that matters

Frying in hot oil. If the oil is not hot enough, doughnuts absorb excess oil and turn greasy and heavy; if it is too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady oil temperature gives golden, fully cooked doughnuts.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Sweet potatofits about as well
  2. Leekfits about as well
  3. Arrowrootfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, butter, milk, egg, 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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