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Dessert

Raised Doughnuts

A yeast-leavened doughnut made with milk, sugar, flour, butter, mace, egg, and salt, then fried.

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 ↓

Raised Doughnuts

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sponge

  1. Dissolve the yeast and 1 tablespoon of sugar in lukewarm milk.

  2. Add 1 ½ cups of flour and beat well.

  3. Cover and set aside to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour.

Make the dough

  1. Add the remaining ingredients and knead lightly.

  2. Place in a well-greased bowl, cover, and allow to rise for about 1 ½ hours.

Shape and fry

  1. When light, turn onto a floured board and roll to about ⅓ inch thickness.

  2. Cut with a small doughnut cutter and let rise again on the floured board.

  3. Drop into deep hot fat for frying.

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. Flour + buttertop 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. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Yeast
Produces gas that makes the dough rise and become light and airy.
Flour
Forms the gluten network that gives the doughnuts structure and chew.
Milk
Adds moisture and softness, and hydrates the flour to form dough.
Egg
Adds richness and helps bind the dough and set its structure.
Butter
Adds fat for tenderness and rich flavour.
Sugar
Feeds the yeast during rising and adds sweetness and browning.

The step that matters

Drop into deep hot fat for frying.. If the fat is too cool, doughnuts soak up grease and turn heavy; if too hot, the outside browns before the inside cooks through. Steady, moderate heat gives a light, evenly cooked result.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Macethe original

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